[Script Kiddie]

A few weeks ago, I read, but was not convinced by an article in MacOPINION called "Linux, Macintosh and the Global Future". Basically Del Miller's conjecture is that Linux will bloom in China and India because people there will want to save a few bucks on the PC purchase. Yeah yeah sure I thought....
http://www.macopinion.com/columns/engine/03/07/21

Today it all changed for me

"About 10 percent of India's personal computers will be sold with Linux rather than Microsoft operating systems by March, 2004, says Linux distributor Red Hat, up from nothing in January."
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5062058.html

Up from N O T H I N G in january!
This is significant.

It gets better..

"analysts say the bigger worry for Microsoft is the growing use of Linux among India's pool of an estimated 400,000 software developers, many of whom churn out code for giants such as General Motors and American Express. "

So how does this "save Apple".
Short answer: X11.
Longer answer: OSX can ride on this wave. Applications written for Linux are so much easier to port to OSX. Often just a few tweeks and a recompile. And this is possible because of OSX's X11 support and the standard Unix libraries included in Darwin.

I am work with people who grind away at porting a big windows application to Solaris and Linux and it aint pretty.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why X11 is going to be included in Panther?

Anyone else see Linux as Apple's hope?

 

[Gerbill]

Anyone else see Linux as Apple's hope?

Anything that shafts Microsoft's monopoly is good. And, as you say, Linux software can be moved to OS X rather easily via X11.

The problem is that Linux geeks will put up with a lot of crap that the average Mac user, or even the average Mac geek, wouldn't tolerate. I just finished installing Open Office and The Gimp through Fink and the Apple implementation of X11. These apps work well enough, but they won't get any extensive audience in the Mac community until they come with a proper OS X installer and an interface closer to the Mac standard.

It's a good start, though, and maybe the interface improvements will come.

Cheers :-> Bill

 

[jo42]

Microsoft has pulled strings in South America, Germany and several other European countries to displace Linux. Microsoft also considers Linux as their greatest threat. Though, look at what they did to Netscape. A good site to keep on top of this sort of stuff is http://www.osnews.com/

Biggest problem with Linux is that it is nowhere near ready for the desktop. Imagine if every program, application or utility, did things its own way with no consistency between them. Imagine that every time a new release of Mac OS came out, the user interface changed drastically. Imagine over a 101 different versions of OS X from 100 different vendors. Imagine having to patch and compile the kernel to add a feature...

Linux is good for infrastructure stuff like file servers, web servers, database servers, etc. But then you need Unix geeks to keep it all running. Personally I prefer, and use, FreeBSD for this kind of stuff. In one corner I have an SGI O2 running IRIX, in another a Sun Ultra 60 running Solaris. Front and centre these days are a Dell laptop with Windows 2000 and Cube (G4 tower at the office) with OS X.

PS. Putting X into 10.3 was another brilliant move by Apple.

 

[JohnnyG4]

Who (besides for a bunch of ANALysts) says Apple needs saving?

John

 

[The Doug]

To digress for a moment, it's nice to see Micro$oft's chain get yanked, though this decision will probably be appealed & overturned.

 

[Script Kiddie]

JonnyG4: If Microsofts monopoly of the desktop is not broken then more and more websites will continue to code to IE on Windows and you and I will start getting seriously shut out. And lets not get into software.

--but--

If the world has, say, 25% Linux use by 2007 than Apple, you, and I can rest assured that our 2-5% presence is not threatened. At least from a web usage point of view. Sites will be forced to code to standards, not browsers.

Until there is a strong alternate desktop presence Apple's low market share *matters*. In a bad way.
We are lucky* that OSX and Linux share a substantial underpinning.

==========
* lucky that Boss Jobs Saw The Unix Light ?