Windows XP or Mac OS X?

[abc123qwerty]

You may or may not have noticed that Windows XP reminds me of another Os. Mac Os X. When I got a copy of Windows Xp from a friend (ha - that 'one copy per user' thing is obviously bollocks seeing as I have used the same copy of XP on 4 computers) I noticed that they ripped off Apple in more ways than one. Windows Movie Maker (iMovie for mac users) Windows Media Player (although this program has been around for a while, its new facelift and features rip off iTunes on Mac) - When you enter text on a password field, instead of the text being starred out it is 'dotted' out - ahem .. Mac os X. Even when you log in to the OS, it is all RIPPED OFF. Windows XP is supposed to be a revolutionary OS yet with 32 bit coding it is way way way behind the 128 bit coding and speed of Mac Os X. Basically, XP is FUCKING SHIT. Microsoft are too lazy to even think of an original name for their piece of shit OS. What more can I say?

"Where would the Mac Os be if there wasn't an Operating System to be better than?"


--- Give me your thoughts and opinions on XP ---


Cheers

Jack

[gump420]

Yeah, you covered most of the bases I think. The thing that annoys me most about XP is how it insists on treating the user like a fucking moron; it's been a while since I did my test run of XP, so that's about the only other thing I can remember.

But, more or less, XP is just Win2K with a facelift; no revolutionary technology anywhere in it. If you want proof, consider this: Win2K would show up as NT 5.0 on certain websites, and XP shows up as NT 5.1 . . .

Oh, and Windows Movie Maker/Media Player don't have anywhere near the same user-friendliness of the Apple counterparts, either! (-;

[ January 18, 2002: Message edited by: gump420 ]

[billy_gates]

and OSX is unix based. If you have ever used Linux, you would appreciate how much work they did to basically exclude the command line completely from the OS. In Linux you need the command line all of the time.

[voidmain]

It took four machines before you figured out XP was crap?  Pretty slow eh?  I refuse to install it on any machine, I'm not helping to spread that virus.  And Billy_Gates, I prefer the command line by the way, maybe you just talked me out of a Mac.  I was very interested before hearing this....  After about 10 minutes of running a mouse I get a serious pain in my arm.  I know it sounds strange but I could type 30 hours staight and the only thing that gets sore is my ass.

[ January 27, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[gump420]

quote:Originally posted by VoidMain:
It took four machines before you figured out XP was crap?  Pretty slow eh?  I refuse to install it on any machine, I'm not helping to spread that virus.  And Billy_Gates, I prefer the command line by the way, maybe you just talked me out of a Mac.  I was very interested before hearing this....  After about 10 minutes of running a mouse I get a serious pain in my arm.  I know it sounds strange but I could type 30 hours staight and the only thing that gets sore is my ass.

[ January 27, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

Oh, you can still use the command line; it's just not "necessary" to use Mac OS X (i.e. if you use it like a Macintosh and not like a UNIX box). However, I use the command line all the time, either by running Terminal.app or firing up an X-Windows server and using an xterm.

Honestly, I prefer the command line to using the OS X Finder for quite a lot of tasks; in fact, you basically can't access the UNIX side of OS X in the Finder at all, so for me the command line is quite necessary.

[voidmain]

I know gump, was just giving him crap for trying to slam my OS when only MS needs to be slammed.  The way I look at it, Linux people, OSX people, and any other *NIX people need to stick together as much as possible.  No need for OS slamming unless you really do have one that is crippled like MS.  

In the later releases of KDE I don't know of much if anything that "must" be done from the command line.  Can you name something? But like I said, no matter how graphical you make most of the stuff I will still do it from the command line, and have several reasons for doing so, one mentioned above, two remote administration is just as fast and easy over a dialup modem line using command line as would be if you were local (even though I can graphically do remote administration as well via dialup, it's not as fast). Three, no matter how sophistocated you make the GUI I will still be able to do a lot of things faster on the command line.  And more..

I believe OSX has one real advantage over Linux and even more of an advantage since they did the right thing and stuck a real OS under the hood. And that advantage only applies when comparing OSX and Linux as a "Desktop" OS.  That advantage is Desktop Applications.  That is why I would not mind getting a Mac.  I would surely continue to use Linux or unaltered *BSD on servers.  I'm sure OSX has more GUI features without a doubt.  How long as the Apple GUI been in development, how long as KDE been around? I think it's pretty damn good for a bunch of hacks doing it in their spare time.  I appreciate their efforts.  

They are also helping OSX now that it has *NIX under the hood you can get all that "great" open source stuff like Apache/PHP, PostgreSQL/MySQL, etc and not have much trouble getting it running.

[ January 27, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[gump420]

Ahh, gotcha; was worried you were turning away from potentially becoming a new recruit to the cult of Macintosh. (-;

There is something to be said for Mac OS X's power as a server OS, though, since having a nice GUI allows somebody to set up a secure server without needing as much technical ability or patience. However, Linux (or any other free OS, possibly even Darwin) makes for a better server OS due to it's scalability. So I'd rate Mac OS X Server as a better solution than say, WinNT, but it probably falls a little short of *NIX OSes where the GUI is optional (simply because the GUI is more-or-less unnecessary for the server to run, so why waste the clock cycles?).

[voidmain]

You can't boot up a new Mac without the GUI?  Not having actually touched one, I would be willing to bet that you can, so maybe you are giving away a server point there where you shouldn't.

[gump420]

Oh, believe me, I've tried; you can't do it with OS X. If you install Linux, Darwin, or some other OS, then sure you can get a prompt-only screen, but you can't do that with any version of Mac OS (especially not OS 9 or prior, which didn't even have a prompt in any way, shape, or form).

Part of the reason for this is that Macintosh computers do not have a "text mode" for the display in the same way that PCs do; you can display fullscreen text, but it's not just a standard screen mode for the computer.

[gump420]

Oh, believe me, I've tried; you can't do it with OS X. If you install Linux, Darwin, or some other OS, then sure you can get a prompt-only screen, but you can't do that with any version of Mac OS (especially not OS 9 or prior, which didn't even have a prompt in any way, shape, or form).

Part of the reason for this is that Macintosh computers do not have a "text mode" for the display in the same way that PCs do; you can display fullscreen text, but it's not just a standard screen mode for the computer.

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by gump420:
Oh, believe me, I've tried; you can't do it with OS X. If you install Linux, Darwin, or some other OS, then sure you can get a prompt-only screen, but you can't do that with any version of Mac OS (especially not OS 9 or prior, which didn't even have a prompt in any way, shape, or form).

Part of the reason for this is that Macintosh computers do not have a "text mode" for the display in the same way that PCs do; you can display fullscreen text, but it's not just a standard screen mode for the computer.

Hmmm, what's the equivelant of the '/etc/inittab' file and 'init' program in Darwin, if there is an equivelant?  I assume Darwin boots first and then spawns the GUI after all the Darwin stuff is initiallized.  Sure if they took all the video modes out of the Darwin kernel (or never created any, along with termcap/terminfo files for video/keyboard) for the Mac's video card I can see how you couldn't bring up a text based tty, however what's stoping someone from writing a very tiny graphical/windowing environment that will only spawn a few shells (microwindows comes to mind for things like PDAs) and replacing the original call to start the GUI with a call to start this.  You should be able to do this in very little memory.  

The only problem I can see is that they changed the init environment to some proprietary binary format. Hopefully the GUI is at least are separate binaries and possibly replacing them with the microwindows binaries. This would get around the binary init (if it's binary). Would make it much more difficult. I wish I had one to play with.  I'm going to do some searching around for info on this (Darwin/OSX/init). I'm sure you've already done this though...

[ January 27, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[voidmain]

Gump, what do you get when you hold down "Cmd-v" on boot?  According to http://www.darwinfo.org/faq.shtml#verbboot you should get the text based initialization info during startup before the GUI starts. You can also add "-v" to the boot-args in the firmware. If you get text here then I would think you can get text by spawning a Mac compatible getty/login in place of the GUI.  Of course if it doesn't work how do you recover?  It also says you can boot into single user mode by holding down "Cmd-s" during boot.  Does this single user mode start the GUI?

[ January 27, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[gump420]

Well, I'll play around a bit and let you know; however, when Mac OS X boots it goes into a graphical mode before even loading the kernel. And I'm pretty certain Darwin has a different booting procedure than OS X.

Okay, I tried "Cmd-v" and that showed a few screens of text messages as the kernel loaded up and as other devices started; however, that may or may not mean I can get straight to a text login. It still depends on how the rest of the boot procedure works, which is something I still need to play around with.

[ January 28, 2002: Message edited by: gump420 ]

[CommonSense]

OK, let me clarify all this, since I'm on an OS X box right now.

Holding down command-V while you start up is "verbose mode," meaning you see text instead of the GUI -- but this is just during the bootup process.  When you get to the point of login, it snaps right back into the GUI again.

However, at the login prompt, you can enter ">console" (without the quotes) as the username and hit enter, and poof -- the GUI's killed and you're in text mode, with a login prompt (from which you log in normally), and there you go.  You're in text mode until you log out.

OS X isn't meant to be a server OS, although it can be used as one pretty effectively.  OS X Server is meant for that.  And on a fast enough box, the GUI isn't going to eat many cycles, especially while the console sits unattended (as is the case with the typical server machine).

[voidmain]

It won't take up many cycles as long as the screen saver isn't running (unless you just use a blank screen screen saver).  It does take up a certain amount of memory though even though memory is cheap these days.  Point is, you wouldn't run it on a server.  There's no reason you would need OSX server if all you want to do is run Apache, Sendmail, DNS, etc.. Just grab all the sources and install them, then you would have yourself an OSX internet server (or Darwin Internet server if you wish).

So it does indeed sound like it will run in text mode (if you wanted to).  And I'll bet you can very easily change the /etc/rc (or similar) to not even load OSX if you wanted.  That article I linked to mentioned how the "init" process works.

Having said that, it would be a waste of a good desktop machine.  It would be wiser to just get a cheap PC and run Linux or FreeBSD on it for that kind of stuff.

[ January 28, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]