[SLUG] fishing for Mac OSX experiences
I was reading an article in the April edition of Linux Journal the other day which looks into the current state of OSX. In it the comment is made: "After hackers barfed on Apples original public source licence, the company issued a new one that the Open Source Initiative soon approved" and " In fact, you don't even need to run Darwin on Apple hardware, since an x86 version is available as well (from Apple even)" I am wondering if any sluggers have tried installing GNU-Darwin and if so, what do they have to report? -=-=-==-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Graeme Robinson - Graenet consulting www.graenet.com - internet solutions -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-==---=-=--=-=-= -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] fishing for Mac OSX experiences
On Fri, 14 Jun 2002 13:26:49 +1000 (EST) Graeme Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I was reading an article in the April edition of Linux Journal the other > day which looks into the current state of OSX. In it the comment is made: > > "After hackers barfed on Apples original public source licence, the > company issued a new one that the Open Source Initiative soon approved" > > and > > " In fact, you don't even need to run Darwin on Apple hardware, since an > x86 version is available as well (from Apple even)" > > I am wondering if any sluggers have tried installing GNU-Darwin and if so, > what do they have to report? Don't know anything about Darwin on x86 but I've had an iBook for a bit over a week now and I feel I'm able to comment on the non x86 things. My main purpose for getting an iBook was that I wanted a laptop with better graphics that the one I had. The iBook had a three advantages over x86 laptops in order of importance: 1) I could dual boot with MacOSX and make sure my software could compile on OSX. 2) it wasn't x86 3) I could run some of the commercial OSX music software so I could compare it with stuff available for Linux. When I got it, the first thing I did was grab the Fink stuff from http://fink.sourceforge.net/ which is a Debian style set of packages for OSX including an X server which can coexist with the standard Aqua GUI, standard GNU tools (autoconf etc) my favourite editor (nedit), cvs etc. The developement angle was for me the most important aspect of OSX. In this, it fails pretty badly. Complaints: 1) Extremely poor libtool/autoconf/automake support. Now you might say this is not Apple's fault but I think it is. Apple has decided to do a number of things in a completely non-standard Unix way. For instance I still do not understand dynamic linking on OSX; there is no ldd program. Its almost as if Apple is making it deliberately difficult to run Free Software on OSX. 2) sed is broken (in comparison to GNU sed and seemingly more than other unixen). The command line sed s/some pattern with spaces/xxx/ fails because the Mac sed is not smart enough to realise that the spaces are part of the pattern. Other annoyances: 1) The Aqua GUI has no concept of multiple desktops. On a tiny laptop screen this is really a pain. 2) The only way to set up networking stuff seems to be via the GUI and I haven't found a way to fix this piece of weird-ness : > nslookup one_of_my_local_machnes # works > ping one_of_my_local_machnes # doesn't work > ping one_of_my_local_machnes.my_local_domain # works I'd know how to fix this on a standard Unix machine but I haven't been able to fix it on the iBook. I'be tried to add a default lookup domain in the GUI, but it doesn't want to allow anything that doesn't end in .com. Painful. 3) The mv command does not allow the renaming of directories in place ie mv old_dir_name new_name I really can't understand why this hasn't been fixed. 4) Speed. With the Aqua GUI and X running it certainly ain't fast, even with 256Meg of RAM. As soon as I get around to installing Linux on it I'll have something to compare it to. Keep in mind this is the opinion of a Linux power user. The average person would probably quite like the interface and the ease of use and thats what Apple is aiming for. I just wish they didn't have such a Not-Invented-Here attitude. Erik -- +---+ Erik de Castro Lopo [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Yes it's valid) +---+ Moore's Law: hardware speed doubles every 18 months Gates' Law: software speed halves every 18 months -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] fishing for Mac OSX experiences
Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: > On Fri, 14 Jun 2002 13:26:49 +1000 (EST) Fantastic feedback Erik. I had been playing around with the thought if getting an ibook, but your comments have made me far less keen. > 1) Extremely poor libtool/autoconf/automake support. Now you might say this > is not Apple's fault but I think it is. Apple has decided to do a number > of things in a completely non-standard Unix way. For instance I still > do not understand dynamic linking on OSX; there is no ldd program. Is it called something else? For instance, the command to show shared lib usage and other stuff on hp-ux is 'chattr'. Surely this is a standard freebsd thing anyway?!? > 2) sed is broken (in comparison to GNU sed and seemingly more than other > unixen). The command line > > sed s/some pattern with spaces/xxx/ > > > fails because the Mac sed is not smart enough to realise that the spaces > are part of the pattern. Are you using quotes around that? I've never known a sed to understand multiple args are a single expression. > 3) The mv command does not allow the renaming of directories in place ie > > mv old_dir_name new_name What does freebsd do here? I know that some Unixes or Unix-like OS's (e.g. plan9? ) don't allow dir renaming because of race conditions. > 4) Speed. With the Aqua GUI and X running it certainly ain't fast, even with > 256Meg of RAM. As soon as I get around to installing Linux on it I'll have > something to compare it to. This'd be one of my main concerns. If it's behind the equivalently priced Dell for instance now, what will it be like in a a year or so? The other thing that concerns me is their jumping through hoops to avoid putting metainfo in the name. It has to make it far more complex to do porting and navigating files under the different subsystems. Look at the complexity and security problems caused by Windows machines trying to maintain 8.3 filename compatibility, Unicode and data forks in their filesystem. Matt -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] fishing for Mac OSX experiences
On Sun, 16 Jun 2002 15:20:04 +1000 Matthew Hannigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Is it called something else? For instance, the command to show shared > lib usage and other stuff on hp-ux is 'chattr'. Surely this is a > standard freebsd thing anyway?!? This is a standard GNU tool chain thing. The C compiler on OSX is GCC or rather Apple's hacked version of it. Who do Apple think they are second guessing the combined knowledge and experience of the GNU compiler and binutils people. > > > 2) sed is broken (in comparison to GNU sed and seemingly more than other > > unixen). The command line > > > > sed s/some pattern with spaces/xxx/ > > > > > > fails because the Mac sed is not smart enough to realise that the spaces > > are part of the pattern. > > Are you using quotes around that? I've never known a sed to > understand multiple args are a single expression. This was in a configure script. The configure script worked on Linux and failed on OSX. Placing double quotes around it made it work on both platforms. Yes it probably should have had double quotes all along but I expect few differences between unices. > > 3) The mv command does not allow the renaming of directories in place ie > > > > mv old_dir_name new_name > > What does freebsd do here? Really not sure. Anybody else? > I know that some Unixes or Unix-like > OS's (e.g. plan9? ) don't allow dir renaming because of race conditions. I can rename Desktop folder (directories) in the GUI but I can't at the command line. That has nothing to do with protecting from race conditions :-). > > 4) Speed. With the Aqua GUI and X running it certainly ain't fast, even with > > 256Meg of RAM. As soon as I get around to installing Linux on it I'll have > > something to compare it to. > > This'd be one of my main concerns. If it's behind the equivalently > priced Dell for instance now, what will it be like in a a year or so? Give me a week or so and I should get around to installing Linux on it. Thats would make for a very interesting comparison. > The other thing that concerns me is their jumping through hoops > to avoid putting metainfo in the name. It has to make it far more > complex to do porting and navigating files under the different > subsystems. Err, sorry, whats all this about? Erik -- +---+ Erik de Castro Lopo [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Yes it's valid) +---+ "These are the finest moments in (post)modern life, when satire is completly indistinguishable from reality... I usually have to rely on the presidential elections for such dada." -- frenomulax on Jesux a christian Linux distro. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] fishing for Mac OSX experiences
Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: > > This was in a configure script. Wow. It would never have even occurred to me to not use quotes. >>This'd be one of my main concerns. If it's behind the equivalently >>priced Dell for instance now, what will it be like in a a year or so? > > Give me a week or so and I should get around to installing Linux on it. Thats > would make for a very interesting comparison. Interesting, but not so important, unless OS-X can catch up to Linux. >>The other thing that concerns me is their jumping through hoops >>to avoid putting metainfo in the name. It has to make it far more >>complex to do porting and navigating files under the different >>subsystems. > > Err, sorry, whats all this about? Err, yeah sorry. That was a bit left field. I know that OS-X marries somehow the old MacOS creator/type information that is kept in different 'forks' of the same file. In contrast to Unix which uses name suffix (.tar) or magic numbers (/etc/magic). I just think that in their attempts to combine all this they're sure to make it quite complex. And complexity breeds insecurity and lack of portability. My reference to Windows is that Windows also has the same sort of multiple data fork files which are hardly ever used. These data forks have been a way to hide data, and also some web attacks rely on web server security not really understanding them either. I would do a cert/cve search except that I forget what windows calls these things. channels? Also supporting Unicode in file names has led to problems. See http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/111677as an example for more details. Doing searches for "unicode" on cert.org or cve.mitre.org will get you a lot of hits. I dunno whether OS-X uses unicode at all; again it just an example of where complexity can help insecurity. Matt -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] fishing for Mac OSX experiences
On Sun, 16 Jun 2002 15:57:31 +1000 Matthew Hannigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: > > > > This was in a configure script. > > Wow. It would never have even occurred to me to not use quotes. Well it work on Linux so I went with it :-). In hindsight I'm a little surprised myself. > Err, yeah sorry. That was a bit left field. > > I know that > OS-X marries somehow the old MacOS creator/type information that > is kept in different 'forks' of the same file. Funnily enough, I've been trying to get my head around that recently. I see zero benefit from doing it this way and a whole pile of added headaches. Erik -- +---+ Erik de Castro Lopo [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Yes it's valid) +---+ "UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things." -- Doug Gwyn -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
RE: [SLUG] fishing for Mac OSX experiences
Hi all, Some people may remember the above subject line from a month or so back. At the time, I had just received an iBook and was playing around with MacOSX. I had not yet installed Linux on the machine and therefore could not make an accurate comparison. That has now changed. I have Linux running, with all the power management and sound stuff working. I haven't played with the modem port, USB or firewire, mainly because I have no need. I still don't have the Blackbox WM running but I think thats a problem with the PPC version of the Debian package. IceWM runs very nicely. MacOSX Pros : Amazing simple to set up. Far easier than even windows. A couple of neat features (like network locations, which doesn't work 100%). MacOSX Cons: Chews up an amazing amount of disk space cw Linux. Chews up an amazing amount of RAM cw Linux. The speed difference is the main thng I've noticed that differentiates Linux and MacOSX on this iBook. Linux is simply far snappier. I spend most of my time on this machine writing, compiling and debugging code. As a comparison I did some times on doing a "make check" (compile the whole thing and run the test suite) on my own project libsndfile. All timings were done immediately after a reboot, so disk caching would not be a factor. MacOSX was running on a HPF+ filesystem and Linux on Ext2. Timings for this machine were as follows (XDarwin is the X window system for OSX): Linux : 2min 13sec MacOSX without XDarwin : 3min 39sec MacOSX with XDarwin: 4min 03sec It should also be noted that the above MacOSX compile times are after I renamed the existing /bin/sh and made a softlink from there to /sw/bin/bash. Being a library, libsndfile gets compiled with libtool which is acutally a Bourne shell script. For some reason (which I simply could not be bothered investigating) the OSX Bourne shell is *REALLY* slow. In fact, using the OSX Bourne shell, compiling libsndfile takes 13 min 20 secs! I have swapped back and forth between the softlink to bash and the native Bourne shell a couple of times. This timing is repeatable. So it looks like this machine will be running Linux for the majority of its life, switching to OSX only to test compiling for OSX or play with OSX only software. Erik -- +---+ Erik de Castro Lopo [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Yes it's valid) +---+ "Reality is just a crutch for people that can't handle CyberSpace!!" - Hank Duderstadt -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] fishing for Mac OSX experiences
Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: > MacOSX Pros : > Amazing simple to set up. Far easier than even windows. > A couple of neat features (like network locations, which doesn't > work 100%). Yes the network locations does not work properly on our TiPowerbook running OSX. There have been several updates last week for OSX including ssh and other security patches and an update to its network locations scripts. Best get them :-) I have got X running with Blackbox wm and its quite snappy. I really miss having a pager like the one in enlightenment. I have one for OSX Aqua but its no where near as functional. You will also find that the xterminal in Aqua is stuffed. Its gets screwed up in its character positioning if you use a different font from the standard and change the window size. The xterm that comes with X Darwin is fine. Mike -- Michael Lake Active caver, Linux enthusiast and interested in anything technical. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
Re: [SLUG] fishing for Mac OSX experiences
On Mon, 15 Jul 2002 07:03:06 +1000 Michael Lake <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Yes the network locations does not work properly on our TiPowerbook > running OSX. I've actually managed to find a fix to this. After changing the location in the GUI, get a terminal up, find the pid of lookupd and send it a kill -HUP. > There have been several updates last week for OSX including > ssh and other security patches and an update to its network locations > scripts. Best get them :-) Already have. > I have got X running with Blackbox wm and its quite snappy. I really > miss having a pager like the one in enlightenment. I have one for OSX > Aqua but its no where near as functional. > You will also find that the xterminal in Aqua is stuffed. I was using xterms alomost exclusively from about the thrid day I had it. Cheers, Erik -- +---+ Erik de Castro Lopo [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Yes it's valid) +---+ Hiesenbugs - The bugs that go away when you turn on debugging. -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
