Why doesn't Apple start making operating systems for x86 PC's?

Mxsmanic wrote something like:

Randy Howard writes:

Spare me. FreeBSD has driver support roughly equivalent to what
Microsoft enjoyed during the XP64 beta period.

You don't need much in the way of driver support for a Web site. You
have only disks and network cards, and maybe a basic video card.

Installing Linux is a breeze with any reasonably modern
distro.

When my parents can install Linux, I'll believe this.

As I say. Insert CD, switch on and choose default install. It's that easy
with some distos now. Dual booting is where it gets hard, but a single
linux PC is a breeze

Of course, installation is just the beginning; you still have to _use_
Linux.

Hint, the start button is replaced by a different icon.

I handed a 65 year old man a SuSE 9.1 DVD, who had
never seen Linux before and sat in the corner and watched him
install it (without any help from me) on a Dell Latitude notebook
all by himself. It took him about 30 minutes, most of that the
time to copy the files onto his slow internal notebook hard drive.

And today?

My 7 year old son installed Linux on an old spare PC by himself
because he likes some of the games that it has on it, such as
Kreversi and SameGame.

And today?

What does 'and today' mean. I have kide using linux as well. Since they were
very young.

In fact, the only "current" OS that might
be difficult to install by non-tech people today is probably
FreeBSD, or Novell NetWare (and that's really not "current"
anymore).

Most server operating systems are much less user-friendly to install
than desktop systems. In general, the friendlier the installation, the
less flexible it is.

That's a falacy. Mandrake linux is easy to install (friendly gui) and can be
used as desktop or server.

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I don't actually live here.
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TheLetterK wrote something like:

Mxsmanic wrote:
TheLetterK writes:


Most people can afford to drop $600 on a computer.


You can buy PCs new for $180 these days.
Let's not exaggerate please. I've done the 'under $200 challenge'
before, the results are not pretty.

They are getting very cheap. $500 here in Oz, so I guess that would be mabe
$300 in the US.

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I don't actually live here.
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In article , Paul Rubin
says...
Randy Howard writes:
Of course, once you shift the GUI towards the kernel to improve desktop
performance, you also shift your OS away from suitability as a server OS.

Define what you mean by "shift the GUI towards the kernel". Show
all your steps.

One thing the original 68k Mac did was handle mouse motion very close
to the serial port interrupt routine in the OS. You would NEVER move
the mouse and then have to wait for some code to page in before the
cursor moved on the screen, as happens all the time under Windows and
X today. OK, so those Macs didn't have paging, but the principle
still seems worthwhile. I don't understand why we don't run realtime
Linux kernels on our desktop boxes and give some of the GUI tasks
realtime priority. That of course might require considerable window
system redesign...

My mouse moves fine on both Windows and Linux as is. Don't see a problem
there. I've noticed that Macs running OS X have good mouse response
as well.



--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"If the evidence doesn't seem to fit a particular conspiracy theory,
just create a bigger conspiracy theory." --Robert D. Hicks

In article ,
Randy Howard wrote:

In article , Chris van Bladel
chbEDmicrofixPUNTnl says...
Henrietta K Thomas wrote:
XP is pure insecure **** and Longhorn is looking like Service Pack 3
with a crappy UI. So why doesn't Apple exploit the buzz around their
kickass OS Tiger and get something going for the dissatisfied
mainstream PC user?

Because the rest of the world would like to work with 2 mousebuttons

Speak for yourself. 3-button mice rule. :-)

Speak for YOURSELF, I run Mac OSX and my mouse has EIGHT buttons and I
use every one them. Most of the Mac software uses right and left click,
as does the OS. I.E. ye who think that Macs and their software CAN'T or
WON'T support multi-button mice know not of what you speak.

--
George Graves
------------------
A sports car makes the journey more fun than the destination.

Mxsmanic wrote something like:

Randy Howard writes:

Must be why people get higher frame rates on it than Windows.

There's more to performance than just frame rates.

Can you detail this. I use linux every day and don't notice any major
performance issues, even with 'bloated' KDE...

Define what you mean by "shift the GUI towards the kernel". Show
all your steps.

Moving GUI functions closer or into the kernel in order to reduce the
overhead of interprocess communication, which is a major consumer of
hardware power in GUIs. The faster you get from the API to the hardware
registers, the better the performance.

Unfortunately, this usually means sacrificing or shortcutting OS
features intended to ensure OS stability or security.

Ah, like putting IE too deep. If there is a slight performnce hit for the
sake of stability and security, then I'll take security. After all, the
hardware thees days is very fast, so I could afford a slight hit if talking
about office and internet apps... Tho I don't see too many speed issues.

Microsoft started doing this on NT-based systems beginning with NT 4.0
in order to improve GUI performance, and destabilized the OS in the
process. They went even further with "DirectX".

I haven't seen this as a good thing. Stability is more important to me.

Windows is currently a desktop trying to be a server OS,
and failing miserably.

When it is used as a server, it's only so-so. But on the desktop it is
king.

Faster but less stable? I haven't noticed the speed too much, but do notice
the stability issues in windows.

I don't recommend Windows for servers except under special
circumstances.

Good call.

Linux doesn't really excel as a server _or_ a desktop. There are better
desktops, and there are better servers.

But used as both quite effectively apparently. Very good when optimized as a
server and pretty much the same when optimized as a desktop.

For who? You mean somebody like Linspire?

For Linux in general, although I realize that saying "Linux in general"
isn't very meaningful when there are 36,411 different "distributions"
out there.

Not that many, but what's wrong with variety. As in nature, a monculture is
not a good thing and is more easily hit with one predator...

You are probably aware that there are more than one linux distros
available, and it's all open source?

Yes. But are you sure that _all_ Linux distributions contain _only_
open source, and nothing proprietary?

Download GPL distros are all OSS, but you can get them with closed source
apps and drivers or download the same. No problem with that. I run Doom3
and UT2004 with a nvidia driver, as well as other closed source linux and
windows apps on linux.

I would actually prefer a massive
fork, with Linux desktop and server flavors diverging. Oh wait,
that's already happened. RedHat ES, SuSE SLES, etc.

They run the same kernel, so they can't really fork. A server kernel
doesn't look the same as a desktop kernel.

Often the same kernel, but you can optimize as you like. Most is the same
for server or desktop tho.

That's called a customer base. Thanks for noticing they have one.

They are very loud, so they are easy to notice, despite their small
numbers.

Minorities get minimalized all the time. It's okay, we don't care. Unlike
MS, linux does not need a monopoly to survive. I've been using linux full
on for 10 years. I don't care about the numbers.

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I don't actually live here.
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Paul Rubin writes:

One thing the original 68k Mac did was handle mouse motion very close
to the serial port interrupt routine in the OS. You would NEVER move
the mouse and then have to wait for some code to page in before the
cursor moved on the screen, as happens all the time under Windows and
X today.

I never see this on Windows. I haven't used X on UNIX enough to notice.

OK, so those Macs didn't have paging, but the principle
still seems worthwhile.

Well, no, that changes everything.

I don't understand why we don't run realtime
Linux kernels on our desktop boxes and give some of the GUI tasks
realtime priority. That of course might require considerable window
system redesign...

Usually that's called "a new operating system."

--
Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

Mxsmanic wrote something like:

TheLetterK writes:

The same people complaining about X11 bloat are the same ones who
hand-code everything in Assembly. You know, the crazies working on
Menuet?

Magic works in assembly language. However, most people don't want
magic, they just want "good enough."

People are looking for 'good enough' these days and moving to open office
and such... Cool.

You are aware that OS X implements it's GUI in userspace, just like
X11... right?

I presume so, yes. I don't expect it to stay that way.

I do.

Why? It's certainly fast enough when implemented in userspace.

It depends on what you mean by "fast enough." Most games are on Windows
for a reason.

Economic usually. It's the bigger market. However I run games on linux, both
native and with cedega, at much the same framerate. Sometimes faster,
sometime slower. Mind you, I tend to run the game with a full PC and about
10 apps on 12 virtual desktops, so that might slow things a little.

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I don't actually live here.
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Randy Howard wrote:


Speak for yourself. 3-button mice rule. :-)



LOL
Damn, I'm running behind. Time to toss out the 2 button.

Chris

In article gmgravesnos-2C2E18.01352129042005@newssvr21-
ext.news.prodigy.com, says...
In article ,
Randy Howard wrote:

In article , Chris van Bladel
chbEDmicrofixPUNTnl says...
Henrietta K Thomas wrote:
XP is pure insecure **** and Longhorn is looking like Service Pack 3
with a crappy UI. So why doesn't Apple exploit the buzz around their
kickass OS Tiger and get something going for the dissatisfied
mainstream PC user?

Because the rest of the world would like to work with 2 mousebuttons

Speak for yourself. 3-button mice rule. :-)

Speak for YOURSELF,

First off, it was a joke. Notice the emoticon.

I run Mac OSX and my mouse has EIGHT buttons and I use every one them.

Hang on, counting buttons here... mine has 7 buttons and a wheel that
also can be clicked, so maybe that counts as 8. Otherwise, you win.

Most of the Mac software uses right and left click, as does the OS.

So I hear.

I.E. ye who think that Macs and their software CAN'T or WON'T support
multi-button mice know not of what you speak.

I'm well aware that the old 1-button mouse thing is long gone as far
as slagging purposes go.

--
Randy Howard (2reply remove FOOBAR)
"If the evidence doesn't seem to fit a particular conspiracy theory,
just create a bigger conspiracy theory." --Robert D. Hicks

In article ,
Mxsmanic wrote:

Paul Rubin writes:

One thing the original 68k Mac did was handle mouse motion very close
to the serial port interrupt routine in the OS. You would NEVER move
the mouse and then have to wait for some code to page in before the
cursor moved on the screen, as happens all the time under Windows and
X today.

I never see this on Windows. I haven't used X on UNIX enough to notice.
I only see it happen in X when something blows up.

OK, so those Macs didn't have paging, but the principle
still seems worthwhile.

Well, no, that changes everything.

I don't understand why we don't run realtime
Linux kernels on our desktop boxes and give some of the GUI tasks
realtime priority. That of course might require considerable window
system redesign...

Usually that's called "a new operating system."