> The competition is with a shrink-wrapped world.
Linux has very little shrink-wrapped software compared to Mac OS,
most of the software that Linux runs is distributed in source form,
or in precompiled packages that can be trivially created from that
source. When you use "fink" to install the software, it actually
creates that package for Mac OS X in the process of installing it.
> Obviously someone as skilled as you (and to a much lesser extent me) is
> not too much bothered by the lack of support for alien shrink-wrapped
> software. As you say, we can download, patch, recompile, make and so on
> to get what we want.
No, I didn't say that. What I said is that the ability to run Linux
binary executables does not provide a significant benefit, because
there are very few programs only available in such packages.
The corrolory of this is not "everyone has to port the Linux packages
to Mac OS X". rather, it is "porting the packages to Mac OS X is
much easier and provides a much greater benefit".
If the problem is a lack of skill, let me remind you that installing
a Linux package for a program requires more work than installing
a Mac OS X .pkg file. The kind of support you get with a Linux
binary package is not what someone using Mac OS X is going to
consider a "deskiled" job.
> Simply imagine: I'm a business customer. I've learned from the idiot
> press that Linux is the next big thing, and also something of a good
> thing. So I put it on my wish-list. Soon it's on my mandatory
> requirement list. If it doesn't run Linux it doesn't get in. So it
> goes.
And "running Linux binaries" isn't going to put it on that list, if the
list is as poorly thought out as you're suggesting. Believe me, I've
been down that path with FreeBSD.
> The US Navy, for example, is running clustered Xserves on some of its
> subs for signal-processing. The Xserves run Yellow Dog Linux rather
> than Mac OS X. There's no obvious reason why the special signal
> processing software could not be recompiled for OS X instead of Linux,
> but the Navy requires use of Linux, so that's what the Navy gets.
Tape support for archive and backups.
File system stability and reliability.
Native remote access for all applications.
Command line configuration and management.
System call performance and Mach overhead.
Ability to run headless with full remote management and control.
Common system administration model (passwd and other flat files
rather than NetInfo).
Linux emulation won't help with any of these, and any of them may be a
show-stopper.
They were for *me*.
A few months ago I ordered an NT-based file server rather than an Xserve.
Why?
Because Jaguar's UFS is an old one, and I would not put anything
important on HFS+ if I didn't have to. My experience with HFS+ is
not of such a character that I find reassuring. I would use FreeBSD,
but I wasn't able to locate a FreeBSD based canned solution that
would do the job. I would have used Linux, but again I wasn't able
to find a canned solution with the right characteristics.
Panther *may* change that, but Panther is new and I haven't had a chance
to evaluate it.
Running Linux or FreeBSD binaries won't change that. Fixing and
improving the underlying operating system will.
> From that point of view, it would seem to me to be advantageous for OS
> X to provide binary compatibility for Linux apps. One more tick in the
> customer's requirements list. So that's why I posed the original
> question.
Mac OS X has native binary versions of any binary-only Linux applications
that I know of. It has an increasing collection of precompiled packages, and
creating a precompiled package for even more is a single command. It
has shrinkwrapped software that Linux doesn't. Any checkbox that can't be
met by that, isn't going to be met by emulation.
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