I've long suspected that having OS X compatibility for Linux would be easier and more useful than Windows compatibility for many people. Due to their similar underpinnings and less legacy stuff in OS X.
Being able to run XCode , Photoshop and Sequel Pro under Linux would certainly make my life easier.
Whether Apple wants to kill this , support it or be indifferent would I suppose depend on whether they feel threatened by Linux on the desktop.
They may even be happy to push people who are unhappy with the "iOSification" of Apple towards Linux in the future.
> Whether Apple wants to kill this , support it or be indifferent would I suppose depend on whether they feel threatened by Linux on the desktop.
They may even be happy to push people who are unhappy with the "iOSification" of Apple towards Linux in the future.
Given Apple's behavior in the past and in other areas, I would be very, very surprised if they were to condone (let alone promote) anything even remotely resembling OS X applications on another system.
While I don't think either outcome is likely, I'd be more willing to bet on them invoking some absurd copyright law to try and prevent this kind of work from happening (something along the lines of Oracle vs. Google).
I felt NT was an apt comparison because not only is it the basis for the current Windows, it also was their first 32-bit offering, i.e. where stuff got serious. 16-bit Windows was a fairly different beast. 9x was certainly influential but (1) is now dead and (2) came after NT, borrowed lots from NT in the beginning. In light of this, drawing comparisons between 1.0 and Win8 doesn't seem all that appropriate to me.
I guess my hesitation was caused by the assumption that while windows before NT was all 16 bit / 32 bit hybrid; it's API's are still essentially the same which is what you would care about when re-platting an API.
However I will concede my argument like a true gentlemen, as I now realize the ABI is what we should care about. It is almost certainly different even if the API's haven't fluxed that much, and that is what a re-platt project would most care about.
My point was the legacy is there and it's pretty large, should not be understated. Apple may not care so much about compatibility between releases or with NeXT binaries from 1987 (though I don't think Windows code from '87 works so well on NT either), but the old code is there and if your argument is that sort of thing doesn't help binary compatibility, then that's a problem. I was making my point in shorthand fashion, so I didn't even touch on Mach which is very old as well.
People have this impression that OS X is flashy and new and immune to or not experienced in code rot, and I didn't think it rings all that true.
That would seem to me to be the least of the problems. Just as you can install GNU coreutils on OS X, you can compile the BSD utilities to run on Linux as well.
I wasn't saying that it was impossible to run them. I'm just commenting on an issue that was immediately apparent to me.
If a program calls '/usr/bin/nc' and expect BSD options, it's not going to get them. "Replace GNU coreutils with BSD coreutils" is an option, but not one that everyone would be ready to jump at, because now things running on your Linux system that expect GNU options won't be getting them.
Even if you just focused on console apps, that would be a huge milestone for many folks.
One example: being able to run XCode's command line build tools to generate iOS and Mac builds on our Linux CI boxes without a dedicated Mac build slave would be huge.
this has the potential to progress much faster, and much more completely than WINE, after all OSX is already a POSIX system, so many of the elements are already there.
Surely POSIX is the least of it. Mac apps are built on an API that has been much extended since the NeXT days and which even then was a complete wrapper over the underlying Unix OS. Think "copying QT and the whole KDE ecosystem" to get a grasp of the scale of it.
that was the first app i thought of when i saw this. pretty much the only piece of osx software i know of that is that much better than any of the competition.
I'd suggest going after source compatibility rather than binaries. It shouldn't be that difficult to check an Xcode project for things incompatible with GNUStep and offer a way to allow ProjectCenter to build binaries on and to other platforms, provided the developer refrained to use Mac-only features. It would be a nice way to collect hard data on what should be considered more important for GNUStep to develop, generating countless other opportunities for students pursuing various degrees.
BTW, is anyone building TextMate for platforms other than OSX?
How long will this project be relevant considering that apple is planning on switching its processors from intel to some apple unique processor soon? If it is similar to the switch they made when switching to intel, nothing will be compatible.
The project will never really be relevant. If you have a serious need to run OS X probably already have OSX and a Mac.
If you need to simultaneously run Linux you install it in a VM.
This project like WINE for the most part will always be a "look what I can do" type project. It's never going to be a rosetta type system designed to bridge ecosystems as the VirtualBox / VMWare bridge already works quite well.
Having been disgusted by security holes in Preview and the lack of viable alternatives to Preview/Adobe Reader on OS X, I installed WINE and Foxit Reader on my Macbook Pro. (And used Automator to have it launched as an OS X app.) Google Chrome is ok for a PDF reader much of the time, but there are some really annoying bugs in its PDF functionality. (Which especially impact comics.)
After becoming somewhat disappointed with silverlight running in a win VM on linux (constant crashes, no reporting, buggy video driver usage) and being pleasantly surprised by the ease of running netflix desktop (http://www.compholio.com/netflix-desktop/) - I would say this couldn't be any farther from the truth. It's at least one instance of wine that has brought a previous inaccessible web app to the linux mainstream.
It doesn't really matter, it's a research project. And second of all your statement that nothing was compatible with the Intel switch is completely false. PPC binaries worked just fine for years.
Lastly, there aren't any plans to switch Macs to ARM, it's a rumor.
Is that confirmed? Last time I checked those were only faint rumors, and switching to a proprietary architecture is not gonna help their bottom line, unless they want to get rid of the PC / Laptop division.
How lovely would it be to be able to run Adobe products on Linux? ... When Apple decided to fuck over Adobe by killing Flash I though the perfect countermove would be to release AdobeOS. They could crowd source the design from its user base, port their products to Linux and be in a very strong position to compete with OSX and Windows. Now that Apple has abandoned its old users for the mass market there's room for an open source OS for the designers, photographers and developers whose needs are not being met.
I would draw the exact opposite conclusion.