[wplug] My distro beat up your distro (yet again, sigh) -- WAS: OS X on Linux?

[Bryan J. Smith]

On Sun, 2007-07-22 at 14:48 -0700, Mackenzie Morgan wrote:
> I'm starting to understand why KDE users argue against GNOME's hiding
> of features.  Now, I like GNOME's level of hiding stuff, but Aqua is
> annoying me to no end.

Well, it's not that GNOME really or purposely "hides" things, but they
have a nasty habit of developing features or options, but not GUI to
change them (other than GConf -- hmmm, sounds like another OS? ;).

And I say that as a GNOME wennie myself, although I find myself using
XFCE (although often with gnome-vfs for "Utopia") on smaller footprint
systems.  If I wasn't such a Red Hat cronie out of pure capitalist
reasons (i.e., I've made 90% of my salary/billables for the last 12
years doing such), I'd probably be running Xubuntu.

> I love having apt-get on Ubuntu, and that's there and working by
> default.  On OS X, you need to go get Fink or Darwin Ports (I went
> with Fink because it's Apt, and I don't know Portage)

Classic "ports v. packages" discussion.  The irony is that MacOS X is
based on BSD, which is the classic "ports" distro, of which Daniel's
"Portage" is a "ports" on steroids.

> to install some stuff (unless you want to build from source yourself,
> which "average joe end user" doesn't,

Which is what "Portage" essentially automates, far better than a typical
"ports" -- thanx to Daniel and those who came after him.  Even though
you'll never see me running Gentoo on a desktop, I love it, the
"portage" concept, and utterly love the approach (and the fact that it
exists to give that option).

Unfortunately too many "script kiddie-level" Gentoo users have false
attitudes of what "Portage" actually gives you.  Those are the Gentoo
users that I think it could do without.

**E.g., from my blog entry "Packages v. Ports" ...
http://thebs413.blogspot.com/2005/07/linux-distributions-packages-v-ports.html

  Secondly, but differing, there is a common believe that "ports"
  distros are significantly faster on newer hardware than "packages"
  distros. It really depends on how the "packages" are optimized, but
  leading edge "packages" distros tend to build all software as
  optimized for the most common platform. In the case of "extensions,"
  such optimizations are not typically a compile-time function, but the
  design of the software itself. E.g., using SSE units in a processor
  instead of ALU or FPU is a decision made by the software, not the
  compiler, because SSE is not as precise and could typically does
  significantly adversely affect calculations (neligable for games,
  detrimental for sci/eng and sometimes system calculations). "Packages
  maintainers" and "ports maintainers" are in the same boat -- without
  re-writing the software, the former typically finds itself building
  the packages configuration to support _all_ extensions and optimal
  performance while the latter allows end-systems to build as optimally 
  for one system.

The main advantage of "Ports" on modern hardware is size, not
performance.  Proliferation of otherwise is just not true, but not
unexpected because 97% of users don't understand the difference between
ISA and extension optimization.

> and I usually don't either unless I just *really* want the newest
> features...like going from Feisty's version of Rubrica to the newest),
> like irssi.  Yeah, there's X-Chat for OS X, but there's setup involved
> before it'll let me connect to #linuxchix (have to add the server, for
> example, before I can choose it, while irssi, I just /server).
> Package manager always pwns having to hunt the internet for a suitable
> program.

And an advanced "ports" system actually has the leg-up on any "packages"
distro, with trade-offs -- such as integration, possibly regression,
testing (although that depends on the "packages" distribution).  No
"repository hell" (although there can be "API hell" which is really the
opposite of "dependency hell," the latter actually prevents the former
in a "package distro" ;).

> ... cut other "post MacOS X install" preferences ...

I just realized something.  You sounded like most of us in the early
'90s.  ;)

But not on Ubuntu v. MacOS X, but SLS/Slackware (possibly even
Yggdrasil) and, later, Red Hat (especially starting with the 3.0.3 "May
Day Release") v. Solaris.  We wanted GNU/Solaris, and had to install all
the stuff post-install to get it.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith         Professional, Technical Annoyance
mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org   http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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