Ha ha, I laughed so hard. Hard core *nix nerds are full on hey!
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Notable Developer Starts Patreon to Fund Apple Silicon Linux Port
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"Some people also just hate well built, fast, reliable software" - oh wow, if only that described macOS lately!!!!!! And you're actually comparing that with Linux, the software that most of the worlds servers run on, because it's well built, fast, and reliable, oh the irony!
Yeah, but he is aiming for a minimum just to get it rolling, knowing that the money will come one way or another. That's the nature of owning or contributing to open source software, if it goes well, you become famous, and get high paid contract/job/speaking/book offers, and if you're running a project then companies will pay you for support, and so on. He started his Patreon yesterday, and already reached the minimum, so no doubt he will end up earning a motza just from the Patreon alone. Which also means he will hire other devs and get it working even faster, which will make it more valuable, and so on. I'd say he's hit the jackpot with this project. And it comes off the back of all his years of nerdy hard work with porting Linux to gaming consoles. Winner.
But Linux is just an app on Mac OS now, what’s the point? Unless it’s a crowdfunding scam to pay himself and any “employees”, of course...
Eh, one’s a great text editor, and the other’s a halfway implemented OS that lacks a decent text editor.
I never even bother using proper terminology anymore. You wanna get replies forever, try and say anything definitive about what GNU is, or call Linux an OS.
My hunch as a dev is a couple hundred hours for a proof of concept, and then thousands of hours for something decent. Hopefully folks can join on to speed up the calendar time with that.
I’m not familiar with low level boot loader development, though, so I may be underestimating getting to a proof of concept.
Wow...sounds like this post was funded by an anti-Linux Super PAC:
I mean there's this really tiny, niche field called AI that requires these hobbyist devices called "GPUs"...Linux is good for that. Macs aren't.
There are also these smaller embedded devices...part of some minor cult called "The Internet of Things"...supposedly gonna be 125 billion devices give or take 8 or 10 by 2025....runs AI too in some cases using something called machine learning specifically. From what I hear, Linux is good for that too. Macs aren't.
I've also heard that there are one or two rooms in some unknown building filled with these things called "servers"...they run this hippie hallucination called "The Internet" among other things...Linux again...
A couple unknown startups called Amazon and Google use those Linux servers and GPUs to do things. They also rent them to regular folk and companies like one called Netflix. Yeah, I never heard of Netflix either...
I heard of a couple more irrelevant applications of Linux but really who cares.
So yeah...I don't know why anyone would waste their time writing quirky, hard to use and ugly Linux apps.
Can you imagine the goodwill (and sales) that would be generated if Apple not only allowed but supported a Linux port? Apple hardware would be hotter than hotcakes.
On the other hand, maybe Apple believes they can be more successful keeping customers penned inside the walled garden ecosystem. I wish them luck.
No they're not. The MACH kernel is a custom version of BSD. The only thing they have in common with Linux is POSIX compliance.
Not all that hard, as it has happened before ...
MkLinux - Wikipedia
I actually ran it back in the day.
Independence, get things to work.
Companies, certainly Apple, have commercial intentions, almost always not in line with whats beneficial for you.
For example Apples M1 cost about $20,- but Macs are still equally expensive. Prohibitive expensive in a lot of cases. A complete multicore 64bit arm board with all io needed costs $70. Macs equivalent is 10 times as expensive and has a much bigger footprint than a creditcard.
Apple software is expensive, almost all linux software isn't.
Apple uses al kinds of cloud services, it is difficult to opt out of that - while you should - linux has no specific cloud ties.
macOS runs on very select hardware. Linux runs an almost all hardware, from micro sd card size, to the biggest mainframes or cluster farms.
If you create and make things that involve computers, you can get it to work with linux. Not so with Mac.
The Mach kernel is NOT “a custom version of BSD”. macOS uses a Mach kernel (which was developed at Carnegie Mellon University, as a replacement for the kernel in the BSD version of Unix) along with a (largely) FreeBSD userland (everything of the base OS outside of the kernel). FreeBSD is a descendent of the BSD versions of Unix developed at UC Berkeley, using further developments of BSD’s kernel and userland. Mach is a microkernel, though the version Apple used (called XNU) is before much of the microkernel direction.
What people commonly call Linux, on the other hand, uses Torvald’s Linux kernel with a GNU userland (and the GNU folks are rather annoyed at everyone calling the combination “Linux”, as if GNU didn’t matter - they promote the name GNU/Linux). Linux is a monolithic kernel, the opposite end of the spectrum from a microkernel.
Agreed that macOS and Linux have very little in common, but let’s get the details right.
Linux is a really good Unix (alike/clone) that is tremendously well supported, it just lacks a good GUI (no arguments), while macOS is a good Unix (and it’s actual Unix™, not a clone), with a fabulous GUI and extremely good 3rd party commercial software support.
I don’t see much purpose in running Linux on a Mac, but I’d be happy to see the support there. (I do a lot of development on Linux using a Mac, but it’s all in the form of using the Mac as a front end, with multiple terminals opened up to remote Linux systems.)
Apple hardware already is hotter than hotcakes. Adding some sales to Linux developers isn’t going to move the needle much. And I don’t expect that they want to “keep customers penned inside the walled garden”, so much as simply that their near exclusive focus is making that garden as nice as possible. They’re not looking to trap customers, they’re looking to offer such a nice experience that customers don’t want to leave (and I say this as someone who spends all day using Macs running macOS to do Linux development - and I’d much rather interact with macOS’s GUI than any of the GUIs available for Linux).
Oh come now, Macs and Raspberry Pi’s are hardly equivalent as desktop systems. Plus that $70 you quote doesn’t account for the case, power supply, monitor, keyboard, mouse, or storage - “all io needed” is incredibly disingenuous. Add a decent monitor and an SSD and it’s no longer anything even slightly resembling $70. try configuring both up to roughly equivalent specs and then quote the price differential - your “10 times as expensive” borders on a lie.
I’m a huge supporter of the Raspberry Pi, I’ve got half a dozen Raspberry Pi’s in my house (all running custom software I wrote), but I sit in front of a Mac all day, because it’s a much better user experience (when I work on the Pi’s, I ssh into them, since most of them are running headless).
Yep. I spent a few years in the mid-2000s beating my head against YDL. Sadly not a pleasant experience.
-----Well, it was, anyway. Unfortunately, they closed-sourced it when they rewrote on top of libxpc back in OS X v10.10 'Yosemite.' (Sources: the last slide/page of this presentation PDF, as well as the opening words of this article by the same author.) (Also, that's not the only attempt at forcibly re–open-sourcing launchd I've seen; here are some others: 'jceel/libxpc,' long dormant; the slow-moving PureDarwin project's 'XPC' repository; and AndromedaOS's libxpc, also somewhat dormant.)
I had no idea that happened. Good to know!Not all that hard, as it has happened before ...
MkLinux - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
I actually ran it back in the day.
Why do you say locked down? I’m on HS or Catalina but I can install whatever I want, I just need to type on my password.
And make certain it is from approved developer. Then disable SIP if you wish to do anything to the system files. Or enable booting from an external drive, the list goes on....