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Apple Businesses

Review of the BSD part of MacOS X Beta 150

Posted by CmdrTaco from the bashing-your-way-through-macos dept.
gbooker writes " Deamon News has an interesting article about the BSD core of MacOS X Beta. They talk about how it differs from the traditional MacOS AND how it differs from BSD. This is the first installment of what could be an interesting series."
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Review of the BSD part of MacOS X Beta More

Review of the BSD part of MacOS X Beta

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  • Mac OS X is like BSD with a new GUI on top. It uses the tcsh shell, and has standard Unix tools. The fs directory structure is diferent. Whooop.
  • Just because Mac OS X has BSD components doesn't mean that it needs to be compared to every other BSD out there. We went thru all of this in the late 80's with NeXTstep/OpenStep. Mac OS X is essentially OpenStep with display pdf (rather than postscript), updated media layers, and Mac app compatibility layers. It's not intended to be a killer replacement for xBSD, it never was.
  • It all sounded quite fascinating, except for when I got to the point that you need to reboot the computer in order to make certain changes. Even stranger was that the changes wouldn't take effect until GUI portion was loaded.
  • Macs and Intel systems have always had ups and downs. For example, Mac's never had the full software assortment of Intel systems. But Mac's always seem to use their hardware much more effeciently. I boot up with an athlon 1ghz and 256 megs of ram into windows 98, and it lags to the point of a crawl, but a nice little 400mhz G4 with 64 megs runs like a lawyer toward a car accident. Hopefully, the bsd core in MacOS X will get more programs ported to the Mac Architechture, or if all else fails, spread BSD a bit farther in computer society.

  • NetInfo is nothing new, do homework (Score:5)

    by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Friday November 03, 2000 @05:11AM (#653471) Homepage
    The author of the article has probably never touched a NeXT system (or a PC, SPARC, or HP box running OpenStep). NetInfo is not new, it's over 10 years old and well documented. Properly implemented on a network it makes life soooooo much easier. Please, before you compare NeXTstep/OpenStep/Rhapsody/MacOSX to your favorite flavor of BSD, do some research on NeXTstep and NetInfo. It makes a lot more sense if you have a real interstanding of why things are the way they are.

    Try this link for some pointers and URLs:
    http://204.214.75.123/next/index.html
  • ah, to be in the presence of the master . . . go Bob!

  • Couple of points on netinfo... (Score:3)

    by f5426 ( 144654 ) on Friday November 03, 2000 @05:14AM (#653473)
    > However, if you make changes to your IP address/DNS/etc. settings, you are informed that you must restart for the changes to take effect. Even if this stuff is 'hard-wired' into the NetInfo setup, it should only require a re-HUP of NetInfo for this to change, not a restart.

    Profound misunderstanding here. Netinfo only holds the information. re-HUP of netinfo make as much sense as saying re-HUP /etc/syslogd.conf (instead of systlogd) after changing it.

    The reason why a reboot is required is that the various configuration are made at boot time, based on info extracted from the netinfo database. He probably could skip the reboot by relaunching the correct scripts.

    The best thing about netinfo is that it is hierarchical, ie: that you can have network-level configuration on a 'master server', whith every little bit customised in your local net-info database.

    There exist a port of netinfo for linux. Lost the pointer, but I may dig it up if needed...

    Cheers,

    --fred
  • how, and if so when will I be able to port this to an affordable computer. This is not a Mac flame(tm), this is just a question from someone who does not want to shell out the amount of cash required to buy a Mac.
  • my poor connection is bogged down already.. here is a mirror of that page of NeXT hardware and software links (NeXTstep, OpenStep, NetInfo):

    http://www.beyondboxes.com/next/
  • I wonder if Macs will become standard issue to the web hsoting community. Designers already love them, and admins are just screaming for more power to their *nix like boxes. With all of the hardware power that Apple has been putting in their boxes, does this make OSX the perfect box? What about performance compared to a Linux box running on a P3 Intel box? Where the software is free mind you.

    Nate

  • Re:So, (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    New iMac $799 Apple Store (store.apple.com)

  • http://www.beyondboxes.com/next/

    Follow the links, learn about NeXT's NeXTstep and OpenStep. See where your Windowmaker/AfterStep/GNUstep are modeled after. See what Apple's Mac OS X is based on. See what NetInfo is all about.
  • Not all drunk drivers kill. It's not the drinking part that should be illegal, but the killing bit. Gary
  • > Even stranger was that the changes wouldn't take effect until GUI portion was loaded.

    He was totally drunk at this part. He probably wrote this from memory. For instance, he said that he booted 'text mode' by using the 'v' key. Error, the 'v' key is for verbose. What he called 'text mode' was probably the 's' key, which is *single*user*.

    In single user-mode, the system just boots and drops you to a shell. netinfgo is not even started.

    Full booting without the GUI is not possible out of the box. Either you boot single user, and about nothing is configured (as expected), or you boot verbose, but end up in the GUI (from which you can go text mode by using '>console' as a user name).

    To get rid of all the gui, you had to change /etc/ttys on NeXTstep / Mac OS X Server. Probably the same under OS X. In that case, all the services are started, as expected.

    Cheers,

    --fred
  • Guess what? Nobody cares!

    So some politician decided to Have A Life before entering politics - big deal!
  • WTF!!?? How can you blame someone for what his father did? What possible bearng does that have at all to his situation? Do you want to be implicated for any of your parents (or grandparents problems)? Come on, face it you just hate the fact that he might win and you can't find anything legitamate to accuse him of. He isn't satan incarnate and that conflicts with your "republicans are evil" propiganda. You are just beside yourselves trying to figure out how this can be. Maybe his character is indeed better and maybe he would do a better job for the american people. But no that couldn't possibly be true. You couldn't actually vote for the best person for the job, could you? You have to stick to your aligience to the Nazi's and are now stuck trying to come up with excuses for why you refuse to vote for the right man for the job.
  • What about performance compared to a Linux box running on a P3 Intel box? Where the software is free mind you.

    why not just put ppc linux on the mac hardware and use whats already out there for linux: apache/php/postgresql/etc?

    john
  • Go to the Mac OS X section of Apple's website and submit a complaint. THat's what it's there for.
  • You already said this, look at my response to your last foolishness
  • And Yellowdog linux runs on it so does LinuxPPC. Good USB support.

  • low blows getting tiring (Score:3)

    by dboyles ( 65512 ) on Friday November 03, 2000 @05:31AM (#653488) Homepage
    If you, like most other Internet server admins with a fully-functional brain stem, prefer Unix over the NT kernel, then Mac OS X will be the first true consumer OS that you will ever feel comfortable with.

    Come on, do we really need to take cheap shots like this? If you ask me, any "server admin with a fully-functional brain stem" would use the tool that best fits the job, even if that means (gasp) NT. Like it or not, Windows is better for some things. Personally I prefer UNIX systems, but that doesn't mean it should be my way or the highway (perhaps the corniest cliche ever uttered).

    Is it just me who's tired of the "My OS can beat up your OS" wars?
  • >>is that Mac finally invented something

    Who's Mac? Some guy that works for Apple?

    But seriously, NetInfo is over 10 years old and was created by NeXT for their NeXTstep operating system (later renamed OpenStep after some major changes). Mac OS X is based on OpenStep.
  • I boot up with an athlon 1ghz and 256 megs of ram into windows 98, and it lags to the point of a crawl

    With all due respect, but this not indicate to speed of the Mac, but the fact that you did not "Tweak" Windows correctly. When I boot up my Celeron 450 with 64 MB Ram, WinMe takes less time to load than the Bios. The next time your Winblowz install slows to a crawl, you might want to take a look in
    HKEY_LOCAL MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Run

    All the crap in there is ran automatically at bootup, also all the crap you thought is uninstalled.

  • Iminent Demise of Linux Predicted? (Score:3)

    by henley ( 29988 ) on Friday November 03, 2000 @05:33AM (#653491) Homepage

    Hmmm.. So Mac OSX = BSD + Nice GUI. And the article reveals that (modulo freely available dev tools) it's a full BSD port.

    So... I can use Linux/BSD + XFree + KDE/Gnome and play the Catchup-with-continuous-development game, or I can get a nice shiny easy to use Mac, get the benefit of (theoretically) 15 yrs worth of legacy Apps, *and* the cutting-edge of Open software fresh from the labs.

    Is this is future of UNIX-for-the-masses?

  • I see that AOLserver (www.aolserver.com) now has a binary for Mac OS X Public Beta. As does Apache (1.3.X, cross compiled for PPC & Intel for OS X and Darwin). Now if Oracle would only port Oracle 9 to OS X...
  • It's well known that Jobs uses both Toshiba and IBM laptops running NeXTstep/OpenStep (the OS made by his former company, NeXT... the basis of Mac OS X). His presentations are often run off his personal laptop and he bought some of his recent machines preconfigured by Bifrost Workstations (see link at http://www.beyondboxes.com/next/).
  • King oath, I've had it up to here with this crap. The thing is, especially with win2k, there's no bloody difference, a trained professional can keep one up and running, the difference being that there's more idiots claiming to be able to do NT than there are idiots claiming to be able to do Unix, it's no harder, no more work to create a stable secure box in fucking NT....

    Gfunk


    --Gfunk
  • It borrows some technologies from OpenStep like Cocoa and bundles, but it borrows a lot of stuff from MacOS as well as brand new stuff. The kernel is completely new, the display server is completely new, the driver architecture is completely new, etc. To say this is 'updated OpenStep' is misleading, you might as well say it's updated MacOS.
    ---
    >80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
  • You're right-on about it being moreso about the features and layout of NeXTstep. Only really difference is the color and style of the GUI widgets and the exact names of the directories.
  • Darwin has a better designed driver architecture, is better organized, and potentially a lot faster than FreeBSD--it's monolithic.
    ---
    >80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
  • Speaking as a '6 macs 9 PCs running linux' user I agree with the sentiment. It's the same thing I used to say about DOS users in the 80s.

    After looking at a self-proclaimed 'Pro' compiling and using GIMP I'm convinced it's the most expensive piece of graphics software ever created given that time is money.
    ---
    >80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
  • While the GUI is still sluggish for me, everything else about the OS has been wicked fast. I haven't done any benchmarks, but as far as my daily work (compiling, running scripts, etc) it feels MUCH faster than any other box I have around.
  • That's exactly the amount of money I was not planning ot shell out...
  • The reason why a reboot is required is that the various configuration are made at boot time, based on info extracted from the netinfo database. He probably could skip the reboot by relaunching the correct scripts.

    And there's a script ("Build your own location manager" or somesuch) that does exactly this on MacOSRumors.com.

  • Apple is evil! (Score:5)

    by thimo ( 36102 ) on Friday November 03, 2000 @05:50AM (#653502) Homepage
    Slashdot apparently pissed off Apple, they've got /.hidden!

    Thimo
    --
  • Say what you will about quality, etc, but Mac OS X is made by an actual commerical company. In theory this means support and well-tested code. If nothing else, it means there is someone to sue if all else fails.
  • While NetInfo has write privilages, it doesn't have rea privilages. This allows anybody to view the rood passwd, which is a simple crypt hash.
    ---
    >80 column hard wrapped e-mail is not a sign of intelligent
  • about half-way down the page:

    http://macosrumors.com/?view=recent
  • I highly doubt you'll see Apple go into the rackmount market - the competition is fierce and Apple has no presence in it at all. Maybe a clone vendor could have taken on this market, but thats all water under the bridge now.

    Note that Apple tried to venture into the enterprise market a few years back with some "larger" servers, but this effort was a total failure.

  • Trickle down worked and Bill took credit for it

  • Re:Reboot? (Score:5)

    by MouseR ( 3264 ) on Friday November 03, 2000 @05:59AM (#653508) Homepage
    This is most-likelly a temporary ommission due in part by delivery timeframe, and certainly not because it can't be done.

    not long ago, a well known rumour site showed a script that was sent to them to restart the network services without having to erboot your machine after such reconfiguration:

    1. #!/bin/sh

    2. case `whoami` in
      root)
      ;;
      *)
      echo "Not Administrator (root). You need to be in order to restart the network."
      return
      ;;
      esac
      echo "Restarting the network, network will be unavailable."
      kill `ps aux | grep ipconfigd | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}'`
      echo " - Killed 'ipconfigd'."
      ipconfigd
      echo " - Started 'ipconfigd' right back up."
      sleep 1
      ipconfig waitall
      echo " - Ran 'ipconfig waitall' to re-configure for new settings."
      sleep 1
      kill -HUP `cat /var/run/nibindd.pid`
      echo " - Killed 'nibindd' with a HUP (hang up)."
      sleep 2
      kill -HUP `cat /var/run/lookupd.pid`
      echo " - Killed 'lookupd' with a HUP (hang up)."
      echo "The network has successfully been restarted and/or re-configured and is now available. "

    This script, when run as root, resets the networking interfaces and services in a very short period of time ( make sure you save this script and chmod 755 and chown it to root.

    Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.

  • Really, there's no excuse for not using ksh93 on any system anymore; ATT has released it open-source, and it is hundreds of times more powerful than anything else.

    This whole dtksh/cde thing, where most commercial vendors install both ksh88 and ksh93, is total brain-damage. But I guess you expect this from commercial UNIX.

    I love to ramble...

  • NetInfo: Genius? No. (Score:3)

    by Robert Bowles ( 2733 ) on Friday November 03, 2000 @06:01AM (#653510)

    excerpt from article:
    "The genius of NetInfo is that it provides a uniform way of accessing and manipulating all system and network configuration information."

    Maybe I'm missing something, but I fail to see any ingenuity here. Granted, these guys are good enough to admit they aren't hard-core, old-school sysadmins, but still... NIS/NIS+ have been answering this question for years now. Despite any failings you might cite about yp, netinfo hardly seems like an improvement.

    The nsswitch mechanism, present on almost every unix these days, allows you to map {passwd, shadow, group, hosts, services, mail aliases, etc.} against {dns, local files, nis, etc} transparently as you see fit. If your system doesn't support host or password lookups against an LDAP database (as glibc-2.1 now does), there's a good chance you can build a module...

    OK, having a central, common, consistent facility for everything sounds "nice", right? This flies in the face of the unix-credo: "Every tool should do one thing well". When confronted with a scredriver and pliers, do you complain: "You mean this one works by turning and that one works by squeezing?" No. This, to me, is akin to complaining about having multiple formats for '/etc/passwd' and dns zone files.

    When I read about doing name-service (esp. passwd) stuff from files in single user mode and via some external service during multiuser mode, I almost choked. Local files aren't consulted when you're connected to a remote netinfo server? (Unix answers the question with the '/etc/nsswitch.conf' entry hosts: files nis or similar.) This essentially means that some external machine can tell you who root, wheel, localhost and shutdown are. I don't know if this is a horrible oversight, a design flaw, or some kludge to avoid implementing a real nsswitch. This is not a feature, its a bug. It begs questions about what other kludges will be used to patch it up.

    It sounds to me like Apple has re-invented the wheel, and in fine tradtion, decided to make it different for the sake of being different.

    I'll stick with my round wheels, thank you.

    void rbowles(int signature)
    {
    signal(signature, rbowles);
    raise(signature);

  • Apple's AIX-based, large format servers were well-recieved, but overpriced and poorly marketed (Apple targeted education and publishing -- audiences that at the time had no idea what Unix was, let alone the AIX flavor). AIX media wasn't included nor was any administration software. After a minor speedbump, the Apple Network Servers disappeared.

    As for a clone server, "Apple is a hardware company" and any sort of licensing would end up costing both parties more than it would be worth. Buuuutttt... why couldn't Apple make an ATX PowerMac G4 board based on the UMA1 or UMA2 chipset? They could sell it at a price where they would be making money but low enough to make it worthwhile for end-users and VARs to customize. Sun does it.
  • Again, this is something that should be addressed to Apple. Mac OS X is not GPL and therefor most Slashdot readers can't do much to fix this. Let Apple know, it's why they have a feedback form on their Mac OS X site.

  • Looking back at my comment, I noticed that my "subject line" looks a bit like flame-bait.

    Sorry, this was unintentional.
    void rbowles(int signature)
    {
    signal(signature, rbowles);
    raise(signature);

  • I belive bash is included. Grab the GNU tools and compile your favorite shell.
  • Posted by BSD-Pat:

    I tend to agree, NetInfo is the worst thing to come along to distributed machine management since...well NetInfo. I used to admin a NeXTStep network and if NetInfo crashes and takes the database along with it, its next to near unrecoverable without a backup, and even then its a pain in the arse.

    NeXT had alot of cool things, DPS rocked, and I *loved* the interface (so much that I use windowmaker now on my BSD boxen) but NetInfo is the biggest mistake they are making with MacOS X.

    Yay! Apple. Come out with a cool product and make it near impossible to use.
  • Use some of the existing Mac OS X YP/NIS/NIS+ tools if you don't care for NeXT's NetInfo. Let Apple know how you feel about this.
  • I use Linux because it is free software. Mac OSX is a proprietory GUI running on free software (BSD). I have no interest in it. Now, if they make it truly free, I would certainly be interested.
  • Trickle down DID NOT work! Recession ring a bell???
  • For those too lazy to do their own homework, here are some very infomative links on what NetInfo is and why its so great (how's that ... a NeXT fan posting actual information rather than just saying its all so cool). Get the info straight from Apple's site. Its been around for a long time and is one of the best pieces of technology that they bought from NeXT (also: WebObjects, Cocoa/AppKit, ObjC, Steve Jobs .... ).

    In a nutshell:
    NetInfo is a hierarchical distributed database that is used to keep track of administrative data. . . . It can store information on user and group accounts, e-mail configurations, NFS (network filesystem), printers, computers and other resources. Since this information is stored in NetInfo these resources are easily configurable, and can easily be shared over in a network environment.

    What is NetInfo [apple.com]
    Intro to NetInfo domains [apple.com]
    Apple's Tech Info Library [apple.com] type "NetInfo" into the search box for lots of good info.

    PS: most of these links havn't been updated to include references to Mac OS X Public Beta, but the content is basicaly valid for Public Beta and the final release (I assume).

    -POIU

    ---

  • How about sending the author of the article a link on some documentation on NetInfo, at least that way they can make more informed article next time.
  • I believe OpenStep was simply the name for the API wasn't it?
    -----
    "People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
  • The PowerPC architecture found in the Mac is a more efficient CPU design than the x86 cpu.

    Also, while windows' process management leaves a lot to be desired, the MacOS, until OS X, has been even worse. But this may actually be a good thing because Windows systems are generally overloaded with background tasks, which Macs don't tend to be.

    That's my view. I could be wrong.
  • this isn't 100% correct. NetInfo has a built in shadow password scheme. If you are a normal user and do a nidump passwd you will get no passwords, if you are an admin user you will get the crypt passwords.

    -c-
  • Wow! It's old news and irrelevant that in 1995 VP Gore violated US law and didn't notify Congress that we entered into a secret agreement with the russians to help the iranians get nukes. The russians get cash, iranians get weapons tech, and dear Al gets the gratitude of Victor Chernomyrdin. Big Whoop.

    BUT!

    It's relevant to deciding your vote on the fact that the Reagan-Bush (George the father) administration played footsie with Iran and sent them some amounts of small conventional arms (no tanks, no F-16s, etc).

    Get a different drug supplier. Whatever he's selling you, it's rotting your brain.

    DB
  • <p>If enough people scream for ASP and Access, then NT needs to be a part of the solution.</p>

    <p>The art is guiding and convincing otherwise.</p>
  • I honestly don't think Unix (any flavor) will be an OS for the masses (at least not anytime soon). OS X is a step in that direction, but it won't be *the* step.

    In order to be a viable OS for the masses, a system needs to support a certain level of gaming. It'll be at least a couple of years before we start seeing leading-edge games released for OS X. If/When that happens, I'll revise my opinion. But I think it's at least a few years away.

    The preceding could be wrong, though.
  • I'd like to thank the Slashdot Gortician appreciation society for their continued involvement... And you know I have a much bigger dick than you...

  • Um, he said that. (Score:3)

    by Watts Martin ( 3616 ) <layotl&gmail,com> on Friday November 03, 2000 @06:59AM (#653529) Homepage

    Not to be too sharply critical of your criticism, but the article says "It's interesting to note that, as befits the NeXT heritage of NetInfo, many of the NetInfo-related man pages are dated 1989." And the article contains a link to Apple's tech note on NetInfo.

    Please, do read the student's writing completely before criticizing him for not doing his homework. :)

  • From your post...
    It sounds to me like Apple has re-invented the wheel, and in fine tradtion, decided to make it different for the sake of being different.

    I guess so, literally:

    From the article...
    I noticed something that, again, I did not expect. The wheel group listed in /etc/group did not contain any users...You typically expect to find root along with at least one administrative user account in /etc/group. In this case, wheel was empty, leaving me to wonder why they even kept the concept, since this functionality had apparently been folded into an alternate privilege manager.

  • Nope...you got it all wrong ...

    OpenStep was NeXT computer's operating system. It was the 4.x version of their previous OS called NeXTSTEP, revamped with an API change that was open.

    This "open" API was actually an open specs, but not an open source implementation; implementation was up to the licensee of this open API specs. This API specs was called OPENSTEP. The case sentitiveness is important.

    Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.
  • One interesting inclusion in the OS-X public beta is a Java 1.2 JDK. Wonder if they'll have 1.3 ready for the release.

  • What's so bizarre about that? (Score:3)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Friday November 03, 2000 @07:14AM (#653533) Homepage Journal

    The most bizarre thing was that a packet filter was enabled, but with a default to open policy and no logging. An open firewall ... why? If they weren't planning to enable firewall rules, why compile packet filtering code into the kernel in the first place?

    Um.. maybe it's so that the user can enable the functionality if they want it, without having to recompile the kernel? It seems very reasonable to me that MacOS X's target market will be people who might want things like firewalls, but also might not want to get too dirty. Enabling stuff in the kernel and then shipping it with config files that don't use those features by default, seems like the Right Thing to do if you want easy configurability.


    ---
  • Can't you afford an $800 new iMac?

  • MOSX & The Hurd: Rise of the Microkernels (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think it's funny that, 10-15 years after the big excitement about microkernels, they finally seem to be poised to enter the mainstream. I mean sure, there was NeXT, but I think it's pretty clear that MOSX will be much bigger. And with Debian working on the Hurd, that should start to get interesting soon as well. I gotta question though... why is Apple using Mach 2.5? I seem to recall that Mach III was supposed to be faster and offer cleaner interfaces...
  • Hmmm. Looks like you are being Slashdotted.

    Anyway, I'd love to see an O'Reilly book - Essential MacOS X System Administration - with a nicely drawn dogcow on the cover.

  • DOS (Score:2)

    by kirkb ( 158552 )
    Will someone also be doing a review on the MS-DOS portion of Windows?
  • Show me stats. FreeBSD is proven , osx and darwin have not been proven yet , they are still very new
  • The genius of NetInfo is that it provides a uniform way of accessing and manipulating all system and network configuration information.

    This shows a complete lack of any serious unix experience, since most of the major vendors have some way of accomplishing this. Sun's been doing with with NIS for around the same amount of time as NetInfo has been around.

    Perhaps BSD has ignored NIS, but Linux certainly hasn't.

  • They talk about how it differs from the traditional MacOS AND how it differs from BSD.

    Well, we can all be sure of one thing; OS X will have a much better memory management structure than OS9, but it'll crash a whole lot more than BSD. Which, in the end, will mean diddly-squat when it comes to actually running programs.

    Remember, this is about the workstation version of OS X, not the server version. Therefore, the focus is to be on overall stability and performance in foreground applications, not background processes (ftpd and the like). Bottom line: if OS X crashes while running Photoshop or Final Cut Pro, it will be a laughable failure for Apple and their workstation OS.

  • If you are a normal user and do a nidump passwd you will get no passwords

    That's simply not true.
    I'm a regular user, now I do nidump passwd .
    here it is:

    root:.B8/f33yykFgk:0:0::0:0:System Administrator:/var/root:/bin/tcsh

    (removed the rest)

  • If Apple ressurected the Network Server formfactor, this time with 2 or 4-way G4s and modern SCSI disks, they'd sell tons of them at a very nice profit margin.

    Even if people did not use them as servers, there's quite a few 'core market' Mac users doing video and sound that have to go to third parties for RAID parts and expansion chassises. These folks are practically begging Apple to take their money.
  • I'd do it, if it were just for the monitor:-)
  • If Apple ports OSX to CHRP/POP systems we could get a rackmount CHRP/POP based server.

    Apple lacks the Enterprise level server hardware, since OSX is limited to Apple Mac hardware and Apple isn't going to have a 64 processor Mac Server any time soon, Apple better port OSX to other platforms or at least the PowerPC CHRP/POP platform.
  • That's definitely not what I consider an I-Mac to be worth, considering the hardware I could get if I spent that same amount on parts to assemble my own box.
  • Oh, so Apple owe you something now, do they?
    And NO, BSD is not "free software" in the sense which you
    mean "free", which is most definitely going to
    be RMS's "free". Of course, you gave that no thought,
    and probably parrot some other guy (RMS) because his prattle
    sounds cool. There's nothing wrong with RMS's
    philosophy (who doesn't like the GPL?) it's just
    the amount of idiots following him...
    Second, it makes no economic sense to make the GUI
    "truly free" as you say. Not that you actually have a fuckin' clue what "truly free" actually _means_... but it sounds k3w|, r1g|-|7.....? (www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.html).
  • Then again, if tenon's [tenon.com] xtools [tenon.com]were free in its final release, as it now is in beta...or some other coca-x server wrapper library that was free is implemented, osx users could get the best of both worlds.

    Granted, newbies aren't going to be out there compiling new apps right and left, but we experienced users can...and then post the binaries, or write small installers, and then...osx==gnu/mac hybrid.

    that's my plan for my next box!
  • I have an abacus, it is inexpensive, portable, needs no batteries, and it reboots quickly.
  • Don't know if this is relevant, but OS X and
    Darwin don't need any particular firmware to boot
    (besides Open Firmware, I suppose).

    Classic Mac OS relies on a section of firmware
    tagged Apple_ROM IIRC. OS X and Darwin don't
    access or need to access that.

    Second, the CHRP spec is sorta old. It'd need
    revision (AGP and USB need inclusion, ISA needs to be shot in the head etc ;) )
  • A quick summary: You can't spell worth a crap. You have the Olsen Twins site for your homepage. You have no idea what you're talking about. Read up on it [arstechnica.com] and try again, grasshopper.
  • Character alone does not make a good president, the fact that Bushs fiscal plans are clearly allinged with the super-wealthy scare me greatly. I don't want a president who caters to large corporations and the elite. And the fact that he didn't release Social Security IS a federal progam further proves his ignorance, do you really want this man handling foreign policy when he dosen't understand the strucure of his own government.
  • Slashdot apparently pissed off Apple, they've got /.hidden!


    There's a reason they picked the apple for their logo, you know. Remember Eve in Eden? ;)

  • Re:Reboot? (Score:3)

    by Ryano ( 2112 ) on Friday November 03, 2000 @07:57AM (#653553) Homepage

    Apple have said that the necessity of rebooting after changing network settings is a bug, which will be fixed in the final release. The previously posted shell script shows that it's easy to fix, so we can be pretty certain it will be done.

    The current MacOS, unlike Windows 9x, does not require a restart after changing your IP address, for example. If this suddenly became the case in Apple's new, improved MacOS, it would be a little embarrassing, to say the least.

  • You wimp! Real men use Pen and paper(tm).
  • I have a P3 500 running Windows 2000 with 320 megs of RAM, and I have no lagging problems at all. Furthermore, the Athlon requires an entire driver set [amd.com] just because you're running an AMD. Windows wasn't made for AMD, and AMD sure wasn't intended to run bug-free.

    In short, ditch the imposter CPU and get 100% i686.

  • Not until Apple ships a dual capable mobo with integrated 100 bit or 1000 bit ethernet and integrated video, so that either they or someone else can slap them into 1U enclosures

    Apple's current G4 motherboards are all dual-processor capable, and the G4's also include Gigabit ethernet now, and thier older motherboards (Beige G3) also included integrated video.

    Re:Will this catch on in the web hosting community (Score:1) by um... Lucas (lk@caralis.com) on Friday November 03, @09:33AM PDT (#176) (User #13147 Info) http://www.dioxidized.com/ Not until Apple ships a dual capable mobo with integrated 100 bit or 1000 bit ethernet and integrated video, so that either they or someone else can slap them into 1U enclosures. Because right now, you can fit 13 or 14 cobalt raq's into the space required by 3 or 4 G4's. So it's not really a winning proposition that way. At some point a while back, some outfit was shipping 1U enclosures for iMac motherboards,

    I believe that outfit was Marathon Computers [marathoncomputer.com]. They also will mount your B&W G3/G4 into a 4U rack (that's still pretty big).

  • Re:NetInfo: Genius? No. (Score:3)

    by Espen ( 96293 ) on Friday November 03, 2000 @08:20AM (#653558)
    Yes, you are indeed missing something. Netinfo was developed by one of the YP/NIS creators as the next generation of directory/configuration services. That should be a pretty good clue that it is more than YP/NIS.

    As for the question of where things are looked up, of course local info is consulted before a remote query is made. Why don't people do their homework before posting?

  • It's another layer or two of cruft on top of UNIX. I'd be more impressed if Apple had taken more stuff out. NetInfo, for example, should replace /etc outright. (Yes, you'd have to rethink startup. So?)

    Also, having used a message-passing kernel, they don't seem to be doing much with it. I would have expected heavy use of IPC. But then, Apple killed OpenDoc, which was the only thing they made that really needed IPC.

  • The only change I've had to reboot for was when I first enabled my airport card.

    If you make changes to network settings from the GUI, it asks you to reboot, but if you make the changes from the command line, it works fine without rebooting.

    I use my Ibook at home and at work. At home, it uses en1 (airport) at at work I use en0 (ethernet).
    I just run a script that uses ifconfig and route to shut down the interface I'm not using, and to reconfigure the one I am. Works like a charm, and I've never had to reboot.
    --
  • Are you sure you meant mach 2.5???

    all the marketing guff I've found proudly proclaims the use of Mach 3.0 and Bsd 4.4...

    I was pretty sure that the last openstep (4.2) relied upon mach 2.5.



    A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close

  • I remembered this one after using my mom's Win95 machine and having media player crash on me: In Win2K, a program which uses MMSYSTEM that ends up crashing will not kill the sound. Instead, MMSYSTEM is restarted instantly. Also, you can run MULTIPLE INSTANCES of MMSYSTEM (i.e.: run Winamp, RealPlayer, Media Player, and Cool Edit all at once!). DirectSound is still first come, first served, but that's how it was meant to be.

    DOS box log! You're not trapped in 80x25 anymore; there's now a buffer in each DOS box, and you can scroll up to previous lines (excellent for doing that >200 line tracert!)

    The most stable Direct3D support. Great for 3DSMAX, Unreal Tournament, The Sims, and other D3D programs.

    All calls to OPENGL32.DLL are redirected to the hardware accelerator (unless the software RGB emulator is specified). This includes the OpenGL screensavers, which run MUCH faster due to this.

    Integrating IE into the operating system isn't all that bad. You can just type a URL into the path, and that Windows Explorer window turns into an IE window. This is one great timesaver.

    File system advances: FAT32 support (though you can't format a volume larger than 32GB as FAT32, since NTFS is more efficient at that point), disk quotas, and per-file encryption.

    By default, upon a STOP error (blue screen of death), only the first 640K of RAM is dumped, and the system is automatically restarted (not like NT4, where all RAM was dumped and the system would stay at the BSOD until the user restarted). This can be changed to your liking, but 2000 usually only goes to the BSOD when running corrupt programs.

  • By default, upon a STOP error (blue screen of death), only the first 640K of RAM is dumped, and the system is automatically restarted (not like NT4, where all RAM was dumped and the system would stay at the BSOD until the user restarted). This can be changed to your liking, but 2000 usually only goes to the BSOD when running corrupt programs

    HOW do you change this? I think I have a corrupt video driver on my laptop which causes these crashes, but the damned thing keeps rebooting before I can get to the pause key ... care to fill in a clueless W2k user on how to stop W2k from moving past a BSOD too fast?

  • Umm, neither BeOS nor QNX are dead. And both are decidedly microkernel (in QNX even drivers run as seperate processes) and can whip Linux's (or MOSX's) ass in the speed deparment.
  • Obviously a non-gamer. Computer games are quite different from console games. For example, computer RPGs tend to be much more strategy oriented, but less story focused than their console counterparts. PC sports games tend to have more statistics while console sports games tend to be "lighter." PC sims can get really hardcore while console sims tend to be much more arcade-like. PC arcade games tend to generally suck while console arcade games are quite good. Its a mixture of market segment (PC gamers tend to be older and more affluent), tradition, and technology (try playing Jane's F15 without a keyboard!)
  • I actually remember a review of DOS95 way back when. It lost by a HUGE margin to PC-DOS and Novell DOS. It was portrayed as a castrated DOS. The recommendation was to keep your old DOS. Since then, nary a peep about DOS95 except in the Caldera trial.

    Keeping DOS away from the typical user was probably Microsofts second biggest affront to its users.
  • Some games will never work on consoles without a keyboard, and I don't see a keyboard in the PS/2s future. The demographics of the two markets are very different, regardless of the technology. There have been times when consoles were significantly more powerful than PCs (when the N64 was released, full scene anti-aliasing was still a pipe dream for PC users) yet that did nothing to raise change the demographics of the situation. It will take a lot to pry the RTS/FPS/Flight Sim crowd from their PCs, and it will take a lot to get the Arcade/RPG/Puzzle gamers to give up their consoles.

    As for fast OpenGL, who said anything about games? I'm talking OpenGL 3D development.

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