With MacOSX coming on 3/24/2001, what compels iMacLinux readers/users to stay with Linux? OSX has Unix capabilities and better driver support. Basically what I'm asking is why anyone would use LinuxPPC with the same functionality and better UI in OSX? Do we just like Linux because it's cool? Post your views on the situation.

Here is an from osopinion. Jef Raskin (for those who don't know) is the man responsible for the first complete GUI brought to market.

This over at maccentral.com mentions that Apple are offering $30 off MacOS X for public beta users, this basically offsets the cost of the beta, which I think was $29.95 from the .

In celebration for the new Mac OS X, LinuxPPC.org is holding a for the best brief essays on why you use Linux on the PowerPC processor. More on the essay can be found in . Get writing, and good luck.

noted tonight on IRC that the hackers are working on hacking into Mac-on-Linux, and that there may be a release that can boot Mac OS X in the near future.

Macinstein has an about the economics of installing Mac OS X. If the base price of $130 isn't already out of your budget, the article points out that many users will need to upgrade to a G3 or G4 processor, and will need to add more RAM -- and their existing RAM in their G3 or G4 maybe rendered unusable by installing Mac OS X. PowerPC Linux, works on almost all 603 and above, and works great with only 32 MB of RAM (of course, the extra speed and RAM is well used in Linux too...) According to our survey, 1 out of 4 iMacLinux.net readers have hardware that can not be upgraded to use Mac OS X.

Mac OS X breaks down many barriers, one of them in tight intergration with every machine. No more system enablers, no more Finder, no more hardware specfic parts of the OS. The days of pretty crash dialogs are gone, as are the lack of cryptic looking files. It's Mac OS now, not Apple Macintosh System Software. looks at Mac OS's process of moving away from being tided to specfic hardware, using properiety non-cryptic looking configuration files to something more like Windows or Linux -- a pretty frontend, to a more technical backend.

The folks over at OSopinion ask and found an answer. Have a look at this over at OSopinion, and find out if MacOS X is really UNIX?

Apple today, that two months ahead of schedule, they will be shipping all new macs with Mac OS X (Mac OS 9 as default for now).

Not enough that a lot of Open Source developers (like TrollTech) have started to port their software to MacOSX, Apple gives the community a hand by porting popular software packages too.

The latest one seems to be mySQL, a popular database engine on Linux systems.

Get it at:

So let's wonder what's next...

Steve Jobs is giving his keynote at Mac Expo, which is being broadcast live on . So far, it looks like more Apple Stores are being opened and currently he handed things over to the developers of the top 10 MacOS X native applications. According to Jobs, 29% of developers surveyed plan to release MacOS X apps within the next month, and 55% within the next 4 months. Right now, Microsoft have the floor talking about the MacOS X native (and MacOS X only) release of Microsoft Office. Will bring you more as it happens..

There is an article on about the upcoming release of MacOS X 10.1. They discuss what it means for Apple and how it may clash with the launch of Windows XP.

Last week we mentioned that a MacOS X upgrade was in the pipeline. According to this upgrade is due out on Tuesday. The upgrade is free from Apple Stores and select Mac retailers, and costs $20 if you obtain it direct from Apple for "shipping costs".

Today announced that they have added to their compile farm. Sourceforge is a site run by that provides hosting and other free facilities to open source projects. Sourceforge already had a IBM RS/6000 system running Linux available on the compile farm. They added two Apple G4 systems both running MacOS X. You can read the or go straight to the .

reports that Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.1 for MacOS (the one thats shipped with MacOS X 10.1) has a major security problem. Apparently it will automatically execute any BinHex file that is downloaded. Read on for the report..

I found on slashdot, about a guy who has managed to emulate MacOS and WinXP under MacOS X. You can check the screenshot out .

Stephan Somogyi has now been using MacOS X for almost 4 weeks without using any other OS to support it. Was he able to do his daily work? Find out at the second part of his "".

Read also .

10.1.1 delivers improvements for many USB and FireWire devices, including support for additional digital cameras, and overall improvements to CD and DVD Burning.

The update also includes enhancements to AFP, SMB and WebDAV networking, updates to the Finder and Mail applications, as well as improved support for printing.

It is available through the Software Update Control Panel.

hello, I have XDarwin running under OS X. I downloaded Matlab for Linux on Mathworks website. I tried to install it by tarring the boot.ftp file. I obtain a install_matlab file but when I try to run it, I got an error message "command not found". Is it because the version if for Intel and not PPC? Lionel

This at written by Scot Hacker, author of the , is a look at MacOS X from the point of view of a BeOS user.

"Linux will continue as a solid player in the server space, but as a desktop OS it's days are numbered. ... Now that there is an OS that has a true UNIX core, an outstanding GUI and robust application support there is no going back. Any hope for Linux on the desktop is gone."

Charles W. Moore whether this applies and whether Linux still stands a chance in the GUI OS market... at least on the Mac...

I thought that this was worth a mention since it seems pretty cool, and Apple have a local store over in Kenwood here in Cincinnati. Your local Apple retail store is now offering "Apple Theater", workshops that offer presentations of all the latest products and solutions. Such as iPod, iPhoto, MacOS X and are geared to help teach people how to get the most out of their Mac. You can find the current schedule on Apple's site by clicking .

In preparation for our upcoming Beta2 release, we are bootstrapping the ports tree for Darwin-ppc and Mac OS X users, so that we now have over 2100 unique packages online, with over 2400 total. More to come! Check it out.

have a featured article about MacOS X Server. You can find the article on their site . The author didn't like the idea of moving over the mail system to MacOS X server, although if he didn't like Apple's software, he could have tried an open source solution. This is where MacOS X may actually benefit from having a BSD core, as its not too much effort to port over existing open source tools when commerical alternatives don't perform. MacOS X server still suffers from the same problem Windows server operating systems have, it still has the GUI eating resources, which you don't need if your administrator has a clue. If you can turn off the GUI in MacOS X server, please let us know.

have released . It is currently available only through the software update in MacOS X, requires that you are running 10.1.2, security update 10-19-01 and installer update 10.1. There is a over at if you want to get end user feedback before upgrading. The release notes can be found by clicking more below, or the MacOS X link above (requires a free account on apple.com).

The folks over at the Linux Journal have this up about MacOS X from a Penguin point of view. While MacOS X sure is pretty nice looking, it didn't really "blow my mind", its slow, ackward, and it'll take a lot more for me to give up my fast and functional Linux desktop. Article is well worth a read though.

Mosfet has released version 0.9.3 of his for KDE 3 on Linux. The Liquid theme makes KDE 3's interface look a lot like MacOS X without making your computer crawl if you don't have a Dual G4...

This release adds a new animated default window manager style, better pushbutton size handling, better stipple handling that fixes bugs on some X servers, lineedit, checkbox, and scrollbar improvements, mouse hover visibility improvements, an autoconf update, new notes for Mandrake and Red Hat, and SuSe packages.

Jason Walsh offers a perspective on when to use Linux on a Mac in this from 'Low End Mac'

" ... Many people are now booting up Linux as a second system on their Macs. Old Power Macs such as the 7200 make fine firewalls and small office servers, and if configured properly they can make great desktop machines. iMacs make great small and inexpensive Linux desktops, and if aesthetics are not a concern, you can add a second IDE hard drive quite easily, though it will hang out of the back of the machine. The G4 PowerBook is probably the best Linux capable laptop on the market ... "

Apple's quaint choice of a microkernel for Mac OS X means Linux will lead in performance on Mac hardware.

The Linux Journal has a rather technical comparing the Linux and OSX kernels on PPC hardware and trying to explain why we PPC Linux users enjoy a much faster system than our MacOS X friends.

Apple also unveiled a new release of MacOS X called Jaguar. You can find out more details . It looks like existing MacOS X users are going to have to fork over the full price of US$129.00 to upgrade, according to at Apple, there are no upgrade paths except for the $129.00 upgrade.