Knoppix, Macs...

[cbbrowne-HInyCGIudOg at public.gmane.org]

> Buy her a Mac. Only half joking. One must recognize that OSX is not
> Linux but shares the same wonderful base of software from the "free
> software world". Apple's next big move should be to distribute a Linux
> ... but I guess they are really an MP3 player company now.

Actually, it begs the question of what _real_ merit there would be in
replacing the kernel with something else.

After all, the VAST majority of the software in what people loosely
consider to be "Linux systems" are in common with what runs on *BSD.

- Typical compiler for Linux distributions:  GCC
- Typical compiler for *BSD distributions:  GCC

- Typical editors available for Linux distributions: vim, GNU Emacs,
  XEmacs, ad infinitum
- Typical editors available for *BSD distributions: vim, GNU Emacs,
  XEmacs, ad infinitum

- Graphical infrastructure on Linux distributions: XFree86
- Graphical infrastructure on *BSD distributions: XFree86

Repeat as needed thus:
(loop for subject in '("web servers" "stats packages" "Window managers"
                       "scripting langs" "desktop environments"
                       "web browsers" "free databases" "shells")
      for app-name in '("Apache, Boa" "R octave scilab" 
                        "twm fvwm wmaker etc" "perl python ruby tcl"
                        "GNOME KDE" "mozilla firefox galeon lynx w3m links"
                        "PostgreSQL FireBird BerkeleyDB" "bash zsh tcsh rc")
  do (format t "Apps of type ~A for Linux: ~A~%" subject app-name)
  do (format t "Apps of type ~A for *BSD: ~A~%" subject app-name))

There's no 'universal' package manager "for Linux," therefore the use of
Ports on *BSD is _not_ a difference between Linux and *BSD...

Mac OS-X is a bit more different than just *BSD, as Apple reshaped the
paths to have a rather different hierarchy than (say) FHS.  But there's
a barrel of Good Unix Stuff there.  Hey, OS-X comes with zsh in its
default install; that's better than you can say for most Linux
distributions ;-)!

I'd be _much_ happier trying to support a "granny" running OS-X than
just about anything else.  A bit of opening up ports ought to let me be
able to ssh in remotely to do some system administration, and that's a
FAR sight better than trying to support someone running Windows.

>  Knoppix is great but doesn't always work ... at least I can't get it to
> work on the two machines I have tried it on. One is a lovely IBM Thinkpad
> and I just haven't had a spare couple of days to debug it. Can't wait
> until I do get it working however. I'm very jealous of my friends that
> have it working...
> 
>  What I'm really saying is test out the Knoppix on the computer. Try
> living with it yourself for a bit.

For sure.
--
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