why not OS X?

[Timothy A. Seufert]

At 5:21 PM -0500 6/4/02, Robert Brandtjen wrote:
>On Tuesday 04 June 2002 02:53 pm, John Brier wrote:
>>   I have to agree with some
>>  points, I really like Mac OS X because I don't have to spend a day or so
>>  on a list like this just getting say my DVD player to play movies
>
>Funny thing is, Red Hat does the same thing, out of the box on any cheap intel
>box made - funny, huh ? then again, Intel hardware specs are freely
>available, for the most part.

Clearly you are ignorant of what Linux driver development is actually 
like.  Examples of PC hardware without freely available specs are 
quite easy to find; in fact that's more the rule than the exception.

The difference between Intel and PPC Linux is that there are so many 
more people working on the former that difficulties such as lack of 
hardware docs get overcome a lot faster.

I would also point out that Apple IS providing driver source even if 
it isn't providing docs.  You cannot take APSL-licensed source code 
and use it as-is in Linux (aside from the licensing there are major 
technical issues), but you are perfectly free to read the source to 
see how the hardware works, then write your own Linux driver.  Driver 
source is actually a hell of a lot more documentation than you get 
from many hardware manufacturers.
-- 
Tim Seufert