OS X that bad?

[m0bia]

i've never been a huge fan of macs, but i like os x for soem reason. I don't know much about it from a technical point of view, but the interface is appealing. Guess it's just different that's all. Guess i'm getting bored of this tired windows GUI....maybe XP will help a little. I dunno, just my random thoughts

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mobia....your greatest phobia
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[Catscratch]

Originally posted by m0bia:
i've never been a huge fan of macs, but i like os x for soem reason. I don't know much about it from a technical point of view, but the interface is appealing. Guess it's just different that's all. Guess i'm getting bored of this tired windows GUI....maybe XP will help a little. I dunno, just my random thoughts

Neither do I, but the idea of running an OS with a beautiful GUI on top of a bad *** core makes me want to buy a Mac.

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Size does matter...unless yours is bigger than mine.

Recently tattooed and loving it!

[blppt]

Originally posted by Instinct:
I used OSX for the first time this weekend.

My impresions were....

On the bad side:
VERY BUGGY...
VERY SLOW (on a G4 even!)...
NO APPLICATIONS and even the browser is a beta version of IE.

On the good side:
The graphical display is second to none!
The UI is friendly.
The full color scalable icons add alot, I hear XP is going to impliment this too.

My overall take is Apple should have held onto the product another 6 months. People would have *****ed about more delays on a product 2 years past due. However its about as buggy as Netscape 6, and we all know user response to Netscape 6 has eliminated any chance of Netscape ever making a comeback. I dont think this will kill Apple, but I think their market share will shrink as some die hard Mac faithfuls lose confidence.

Yeah, NS6 does suck on at least both Linux and Windows. I cant live with its instability and lack of speed for more than a few days. Then its back to NS 4.7x.



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Pat D.

Visit a music site I write for:
http://www.geocities.com/mjareviews

[jtshaw]

That is because the memory handling and processor handling is done better in 2.4. What I ment was its bad multimedia abilities has little to do with the kernel, it has most to do with poorly written drivers, multimedia libraries, and various other non-kernel issues..though if you have tried out some of the new stuff you will see 3D is pretty good in linux these days.

Originally posted by blppt:
Ummmm, how can you say that mutimedia has little to do with the kernel when benchmarks prove that kernel 2.4 is 10-15% faster in Q3A than kernel 2.2.X. Seems to me it has at least a decent portion to do with it.

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Q: How many UGA students does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Two, one to call a friend at GT and another to follow the directions.

[This message has been edited by jtshaw (edited April 10, 2001).]

[jtshaw]

Also, what you might have missed was Linus reason for talking about it at all.... twas because Steve Jobs tried to get him to drop linux to work on OSX over at Apple after they had already chosen the mach kernel stuff.... and he didn't want to do it and thus he likes to say why... not to say he might not be overly harsh in some respects..

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Q: How many UGA students does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Two, one to call a friend at GT and another to follow the directions.

[blppt]

Originally posted by jtshaw:
That is because the memory handling and processor handling is done better in 2.4. What I ment was its bad multimedia abilities has little to do with the kernel, it has most to do with poorly written drivers, multimedia libraries, and various other non-kernel issues..though if you have tried out some of the new stuff you will see 3D is pretty good in linux these days.

Yes, i know i run Quake3 and Unreal Tournament in Linux right now. It is impressive, but Q3 runs about one resolution slower than windows 98/2k on my machine (1024X768X32 (windows, un overclocked) vs 800X600X32 (linux unoverclocked) are about the same, give or take a couple of fps advantage with windows) and UT isnt really close to windows performance, though that was originally designed as a Glide, then primarily a D3D port, so the fact it performs as well as it does in OpenGL is pretty impressive. However, all of this becomes irrelevant unless the person in question owns a NVidia card, as they make the only 3d gaming drivers worth talking about for Linux. Anand did a test and the ATI drivers came up like 50-60 percent of windows performance.

I just wish i could overclock my Geforce under linux without rewriting my bios permenantly. ;-)

Oh---since multimedia is usually extremely dependant on bandwidth and memory management, you could make a strong case for the kernel directly affecting mutimedia performance to a great degree.

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Pat D.

Visit a music site I write for:
http://www.geocities.com/mjareviews

[jtshaw]

Originally posted by blppt:
Oh---since multimedia is usually extremely dependant on bandwidth and memory management, you could make a strong case for the kernel directly affecting mutimedia performance to a great degree.

That is true, but you still seam to missing my point. Linux's poor multimedia is not do to the kernels inability to manage tasks and memory. It is mostly do to hacked drivers that don't best implement the features of sound and graphics hardware (especially in the case of non-nVidia graphics hardware). If venders would release the specs on how there hardware works instead of insisting on doing there own drivers (nVidia excluded..they do a wonderful job) then the linux multimedia capabilites would be that much better. It is really hard when you have to do large amounts of reverse engineering to get things to work.


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Q: How many UGA students does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Two, one to call a friend at GT and another to follow the directions.

[blppt]

Originally posted by jtshaw:
That is true, but you still seam to missing my point. Linux's poor multimedia is not do to the kernels inability to manage tasks and memory. It is mostly do to hacked drivers that don't best implement the features of sound and graphics hardware (especially in the case of non-nVidia graphics hardware). If venders would release the specs on how there hardware works instead of insisting on doing there own drivers (nVidia excluded..they do a wonderful job) then the linux multimedia capabilites would be that much better. It is really hard when you have to do large amounts of reverse engineering to get things to work.

So, instead of Linus being concerned about his kernel, he should at least acknowledge that his OS has very poor support in the area of multimedia. I guess that was the poijt i was trying to make, i never meant to suggest that the Linux kernel was inferior to windows 9x (shudder).


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Pat D.

Visit a music site I write for:
http://www.geocities.com/mjareviews

[jtshaw]

That is not his focus though. You can't expect Linus to do it all. No one person can write an entire OS. He probably doesn't know all that much about multimedia and thus it isn't his job. He does the best he can with the parts he works on. Hell, he doesn't even do a lot of it anymore, Alan Cox has almost as big an enfluence on the Linux kernel these days. What we need is for the people that do the multimedia stuff to step up and produce a little bit better, and for companies to not keep them in the dark so that they have an easier time producing.

Originally posted by blppt:

So, instead of Linus being concerned about his kernel, he should at least acknowledge that his OS has very poor support in the area of multimedia. I guess that was the poijt i was trying to make, i never meant to suggest that the Linux kernel was inferior to windows 9x (shudder).

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Q: How many UGA students does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Two, one to call a friend at GT and another to follow the directions.

[blppt]

Originally posted by jtshaw:
That is not his focus though. You can't expect Linus to do it all. No one person can write an entire OS. He probably doesn't know all that much about multimedia and thus it isn't his job. He does the best he can with the parts he works on. Hell, he doesn't even do a lot of it anymore, Alan Cox has almost as big an enfluence on the Linux kernel these days. What we need is for the people that do the multimedia stuff to step up and produce a little bit better, and for companies to not keep them in the dark so that they have an easier time producing.

Argh, i dont even know what i'm arguing about any more. ;-)

It just seems like everytime Linus is quoted on something other than Linux he has nothing but bad things to say. BTW, i saw some bad musings about BeOS from him, and of course, he probably hates win2k to no end as well.
I just think he doesnt have a right to critizize other operating systems so much when his own (granted he doesnt do much for it anymore) in inaccessible to anybody but the technology minded. Wouldnt you agree that the amount of things that differ from various kernels and the different problems with each distro indicate that Linux is not exactly ready for prime time? Yes, i know what the Xfree Project, Mandrake, Red Hat, Suse, KDE, Gnome, etc, do with the kernel is not entirely Linus' fault per se, but if he had integrated an equal to Xfree for games and a GUI (which most people use nowadays) we wouldnt all have the problems that we do, and then Linux would have been truly amazing. It is not an excuse to say "Linus has no control over the third parties like KDE and Xfree" because the very nature of his OS makes it dependant on that software. That really IS his fault. ;-)

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Pat D.

Visit a music site I write for:
http://www.geocities.com/mjareviews

[slick]

Hmmmm
I don't look at linux as a multimedia os. I look at it more of an server os. Or a os for the tech. population. I don't know i could be wrong. I think that alot of people want it to replace M$. I just think thats wrong to think that way. I look at it as an alternitive. One where if you don't like something hack at it and make it better. So in that in mind i don't expect it to ever be as good as other os's. When it comes to multimedia.

As for linus saying bad things about other os's. More the power to him. I know if i had an os i would talk trash about others.

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Do the Dew

[blppt]

Wow, mach was created at Carnegie Mellon U, eh? One of my friends Mike went there. Graduated with near a 4.0 gpa---thats some school. That fact puts me in even more awe of that college.


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Pat D.

Visit a music site I write for:
http://www.geocities.com/mjareviews

[Adisharr]

Originally posted by The_Hitman:
I think Linus has the right to express an opinion about a design of an operting system...its not like he said "OSX SUXORS!!HAHAHA"....he said he thinks the microkernel design theory has not lived up to the hype and has caused many more problems than it could ever solve.

I think Linus knows a little bit about how to design an Operating System...how many have you designed?

For someone that obviously knows how to design an OS (which no one here doubted in the first place) to say that a competitor's piece of software is a 'piece of crap' is below what I would consider an acceptable evaluation.

He does not speak like a professional - more like a pissed off haxor. He could use a bit of 'class' .. There are ways of saying things ...

Oh, If I walked into a machine builder in my area and proceeded to call my competitors vision system a POS I would be doing no business with them. Most professional people can figure out somethings a POS on their own.. (most of the time)

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- My head best viewed at 320 x 200 -

[This message has been edited by Adisharr (edited April 12, 2001).]