Subject: Re: LinuxPPC+MOL versus MacOS X Public Beta
From: johnathan spectre (jspectre@lords.com)
Date: Thu Sep 28 2000 - 06:20:02 MDT
on 9/28/00 3:47 AM, Timothy A. Seufert at tas@mindspring.com wrote:
> I don't think that's true at all. Both are about putting MacOS in a
> box, but Classic has taken on the additional burden of trying to hide
> the box from the user.
Yeah, and it doesn't work very well either. See how the menu bar up top
switches back and forth? Ugly and confusing. See the Applications menu and
the clock in the upper right appear and disappear. Again, ugly and
confusing. Why does it take at least 5 minutes for Classic to boot up for me
when MOL starts up in under a minute? I can't control how much RAM Classic
gets, but I can control that and a lot of other things about MOL. Be careful
using network apps under Classic, some can crash X (has happened to me with
interarchy). Many control panels don't work right in Classic but some
Applications still depend on their functionality. Classic tries to work as a
"hybrid" system merging Classic and X, but extensions and control panels
don't load and work right in this mixed environment. MOL being in a
self-contained box works just like a Classic machine would. Finally,
LinuxPPC/MOL supports my Airport! :-) Way to go Apple with breaking that one
(not to mention I can have MOL use one network interface and LinuxPPC use
another, try that in X/Classic).
I like being able to run MOL in a box, either in an X Window or full-screen
(Classic used to have this option). It helps separate the "classic"
applications from Linux/X applications.
> I've used both, and at this point, Classic is certainly easier to set
> up, seems to be plenty fast, and has a few glitches related to the
> not-yet seamless integration with the MacOS X desktop. I'm not sure
> how you get 'blow away by a mile' out of that. Perhaps you're
> running on a system which has enough RAM to run Linux and MOL well,
> but not enough for MacOS X and Classic (if there is one thing you can
> fault OS X for, it's that it is a RAM pig).
It has a lot of glitches as far as I've seen. I am running on a 500mhz Pismo
with 640M RAM. Both Linux, MacOS 9 and MacOS X have _plenty_ of space to run
with. I haven't done any formal speed tests with Nortons or MacBench but MOL
is a lot snappier running OS 9 than X is running Classic. When MOL crashes
it has never brought down LinuxPPC. When Classic does it has brought down X
on me several times, or hosed networking on me.
> If all you wanted out of Classic was MOL, the version of Classic
> released with MacOS X Server a long time ago (isn't it a year now?)
> did pretty much what MOL can do now, only better (faster, more
> stable, easier setup, etc.). Not surprising since Apple obviously
> has a lot more resources to do such a project than Samuel; I'm quite
> impressed with how much Samuel has done on his own. But Apple did
> not want Classic to be just what MOL is, so you're now seeing a
> Classic that is trying to go far beyond it.
How is Classic going "far beyond" MOL? What else is left to add? Both run
"Classic" MacOS applications, both support networking. Pretty much all
either has to do is support various devices, firewire, usb, etc. I'm sure
Samuel is working on this just as much as Apple is. You'd think with Apple's
"more resources" they could give us something better than they already have.
As I said different people have different opinions. Apple is trying to blur
the lines between 9/X so they can maintain the wide program base of 9 while
developers catch-up (or abandon) X. I don't care much for the job they've
done so far.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : Thu Sep 28 2000 - 06:27:28 MDT