Interesting stuff... how long until Mac OSX catches up?
</evil grin>

Oops... sorry for breaking the html...

Wim, I think you are confused. It is not how long until OSX catches up to XP, it is how long will it take Windows to catch up to OSX.

The answer is probably "never." Or, "When MS gets rid of the win32 API."

An even better question is "When will Linux catch up to OSX" and the answer is, "When they stop having two competing desktops, have a single elegant GUI API that vendors can use, gains 5% of the desktop market, and everyone works toward the same goals instead of milling around like a bunch of cats."

In other words, never.

Although... anyone have any suggestions on how to do good, solid init script for a distribution? I am working on that very issue right now for SimplyGNUStep. They are in need of some help, so if you want a NeXT/OSX-like Linux distro, give them some help!!!!

The problem is a single api means everyone is stuck with a single api. And if it's apple's, well, it's not open (anything on top of darwin that is), and if it's windows' you have the same problem. The reason that I think that linux has to exist is because without it you're stuck with commerical and propriotary systems. Microsoft has already proved that the whole 'security through obscurity' thing doesn't work, and anyone who has used IE knows that it does not cater to the desires of the everyday person (ie: pop up blocking built in).

Even if it's not as good, competition is good, competition is good, competition is good, and without it, you're completely screwed by whomever is in charge. If I may be so bold as to allude to a political tone, even in a democracy where the best party wins (well, ok, maybe a bad example :), there are still other parties there to keep the winner in check. If apple "won" and linux and ms simply dissapeared, why would apple have any reason to get better, charge cheaper prices (well, not that they do now), etc.

Without multiple parties doing things, you wouldn't get things like e, the simply gnustep project, etc.

Good solid init script? What are they using now? Maybe look through some of the other distros to see how they are doing it. I'd suggest downloading livecds like the knoppix one and/or the gentoo livecd.

Is there a system that isn't working (I haven't seen the simply gnustep project for a while, so I don't know how their system is doing it).

And as an aside.... what package management system are they using, I noticed they say "create a new package management system" on the release schedule... any reason for not going with apt/rpm/upm/gar/portage?

Maybe I'll throw myself on a mailing list or two and actually ask huh? :)

To address several points:

1) MS (and Apple) and Linux are on polar opposite sides of te API/GUI issue. MS/Apple basically make sure that everything is consistent (ok, well, APPLE does...) but at the cost of flexibility.

Linux works on the idea that if you don't like it, just make your own project. Unfortunately, this costs sustainability since everyone is doing their own thing.

As in all things in life, there has to be a balance. On one hand the Community (notice the capital) has to rally around something that they think is important and have a direction. On the other hand, there has to be room for The Individual to experiement and make thing better.

So far, the winning side has been consistency with extensibility (win32, unfortunately). As I've said in the past, I think Linux's future would be much brighter if they took Cocoa (or even win32) CODE compatibility and made it the way you do GNOME/KDE apps. Like, imagine if a person could write one application and have it natively compile for windows and/or OSX and/or Linux... and not have it suck (i.e. java). No, I am not talking binary compatibility, I'm talking a cohesive API, shared with a larger vendor so we could get some commercial apps on Linux.

I think when the commerical vendors and game makers start taking Linux seriously as a target, you'll see change in the computer world. until then, Linux is great on a server, but rarely used anywhere else, unfortunately.

anyhow... just my opinion :-)

2) SimplyGNUStep is now... well... very, very alpha. You can put it on a machine, but it doesn't do multiple boot well, and it is still pretty buggy. But it is limping along.

3) Thanks for the advice on the init scripts, guys. I was going to look at gentoo, because apparently they have some kick-ass init scripts. I'll probably model my 'scripts from theirs.

4) I *THINK* the package management system is going to basically be like an OSX .app, combined with apt, etc. if done right, it could be really cool. Personally, I am a fan of the OSX .app structure, except that I think they should be in some way tar'red instead of just being a directory that the OS recognizes and registers as an application.

The only reason to not go with the "normal" apt/rpm/portage/upm system is that NeXT/OSX does it differently, and I think the dude is basicaly an OSX and Linux fan. Again, it comes down to the herding cats problem above. Personally, I think apt is the way to go, but who knows....

Regarding point 1 and binary / code compatibility... this sounds a lot like MS's .NET strategy (I think). It actually sounds more like posix C :) You can compile any of the GNU tools on pretty much any unix around, which is a heck of a slap on the back for the makers of gcc!

Nice thread guys... my "Confused" question achieved exactly what it intended ;-)

Wim: Yeah, I saw the hook from the beginning, but I figured I might as well go full-bore. I am sitting here doing a LOOOOOOOOOONG data migration, and have time to make long zealous posts. :-)

Arc: yeah, Linux needs to do with the GUI API what GCC (and other compilers) does to C, that is make it cross-platform yet compiled and native.

WxWindows, from what I know of it, is a good step. So is Qt, except that it is not open source, really (commercial still pays). From what I understand of WXWindows, they now have to make a compelling reason for Windows and OSX developers to use it, so that all the goodness can come to Linux, too.

Longorn installs properly until it star ups. I get a stop error screen