Review of Ubuntu and call for OSX to Use Linux Kernel

[poofyhairguy]

I found this in a weird place, and it has two things of interest. One is a long review of Ubuntu for PPC and x86 and another is a call for OSX and Linux to merge.

I think the second idea sounds not possible but I could be wrong. My favorite part was when he described the stereo type of Linux users:



Linux users form another counterculture, one more technically inclined. They debate distributions, GUIs (Gnome vs. KDE), and hardware. They know that OS X should have been built on a Linux foundation - and they think Linux is accessible to the masses.

Even though I fit parts of that stereotype, I did not think I was part of the majority. IS the stereotype well established, or is it a perception from those who gave Linux a chance but it fialed on them for one reason or another (aka someone with a negative experiance who reads a lot of forums and stuff trying to fix it all) . Do Linux users have other common stereotypes?

[macgyver2]

That's interesting. Unfortunately I can't comment all the way because I just got into Mac OSX at work about two months ago and don't know much about the internals yet. From what I've seen Mac OSX works great the way it is.

Anyway, I didn't know OSX should have been built on a Linux kernel. Guess I'm not a Linux user. Oh well... :)

May we have a link? I'd be interested in reading the whole thing.

[endersshadow]

I think that more and more, you're starting to see an influx of Linux users who are the "just work" type people, that don't know or particularly care what the differences between Gnome and KDE are; have no idea what Metacity, xfwm4, or Fluxbox are; think that GTK and Qt are just letters of the alphabet, and are rather scared of CLI. That being said, the impression that I had of Linux (before I accidentally stumbled into it) was that it was only for hackers/ubergeeks and was inferior to Windows or Macs. Of course, I actually tried it out, and now I run on only Ubuntu, but hey, who can blame me, right?

At any rate, I think that Linux still has this kind of "geek" mentality to it, since it's out of the mainstream computing. Sure, it's easy to use. But, it's not in people's faces all the time, like Windows or Mac. That being said, I still would think that Linux users, on the whole, know a great deal more about their computers and their OS than Windows users or Mac users.

Should OSX have been built on Linux? I don't know. Since the beginning, Mac has been based off of Unix. How much work would it have taken to port all of OSX from Unix to Linux? Would that have been feasible? My guess would be no, so why would it make sense for Apple to push that?

As for the last bit, I think that we can all agree that Linux is accessible to the masses. Isn't that Ubuntu's goal in the first place?

[macgyver2]

Should OSX have been built on Linux? I don't know. Since the beginning, Mac has been based off of Unix. How much work would it have taken to port all of OSX from Unix to Linux? Would that have been feasible? My guess would be no, so why would it make sense for Apple to push that?
Hmm, I would guess probably just as feasible or maybe even more feasible than switching processor architectures.

[prizrak]

Poofy, you got a link to the original somewhere, sounds like interesting reading. Linux is ready for the masses if someone installs and configures it for them you know like they do with Windows and OS X? Linux users on average DO know more about their computers but it's because we have to to config our systems in many cases.