EXCLUSIVES

Open Apple > Macs & Linux
Words by Chris Mace > Illustration by Raul Silva
March 2004

Apple made a strong move by giving OS X an open source Unix-based foundation. It harnessed a wide community of developers by allowing people to peer beneath the sleek Aqua interface into the Darwin kernel below, but it also protected itself from potential future competition with Linux on the desktop by opening up and creating the conditions for some serious cross platform collaboration.

As the open source development community gets closer and closer to producing a viable desktop operating system (currently its desktop deployment is limited to developing countries) for the plug-and-play set, Apple is poised to benefit from that development.

Linux was originally developed by Linus Torvalds, then a computer science student in Finland. He posted his Linux kernel (the part that gets software and hardware to communicate) to a user group for another Unix-like program called Minix and asked for a hand in fleshing it out. He also published it under an anti-copyright license from the Free Software Foundation, an organization run by Richard Stallman who would add his own GNU code to Linux (so it should be called "GNU/Linux" but the tendency is to truncate).

Anyone can obtain, use, and modify open source, though downloading, installing and running Linux distributions for free takes effort and patience-not to mention know-how. But those inclined to really "think different" can get Linux preinstalled on Apple hardware. Terrasoft Solutions offers its Yellow Dog Linux distribution (based on the Red Hat distribution for x86 machines) installed on Macs¨ (including the dual processor G5 which means fast).

As a licensed distributor selling hardware preinstalled with their Linux distribution, Terrasoft is among the growing ranks of others doing the same-that's how you make money apparently with open source "free" software. You package, support, and develop it for customers, says Martin Schulze, a developer for Debian, one of the more popular Linux distributions.

"OS X is relatively compatible with Linux so both benefit from open source development. However, applications created with either one won't run on the other system; the exception is if the application is a script, or run-time, such as Java or Python," says Kai Staats, founder of Terrasoft.

But can you run standard programs not built for Linux? "You can run programs such as Photoshop® and Quark® on a GNU/L, but not by default, as they were compiled for different operating systems, but you can use [Linux apps] to run these programs although you'd need a faster machine to do so," said Schulze.

Currently, Linux distributions represent an almost negligible share of the desktop market and have primarily made inroads in the server market. Yet, Linux could become the default platform of an eventual global integration of certain types of systems. We already have seen in China (Red Hat won a contract with the Chinese government) and various European and South American regions Linux distributions being tailored and adopted for municipal functions.

The European Union has expressed much interest in open source software for various development protocols, and the hypothetical blank price tag (there are some associated costs) is just one reason. "Linux provides a homogeneous OS across heterogeneous hardware, enabling seamless code migration between CPU architectures, reducing cost of deployment of new systems and maintenance of existing hardware," Staats explained.

In the region of Extremadura in Spain, LinEx (Linux + Extremadura) is the official operating system for the public school system and state offices. This has saved the government enough money to pay for support staff and extra computers to the point where the particular region has one computer for every two kids-the highest ratio in Spain even though the region is a relatively poor one.

Terrasoft counts among its customers NASA and Lockheed Martin. Organizations that switch to Linux have the advantage of needing only one OS for office computers, workstations, servers and clusters, resulting in simplified operation with less expensive maintenance, said Staats. There also are no paid licenses, security is tighter, and viruses aren't as big of a concern.

The version of Linux installed on the desktop computer Wal-Mart offers for $199 is modeled after Windows¨, something that has brought the price point down considerably for desktops in general and that computer has enough juice for basic functions such as email, word processing, web browsing, etc., although judging by various internet message boards, you can apparently amp it up considerably with extra memory.

But Mac users aren't known for their aversion to expensive hardware. Besides, just as there is virtual PC for the Mac, there is a Linux program called Mac-on-Linux that allows a user to run Apple's Classic or OS X in a full screen or reduced window on top of Linux, but it has to be over a Mac compatible CPU.

So there is a point of returning to the OS X interface for those Apple users who chose to give Linux a shot, and we'll be watching to see what comes of open source apps developed for OS X (available for download on the Apple website), which are bringing new meaning to the term "market share."