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Minghold

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 21, 2022
453
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(TL;dr version)

Preface: this post is drenched in sarcasm, because it's directed at those who have it coming. And who are these people? --Answer: anyone and everyone who's ever claimed that any version of Linux is "ready" to replace the MacOS on a Mac (or indeed any OEM OS on any PC). Especially if it came out of the mouth of a distro developer themselves.

A brief, itemized list of aggravated nonsense (this is from a Mac POV, but applies just as easily to Windows machines with a few word-substitutions):

1) The installers.

Stupid ISOs from the CD-rom era that require third-party app flashing to a USB boot device (seeing as most machines don't have an optical-drive anymore). What is it with this garbage? Have any of you paid any attention to MacOS installers or the Disk Utility at all over the last quarter-century? Hey, here's a novel idea: write a launch-file that users can just run! And it'll create a partition, and install into that right on the spot! (Or automatically go through the process of creating a temporary EFI booter that'll do so upon restart, if reasons (see next three below.) --Wouldn't it just be utterly fantastic if we had something like that? Why yes, it would be just lovely. Why aren't you making them that way? Why isn't it literally the first thing that you do? It's as if you're designing a new engine with no thought given as to how your user will manage to put it in their car.

2) SIPiddy-doodah, SIPiddy-day

You must know that most older Macs (of the sort that people are contemplating putting your distro on) have this little "feature" called System Integrity Protection, right? (The more recent ones have Secure Boot, which does the same thing.) --Does your chimp-written installer know how to account for it, or will it breezily plod along until it freezes or crashes without explanation? (Looking at you, Elementary OS, you bloody great heaping waste of time that I'll never get back.) You probably also don't know that Macs have this feature called "zapping PRAM", and if you do it twice in a row, amongst myriad other default-resetting, SIP is re-enabled, and if the particular vintage of machine does not have the Command-R phone-the-Apple-mothership procedure implemented, it's going to be pretty damned difficult to disable SIP again without a Recovery Partition whose Terminal app has the permissions to successfully "csrutil disable".

3) You don't get partitions, those are for closers

The Mac Disk Utility easily creates drive partitions, into which the MacOS can be installed. The installer will even list the partitions for you. It's been, what, fifteen-twenty years it could do that? Longer even? --Why doesn't your distro's installer either create or ask of partitions, let alone install into them? ...because you don't care enough, that's why. You're perfectly comfortable with "Evil Big Tech" squatting over virtually all consumer hardware instead of takin' the fight to the man.

3) Your AWOL Bootloader

Maybe 4% of Mac owners (who have a leg up on the 3% of Windows users aware of BIOS boot keys) know that if they hold down the Option key at startup, they're given a choice of bootable volumes (one of which could be your crappy-on-its-face Linux distro's ugly generic EFI load icon, because you didn't care enough to paint the thing). It's as if you're advertising a new car in the 2020s that requires its users to set the choke and check the floatbowl like a 1940s tractor. Unless it's the only vehicle in the barn because it ate the other, in which case it'll start right up. --Would it absolutely kill you not to be so lame?

4) Pull your head out of your Broadcom

There's only millions of used Macs out there made between whenever and whenever that have Broadcom network adapters. Do you think their users give a damn if the drivers are proprietary? --What they will give a damn about is your Linux distro being absolutely useless without working wifi (and most Mac laptops and many PCs haven't had optical-drives or Ethernet ports for a decade, so be prepared for byzantine bluetooth phone-tethering tricks attempting to smuggle drivers onto them). WiFi should have a visible icon on a taskbar by default, whether connected or not. There must be a dozen distros out there whose devs obviously spent countless hours lovingly crafting superb desktop environments mimicking the look-and-feel of the MacOS (staring at you, my lovely Pop! OS, so dolled-up but dysfunctional out-of-box) ...which are nevertheless useless on a Mac because they spent zero hours rounding up the bloody drivers.

5) Could I please put my favorite crap on the desktop?

Do you know what the heart & soul of a GUI operating-system is? The ability to plaster application and document icons and alias shortcuts all over our desktops and make snow-angels in them to our heart's content. And click them over and over in a dopamine rush. (The look & feel of MacOS Lion is the goal here.) --If your sterile GUI Linux distro doesn't even have a desktop environment and thinks it's just going to run as a pile of tiled windows, please slouch away, as there may be children present. (Suffice also to say that your distro ought find and auto-mount (as icons) attached storage devices regardless of format type (HFS+, APFS, NTFS, ExFAT, etc) so the user can access his files.

6) Effing Firefox as default

You obviously haven't received the memo detailing that Mozilla isn't a nice company anymore, and heading downhill fast into full enshattification. (Yeah, it's still better than Safari, but that's damning-with-faint-praise.) If they're not as bad as Microsoft or Apple yet, it's only because they're not as big yet. At least consider Waterfox (for up-to-current Firefox forks) or Basilisk or Chromium-legacy (up-to-current chrome fork) or something else without an S&P500 ticker-symbol. --And would it kill your lazy asses to equip your default browser with uBlock Origin, FB Purity, and Adblocker Ultimate already up and running? I mean, if you really intend to stick it to the man by throwing a sledge in his face, show me that you mean it.

7) Forking the MacOS

Just imagine how popular your distro would *instantly* become for millions of suffering Mac users if it actually ran MacOS apps as well as Linux apps? And I mean all of them, from the 9" B&W era up to silicon, by removing all the restrictions Apple wrote into the code (or maliciously removed from the code qua artificial-obsolescence). --The one thing every Mac user would love is to never again have to see the slashed-circle "No!" icon over their favorite app after Apple scared them into updating the OS. (Reduce your dev team's work-load by removing all of Apple's telemetry-bloat, starting with Spotlight Indexing and MRT, and proceeding from there.)

And then envision your distro running on any platform, not just Mac, and that it also ran Windows apps too. (This is how you stick it to the man at both Apple and Microsoft.)

And make your logo six-colors, to really rub it in how much better you're going to be than these soulless data-harvesting, wallet-hoovering abominations.
 
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NEPOBABY

Suspended
Jan 10, 2023
697
1,687
GNUStep is designed to address the thing you say. It’s a reverse engineering of NeXTStep. It can also run on Linux with GNUStep Desktop.

So if you’re good at coding apps and can design UI, go for it. The frameworks and all exist.

The issue is designing really strong apps with great UIs is not the open source community’s forte. Blender is only good because it gets lots of donations including from corporations. If you want good UI designers they need to be paid.
 

Minghold

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 21, 2022
453
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The issue is designing really strong apps...
*Wrong*. --That's putting the cart before the horse. The "issue" is that the various Linux operating systems themselves still range from impractical to impossible for the average user to install on any platform, let alone glean the first ounce of utility from -- and so those distros are consequently never installed in the first place. Apps? Nobody is going to pay for good players on a team that doesn't even hit the field. So get your team on the field *first*, and the rest will resolve itself.

Apple had made it pretty clear what they were up to by 2018, and here we are over half a decade later with bupkiss to show for it from Linux.
 
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Yael-S.

macrumors member
Nov 1, 2022
70
82
Can you run windows 10/11 and macOS Sonoma on a 32-bit computer with an Atom N450, 1GB RAM and HDD?
Will it perform acceptably?

packard bell - dot s (Atom N450, 1GB RAM, HDD) and Simply Linux
L1Oxrgg.png


Do Windows and macOS have as good security as OpenBSD and NetBSD?

Do macOS and Windows have file systems as fast/feature-rich as BSD and Linux?

Does windows or macOS have any alternative to the concept of GNU Guix?

What is the performance of Python (the most popular programming language) on Windows and macOS?

How many window managers / desktop environments do macOS and windows have?

Firefox is a better default browser than Chrome and Safari.

Setting up Linux via USB is really a one-time thing that is also super simple and takes little time.

Linux supports many times more hardware than Windows and macOS, I hope you realize that, right?

Linux has been very good on the desktop for years.

It's just that it usually doesn't come pre-installed on computers in stores, which is really the only real reason why it's not popular on PC/notebook.

(Linux is the leader on smartphone/supercomputers/IoT/TV/most hardware devices/Chromebooks/infotainment in cars/etc)
 

Yael-S.

macrumors member
Nov 1, 2022
70
82
Let's analyze which things defined macOS a thousand times more than Steve Jobs?

Dennis Ritchie: The Shoulders Steve Jobs Stood On

The firewall code in Apple's macOS is based on OpenBSD's PF firewall code.

Much of FreeBSD's codebase has become an integral part of other operating systems such as Darwin (the basis for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS)

Both Chrome and Safari were based on WebKit which itself started as a fork of KDE's KHTML and KJS libraries.
KHTML is a layout engine and KJS is a JavaScript developed by the (free) KDE open-source (Linux) project.

xhyve is the lightweight virtualization solution for OS X that is capable of running Linux and it is a port of FreeBSD's bhyve.

CUPS was initially called "The Common UNIX Printing System". This name was shortened to just "CUPS" beginning with CUPS 1.4 due to legal concerns with the UNIX trademark. CUPS was quickly adopted as the default printing system for most Linux distributions. In March 2002, Apple Inc. adopted CUPS as the printing system for Mac OS X 10.2.

The TrustedBSD MAC Framework has been adopted by Apple for macOS.

Darwin, the core of Apple's macOS, includes a virtual file system and network stack derived from those of FreeBSD, and components of its userspace are also FreeBSD-derived.

Study shows open-source code more bug-free than proprietary

Is macOS open-source? Can macOS say it has fewer bugs and higher quality?

The reality is that macOS users put down a lot of money for less quality/security/stability.
And for the high price they give to Apple products, they get in return that their privacy is much more strongly abused.
 

RandomDSdevel

macrumors regular
Jul 23, 2009
153
76
Kokomo, IN
1) The installers.

Stupid ISOs from the CD-rom era that require third-party app flashing to a USB boot device (seeing as most machines don't have an optical-drive anymore). What is it with this garbage? Have any of you paid any attention to MacOS installers or the Disk Utility at all over the last quarter-century? Hey, here's a novel idea: write a launch-file that users can just run! And it'll create a partition, and install into that right on the spot! (Or automatically go through the process of creating a temporary EFI booter that'll do so upon restart, if reasons (see next three below.) --Wouldn't it just be utterly fantastic if we had something like that? Why yes, it would be just lovely. Why aren't you making them that way? Why isn't it literally the first thing that you do? It's as if your designing a new engine with no thought given as to how your user will manage to put it in their car.
-----Having a separate bootable installer is still very useful, no matter the format of the media it's on (CD/DVD or USB flash drive or external drive.) If you're installing a new version of macOS on multiple machines and aren't in an environment where MDM is set up is easy to set up (like in a home network,) then it's easier to run 'createinstallmedia' to bootstrap some USB storage with the installer and use that.

4) Pull your head out of your Broadcom

There's only tens of thousands of used Macs out there made between whenever and whenever that have Broadcom network adapters. Do you think their users give a damn if the drivers are proprietary? --What they will give a damn about is your Linux distro being absolutely useless without working wifi (and most Mac laptops and many PCs haven't had optical-drives or Ethernet ports for a decade, so be prepared for byzantine bluetooth phone-tethering tricks attempting to smuggle drivers onto them). There must be a dozen distros out there whose devs obviously spent countless hours lovingly crafting superb desktop environments mimicing the look-and-feel of the MacOS (staring at you, my lovely Pop!OS, so dolled-up but dysfunctional out-of-box) ...which are nevertheless useless on a Mac because they spent zero hours rounding up the bloody drivers.
-----Linux drivers for Broadcom Wi-Fi/Bluetooth cards exist:


There's also:


for Hackintoshes.

7) Forking the MacOS

Just imagine how popular your distro would *instantly* become for millions of suffering Mac users if actually ran MacOS apps as well as Linux apps? …
-----Please contribute to airyxOSravynOS (main GitHub repository; Discord server linked to from there) alpha development as a coder or early tester. Preview release v0.5.0 'Sneaky Snek' came out late last month.

(Also, as an aside while I'm here, PureDarwin — main GitHub repository, Discord server linked to near the bottom of the home page — could also continue to use some more love.)

…And I mean all of them, from the 9" B&W era…
-----Potential licensing issues depending on the host OS aside — stares at the GPL —, this one's easier; SheepShaver (and Basilisk II) is(/are) a thing.

…up to silicon, …
  • Apple silicon chips have some non-standard extensions to AArch64 that'd have to get patched out or emulated.
  • What's the state of Intel emulation of ARM(64) code again?

…by removing all the restrictions Apple wrote into the code (or maliciously removed from the code qua artificial-obsolescence). --The one thing every Mac user would love is to never again have to see the slashed-circle "No!" icon over their favorite app after Apple scared them into updating the OS. …
-----Nobody's done any work on trying to pick work on a 64-bit version of the Carbon APIs back up from where Apple left off so far, at least as far as I'm aware. I don't think there's an open-source reimplementation of 32-bit Carbon, either? (If you want to go back that far, anyway.) 32-bit (Cocoa/AppKit) app support depends on whether the host OS still supports that for non-Mac executables.

…(Reduce your dev team's work-load by…
-----…Whether that decreases the development work needed or increases it depends on how what's included in any open-source Apple code used and how much of the below it includes in it. If it's there and hard to strip out, then that's more work, not less, sorry. (Though I might be surprised if such code's in the open-source code releases?)

…removing all of Apple's telemetry-bloat, …
-----Apple's telemetry scoping is far better than how Microsoft's has often gotten described and reported on publicly. I'm just fine with sending minimal usage statistics and diagnostics to an OS developer, personally. (If you aren't, then that's just a simple toggle away, usually.)

…starting with Spotlight Indexing…
-----…Since when has Spotlight indexing sent any telemetry to Apple? All it goes to the Internet for should be Web search result suggestions and previews.

…and MRT, and proceeding from there.)
-----If I'm understanding this correctly, than the Malware Removal Tool was superseded by XProtect ages ago. Also, having an anti-malware mechanism built in to the OS is nice to have.

-----Application support for GNUstep requires explicit consideration in code, as well as recompilation.
 

startergo

macrumors 603
Sep 20, 2018
5,019
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Endeavour os is an Arch Linux distribution and its T2 fork runs flawlessly on T2 Mac’s. It boots in less than 10 seconds and has all the drivers even fan control.
 
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Minghold

macrumors 6502
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Oct 21, 2022
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You're all missing the point, which I will reprise: "...The "issue" is that the various Linux operating systems themselves still range from impractical to impossible for the average user to install on any platform, let alone glean the first ounce of utility from -- and so those distros are consequently never installed in the first place...."

Sure: *We* are all very smart people here, with lists of Terminal hacks*, squirreled-away links to obscure driver repositories, and wot not that the average student will not be, nor have time for. Those persons, barely out of the egg, are utterly incapable of installing let alone using any current Linux distro on an old machine let alone a newer one encrusted with multiple layers of security crud. They'll only have a shot at installing something useful and pretty (like Pop! OS) on their old macbook if the distro's developers release an installer that doesn't blow dead dogs. ISOs simply don't cut it.

(*Beagle Bros. Peeks and Pokes chart for you grizzled grognards in the group.)
 
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Unhyper

macrumors regular
Apr 7, 2010
168
13
Finland
I haven't come across a distro that supported the internal audio on my 2017 iMac. Hardware still too new I suppose.
 
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Minghold

macrumors 6502
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Oct 21, 2022
453
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Minghold said:
7) Forking the MacOS
-----Please contribute to airyxOSravynOS (main GitHub repository; Discord server linked to from there) alpha development as a coder or early tester. Preview release v0.5.0 'Sneaky Snek' came out late last month.
Now this is very interesting: We're inching closer and closer to the Holy Grail of being able to run all old applications (from the Apple ][ to present Mac, and DOS forward through Windows) under the same hood.
Potential licensing issues depending on the host OS aside — stares at the GPL —, this one's easier; SheepShaver (and Basilisk II) is(/are) a thing.
Licensing is a problem only for those distros produced by entities hoping to rent-seek a profit. Otherwise, it'd essentially be the OS equivalent of launching DVD Decrypter on bittorrent while megacorps fume impotently at not collecting a cut.
  • Apple silicon chips have some non-standard extensions to AArch64 that'd have to get patched out or emulated.
  • What's the state of Intel emulation of ARM(64) code again?
Couldn't tell ya. (Someone tell me.) After the completely unnecessary (in a technological or logistical sense) murder of both 32bit apps and HFS+ partitioning with Catalina in 2019, I've written off Apple and largely stopped following silicon developments. Their OS is no longer a productive tool in and of itself*, and they've come fully into the open as a deliberate destroyer of the past in order to more efficiently parasitize everything that their customers must now replace if they intend to stay aboard the ship.

(*The purpose of GUI OS is to facilitate productivity using an input-based device, such as a mouse, to organize information. Yet Apple has been consistently thwarting this for the better part of fifteen years now: removal of the main drive's icon from the desktop by default, removing default scrollbars from windows, the de rigueur insistence upon a useless single-button mouse, introduction of a propaganda dissemination-point i.e. the "News" app that cannot be uninstalled in a grotesque parody of Stalin's proverbial radios, and the escallating outright hostility toward the user having any self-control over portabilizing their OS environment via USB sneakernet eschewing a spook-infested "cloud" -- this used to be an operating-system that could be cloned just by drag-copying a hard-drive icon, then double-clicking the system folder to "bless" it!)
-----Nobody's done any work on trying to pick work on a 64-bit version of the Carbon APIs back up from where Apple left off so far, at least as far as I'm aware. I don't think there's an open-source reimplementation of 32-bit Carbon, either? (If you want to go back that far, anyway.) 32-bit (Cocoa/AppKit) app support depends on whether the host OS still supports that for non-Mac executables.

-----…Whether that decreases the development work needed or increases it depends on how what's included in any open-source Apple code used and how much of the below it includes in it. If it's there and hard to strip out, then that's more work, not less, sorry. (Though I might be surprised if such code's in the open-source code releases?)
It occurs to me that virtualization might be the more expedient avenue, as it affords the prospect of running a MacOS stock inside a Parallels-like shell. (Then the OS itself can be picked apart later for further refinement and bloat removal.)
-----If I'm understanding this correctly, than the Malware Removal Tool was superseded by XProtect ages ago. Also, having an anti-malware mechanism built in to the OS is nice to have.
As far as I am concerned, the biggest piece of malware in any commercial OS is its own ostensible malware-removal package. In my experience, their primary aim is to thwart piracy of accredited business-partner products, while removing garbage infesting ecosystem apps is left in the backseat. E.g., it would cry bloody murder over every serial patch-utility, but let ransomware run roughshod over Safari and Mail. (In fact, not dealing with its ecosystem after a three-year rollover cycle is Apple's new marketing strategy prompting users to dump their old "non-secure" Macs in a heedless race to remain "current". It's a twisted joke now, and why I tell everyone to not use ecosystem apps, whether iWidget or Microsoft.)
 
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RandomDSdevel

macrumors regular
Jul 23, 2009
153
76
Kokomo, IN
-----Potential licensing issues depending on the host OS aside — stares at the GPL —, this one's easier; SheepShaver (and Basilisk II) is(/are) a thing.
Licensing is a problem only for those distros produced by entities hoping to rent-seek a profit. Otherwise, it'd essentially be the OS equivalent of launching DVD Decrypter on bittorrent while megacorps fume impotently at not collecting a cut.
-----I was only referring to BSD distributions' (and Apple's) complete avoidance of software licensed under the GPLv3 here. Some subsets of one or more of the various BSD distributions' communities do also avoid the GPL entirely.

After the completely unnecessary (in a technological or logistical sense) murder of…HFS+ partitioning with Catalina in 2019, …
-----Wait, hold up, I don't remember hearing about that or it being a problem. If so, then that's…awkward, at best, and that's putting it charitably. What's broken, exactly? (At least one source would be helpful.) Is it maybe just in the GUI in Disk Utility*, and you can still drop down into Terminal and use 'diskutil' for this?

(* Speaking of Disk Utility, I'm still at least mildly salty about how they nerfed it some at some point between Lion and El Capitan.)

Their OS is no longer a productive tool in and of itself*, …
(*The purpose of GUI OS is to facilitate productivity using an input-based device, such as a mouse, to organize information. Yet Apple has been consistently thwarting this…
-----(Hidden behind in-line spoiler tagging since it's an old, inactive thread:) That the 'Why is Big Sur so ugly?' thread sprawled to 66 pages is a good amount of evidence in favor of this.

…for the better part of fifteen years now: …
-----This is exaggerating some, perhaps, but I suppose that may also depend on what changes have earned displeasure.

…removal of the main drive's icon from the desktop by default, …
-----Changing that back has always been an easy fix. That said fix has to get re-applied for every new user is still mildly annoying, though. It may be possible to apply preferences to new user accounts automatically using either some kind of first-time log-in script or a non-default user template, but I've never seriously looked into this.

…removing default scrollbars from windows, …
  • There's a 'Show scroll bars' preference that can be set to 'Always,' the default of 'Automatically' (when a mouse is connected instead of a trackpad,) or 'Never.' (Scrolling always brings the scroll indicator up regardless of this preference, of course, and the full scroll can be accessed when the scroll indicator is visible by hovering over it, and also by clicking and dragging it. The removal of the scroll directional buttons was an accessibility disservice, though; I'm unaware if there's a preference to bring those back.)
  • As mentioned, by default, connecting a mouse instead of a trackpad makes macOS show window scroll indicators/bars at all times.
  • I agree that that the scroll indicators's tendency to 'be shy' and hide can make it uncertain and/or ambiguous whether there's more content to see in certain sections of macOS and application UI, especially in sidebars. One often just has to experiment to find that out.

…the de rigueur insistence upon a useless single-button mouse, …
  • Macs have had a secondary mouse button that you can enable since the Mighty Mouse in 2005, though, yes, it hid in plain sight unless you were aware of it.
  • All multitouch Apple trackpads support the two-finger click 'gesture' for performing secondary ('right') mouse clicks.
    • The Magic Mouse also supports this gesture. It may also allow assignment of one side of the mouse for use as a secondary mouse button, similarly to the Mighty Mouse, but I can't remember for sure; I've never used a Magic Mouse, at least not often or for long.

…introduction of a propaganda dissemination-point i.e. the "News" app that cannot be uninstalled in a grotesque parody of Stalin's proverbial radios, …
-----You never have to open it or keep it on your Dock if you don't want to use it.

…and the escallating outright hostility toward the user having any self-control over portabilizing their OS environment via USB sneakernet eschewing a spook-infested "cloud" -- this used to be an operating-system that could be cloned just by drag-copying a hard-drive icon, then double-clicking the system folder to "bless" it!)
  • Show me at least one example of any time when the ability to create a macOS installation on external hard drive has been broken or made difficult on purpose. (Aside from early installment weirdness on Apple silicon Macs, I mean.) You may be hard-pressed to find such an example.
  • Network user accounts have been buggy since their introduction in Leopard, though, I'll give you that.
  • Could you perhaps be a bit more specific about what you mean by 'portabilizing their OS environment' ('sic,') please?
  • Yes, the default OS preferences for Apple's Web services over the year — both MobileMe and iCloud, at least — aren't ideal in some cases. This has been known for years.
  • Copying an OS installation and other partition or hard drive contents using anything other than:
    • a full-disk copying/cloning tool or
    • the combination of a full clean macOS install and either:
      • Migration Assistant or
      • restoring from a Time Machine backup
    has always been, to borrow a piece of terminology from ISO programming language standards and standardization, undefined behavior.
  • Portability of OS installations and self-hosting of files and other assets accessible over the Internet are orthogonal concerns.

…and they've come fully into the open as a deliberate destroyer of the past in order to more efficiently parasitize everything that their customers must now replace if they intend to stay aboard the ship.
(In fact, not dealing with its ecosystem after a three-year rollover cycle is Apple's new marketing strategy prompting users to dump their old "non-secure" Macs in a heedless race to remain "current". It's a twisted joke now, …
-----Three years of usability is indeed too little time.

-----On the other hand, no hardware can be supported forever/indefinitely, even with community support. (It'd be nice if Apple was friendlier towards community support, especially with the impending future loss of support for Intel Macs, official or otherwise, but I won't hold my breath on that, as it's sadly unlikely.)

As far as I am concerned, the biggest piece of malware in any commercial OS is its own ostensible malware-removal package. …
.

..



…👀 What.

-----…OK, then?

…In my experience, their primary aim is to thwart piracy of accredited business-partner products, …
-----Built-in OS anti-malware tools (mostly) aren't anti-piracy tools. Each application or application suite is left to its own devices on that front, mostly.

…while removing garbage infesting ecosystem apps is left in the backseat. …
-----OS and app bloat is one or more orthogonal concerns.

…E.g., it would cry bloody murder over every serial patch-utility, …
  • Malicious or unexpected modification of installed applications' files by non-user processes or activity and
  • any unauthorized user modification of installed applications' core files in a way that's easy to detect
are things I would expect an OS's built-in anti-malware tooling to catch. Whether such modifications happened because of malware or deliberate user action can be difficult to determine.

…but let ransomware run roughshod over Safari and Mail.
-----Built-in anti-phishing tooling on Apple platforms is still somewhat primitive, at least as far as I'm aware. There's only junk mail filtering.

-----Perhaps any further discussion of the usability of macOS, the Apple ecosystem, and Apple hardware should get split out into one or more separate new threads? I'd be surprised if a good number of the relevant discussion points haven't been covered here on the forums in one or more places already, though, so maybe there isn't much point in belaboring the point much further or any further.
 

Minghold

macrumors 6502
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Oct 21, 2022
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minghold said:
After the completely unnecessary (in a technological or logistical sense) murder of…HFS+ partitioning with Catalina in 2019, …
-----Wait, hold up, I don't remember hearing about that or it being a problem.
In High Sierra, HFS+ was the default boot-drive file-system and APFS was optional. In Mojave, APFS was default, while HFS+ was still supported (the user had to clone his installation into an HFS+ partition to take advantage of it). In Catalina, APFS was default, and the OS would no longer operate from HFS+. This had HUGE ramifications for existing hardware, as Apple's security panic-theater had kept everyone upgrating their OSes to the latest that their machines would officially support, while at the same time Apple began removing the older OSes from the AppStore.

There may be some nice features about APFS, but Apple's implementation of it is horrifically slow (deliberately) and caused excessive drive-lifespan wear on intel-chip Macs, and Catalina was supported on iMacs, Minis, and MacBooks from 2012 onward. So those machines slowed to a crawl and users threw them out or sold them for peanuts. (People are amazed how much faster their machine I service runs when I blitz a Catalina installation for a Mojave/HFS+ one. "Oh, by the way; all your great 32bit software ike FCP7, CS6, and Angry Birds Seasons will work again!")

(At least one source would be helpful.)
I provide sources if convenient to me at the time, but almost never upon request. I expect the reader to do his own research after being provided adequate search-terms.
Is it maybe just in the GUI in Disk Utility*, and you can still drop down into Terminal and use 'diskutil' for this?

(* Speaking of Disk Utility, I'm still at least mildly salty about how they nerfed it some at some point between Lion and El Capitan.)
Apple had been letting rsync (of which Disk Utility is a shell) stagnate for over a decade.
All multitouch Apple trackpads support the two-finger click 'gesture' for performing secondary ('right') mouse clicks.
  • The Magic Mouse also supports this gesture.
They're overpriced chunks of crap that don't have a wheel or a physical second button. I can buy ten wireless sets for the price of one useless MM, and start doing work right away with cross-platform apps that expect those features on input devices
Could you perhaps be a bit more specific about what you mean by 'portabilizing their OS environment' ('sic,') please?
A portable external boot-drive clone, i.e., of the sort Mac owners used to easily create with CCC prior to Catalina.
On the other hand, no hardware can be supported forever/indefinitely, even with community support.
There are more '33/'34 Ford coupes on the road today than Henry Ford ever sold. How so? You can buy them as kits. You see dozens at every classic car parade.
 
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RandomDSdevel

macrumors regular
Jul 23, 2009
153
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Kokomo, IN
After the completely unnecessary (in a technological or logistical sense) murder of both 32bit apps and HFS+ partitioning with Catalina in 2019, …
-----Wait, hold up, I don't remember hearing about that or it being a problem. …
In High Sierra, HFS+ was the default boot-drive file-system and APFS was optional. In Mojave, APFS was default, while HFS+ was still supported (the user had to clone his installation into an HFS+ partition to take advantage of it). In Catalina, APFS was default, and the OS would no longer operate from HFS+. This had HUGE ramifications for existing hardware, as Apple's security panic-theater had kept everyone upgrating their OSes to the latest that their machines would officially support, …

There may be some nice features about APFS, but Apple's implementation of it is horrifically slow (deliberately) and caused excessive drive-lifespan wear on intel-chip Macs, and Catalina was supported on iMacs, Minis, and MacBooks from 2012 onward. So those machines slowed to a crawl and threw them out or sold them for peanuts.
-----…I don't blame Apple for wanting to move OS installations off of a filesystem that was a 19-year-old file system then and is a 26-year-old one now. It's a shame that APFS is optimized only for SSDs and not for 'spinning rust' hard drives, yes, but there's nothing to be done about that.
-----I thought you were potentially saying that something about creating even non-bootable HFS+ drives and partitions got broken for some period of time, but that can't be right. You can still create non-bootable HFS+ drives and partitions from newer versions of macOS, and older versions of macOS/(Mac) OS X can still change them to be bootable.

…while at the same time Apple began removing the older OSes from the AppStore.
-----Older (Mac) OS X/macOS releases' App Store pages are hidden for new users, but you can still view them, or at least download the installers that were on those pages, through the App Store if you've installed one of those older OS versions before while those pages were still up. The underlying download links are still live, too. (See the relevant page on Mr. Macintosh's blog, the 'Where to get older versions of macOS' section of this MacWorld article, or the 'Use a web browser for older versions' section of this official Apple documentation.)

Apple had been letting rsync (of which Disk Utility is a shell) stagnate for over a decade.
-----No, Disk Utility is a GUI for the command-line 'diskutil' and 'hdiutil' programs. 'rsync' is indeed one of the tools that Apple hasn't been updating. The reason? Per the linked blog post, it's the GPLv3 again.

They're overpriced chunks of crap that don't have a wheel or a physical second button. I can buy ten wireless sets for the price of one useless MM, and start doing work right away with cross-platform apps that expect those features on input devices
  • The two-finger scrolling gesture exists.
  • If you prefer physical mechanisms with proper physical, unemulated haptic feedback, then fair enough.

A portable external boot-drive clone, i.e., of the sort Mac owners used to easily create with CCC prior to Catalina.
-----OK, that's what I thought you meant.
 

Minghold

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-----…I don't blame Apple for wanting to move OS installations off of a filesystem that was a 19-year-old file system then and is a 26-year-old one now. It's a shame that APFS is optimized only for SSDs and not for 'spinning rust' hard drives, yes, but there's nothing to be done about that.
There's nothing wrong with an old file-system if it works. (Note that Microsoft hasn't abandoned NTFS.) Your average "spinning rust" drive also has astonishing longevity; unless there's a manufacturing default such a bad bearing lubricant or it is subjected to user abuse, it'll outlast most SSDs, which have a finite lifespan based on write-cycles (this is why I disable Spotlight indexing).

The real reason for APFS was compartmentalization: shunting all the user's changes into a separate data partition, securitizing the crap out of it all (and selling that as a feature), and making it nigh impossible for the user to make a bootable backup.
-----Older (Mac) OS X/macOS releases' App Store pages are hidden for new users, but you can still view them, or at least download the installers that were on those pages, through the App Store if you've installed one of those older OS versions before while those pages were still up. The underlying download links are still live, too. (See the relevant page on Mr. Macintosh's blog, the 'Where to get older versions of macOS' section of this MacWorld article, or the 'Use a web browser for older versions' section of this official Apple documentation.)
Already ahead of you. (Been using Mr. M's High Sierra and Mojave installers for years.) The problem with Apple sourcing is that they require you to be logged into an Apple ID now, and they can explode brown.

Of course their real problem is that various Linux developments are very close to pulling off the Holy Trifecta of running Windows, Linux, and Mac software either natively or hypervirt all under the same hood, after which Microsoft and Apple get a stickpin jammed into their bloated NASDAQ valuations.
 
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mattspace

macrumors 68040
Jun 5, 2013
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Australia
It occurs to me that virtualization might be the more expedient avenue, as it affords the prospect of running a MacOS stock inside a Parallels-like shell. (Then the OS itself can be picked apart later for further refinement and bloat removal.)

A real issue for virtualising at the moment (cause I've been doing this for a couple of weeks as my main work process) is virtualised macOS not having easy / any support for multiple displays. Trying to run InDesign on a single screen, when you built a triple screen workstation setup for all the palettes is frustrating as hell - BUT these are the sorts of issues you come into when you're working on archiving & historical preservation of digital formatted documents (and can't get people to understand that the version of the app a document is created in is part of its historical value).

There's a 'Show scroll bars' preference that can be set to 'Always,' the default of 'Automatically' (when a mouse is connected instead of a trackpad,) or 'Never.' (Scrolling always brings the scroll indicator up regardless of this preference, of course, and the full scroll can be accessed when the scroll indicator is visible by hovering over it, and also by clicking and dragging it. The removal of the scroll directional buttons was an accessibility disservice, though; I'm unaware if there's a preference to bring those back.)

Unfortunately, Apple (and other developers) will design UI without testing if it alters the available space within the UI for content, leading to hilarious interactions with the "always show scroll bars" setting - eg this example eBook developers could see in iBooks:

scroll_always_bug.png


Scroll always reduces the width of the menu palette, causing the content to break to below the bottom edge of the palette's visible region (and therefore not require the actual scrollbars to show up).

Network user accounts have been buggy since their introduction in Leopard, though, I'll give you that.
Pretty sure I have a memory of them being part of the featureset we were trained in when I was doing my Apple OS X Server Admin certification back in the Tiger days.
 

Minghold

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Oct 21, 2022
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Unfortunately, Apple (and other developers) will design UI without testing if it alters the available space within the UI for content, leading to hilarious interactions with the "always show scroll bars" setting - eg this example eBook developers could see in iBooks:

View attachment 2393659

Scroll always reduces the width of the menu palette, causing the content to break to below the bottom edge of the palette's visible region (and therefore not require the actual scrollbars to show up).
This is a perfect example of enshattification-in-action: 1) Apple removes a previously ubiquitous feature (window scrollbars being default) for reasons, which results in 2) the entire desktop playground becoming less functional for most users (e.g., the newbs, who come in without memories), including 3) those who go on to write apps that break when others turn the 'off' feature back 'on'. Eventually 4) Apple joins Google/Android and Windows/Metro in doing away with any semblance of a productive desktop whatsoever (and various and sundry defenders will weigh in that it was "necessary" due to escalating code headaches, "fresh starts" are needed, etc), and "your" computer is fully transformed into an order-kiosk pouring drinks from their "Stores". Enshattification at that point is total.

FWFestCenter-0231.jpg
 
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DaveFromCampbelltown

macrumors 68000
Jun 24, 2020
1,779
2,874
I'm not too sure why people think installing Linux is so hard, especially with devices like the Raspberry Pi.

I use my (RPi | Mac | Windows PC | Linux PC) to download Ubuntu Budgie (as an example) to a drive (microSD Card, SSD, HDD, rewriteable Paper Tape, whatever...) boot it, and within minutes I have a working copy of Ubuntu running. I can then choose what sort of UI I want (Windows, Classic Budgie, MacOS, etc) and then use some of the most robust software around (LibreOffice, GIMP, Zettlr, etc, etc, etc) to create stuff.

If I am not happy with the Budgie Desktop, it is simple to install Mate, Cinnamon, KDE, which ever floats my boat.

None of the above needs to involve typing commands, it can all be done via the GUI.

If I want to install Linux to a PC, I need to download an image, burn it to an installer drive, boot it and install to another drive.
If I want to install Windows, I need to download an image, burn it to an installer drive, boot it and install to another drive.
If I want to install MacOS, I need to download an image, then, depending on the version of the OS, burn it to an installer drive, boot it and install to another drive.* The one exception is if I want to trash my whole internal drive. I can boot to recovery mode, download the latest MacOS version and install it automatically. But that doesn't work if I want an earlier version, or if I want to put it to another drive, or if I have older hardware.


* Downloading an installer app and installing directly to another drive only works if you are working with the same version of Mac OS.
 

Minghold

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 21, 2022
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I'm not too sure why people think installing Linux is so hard, especially with devices like the Raspberry Pi.
1. The title of this thread is "Why no Linux distro is ready for prime-time on a Mac".
2. Read my first follow-up post in the thread.

--What very precocious people like you and me consider not-so-hard is beside the point. Linux will not be "ready for prime time" (i.e., easily adaptable by a broad mass of users who have no time or patience for anything that isn't click-and-go out-of-box) on a Mac until the list of items in the OP is dealt with.
If I want to install Linux to a PC, I need to download an image, burn it to an installer drive, boot it and install to another drive.
If I want to install Windows, I need to download an image, burn it to an installer drive, boot it and install to another drive.
If I want to install MacOS, I need to download an image, then, depending on the version of the OS, burn it to an installer drive, boot it and install to another drive.
Installing MacOS: 1. Launch installer, which is a file (manually, if not via SoftwareUpdate/AppStore). 2. Pick target volume and install. --That's basically it (aside from prepping partitions with Disk Utility). Cloning a boot volume: launch Carbon Copy Cloner, pick source and destination volumes, copy.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Any OS (not just Linux) that has yet to make installing-into-volumes (or partitions) default behavior (as opposed to wiping the whole target drive) is over twenty years behind the MacOS.
 
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bapegg

macrumors member
Sep 11, 2019
75
26
Missouri
I just installed Lubuntu on my 2010 Mac mini from a USB thumb drive the other day. It ws pretty simple to do by just following the on screen instructions. Linux does give people choices on how and where to install Linux. The first choice with Debian/Ubuntu based distributions is to install Linux along side the current OS.

I won't lie, it would be nice to have more available programs for certain things for Linux. But some of the programs I need won't run in MacOS either. There are some programs that I use for model rail roading and amateur radio that are only available on Windows. And that is the only reason I am running a Windows computer right now.

Linux isn't for everyone but the same can be said about MacOS for people that have only used Windows. I will say that Linux has come along way in the last 25 years and is easier to install and use now than it was back then.
 

Minghold

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Oct 21, 2022
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I just installed Lubuntu on my 2010 Mac mini from a USB thumb drive the other day. It ws pretty simple to do by just following the on screen instructions.
Making the thumbdrive, and getting any Mac with SIP enabled to not puke random errors during installation, is the irritating part of prep that'll shy away 90% of users. (And then, once it's installed, does the distro have Broadcom drivers for WiFi? If not, 999 out of a thousand users are sending that computer to the flea-market.)
Linux does give people choices on how and where to install Linux. The first choice with Debian/Ubuntu based distributions is to install Linux along side the current OS.

I won't lie, it would be nice to have more available programs for certain things for Linux. But some of the programs I need won't run in MacOS either. There are some programs that I use for model rail roading and amateur radio that are only available on Windows. And that is the only reason I am running a Windows computer right now.
If they'l run in Wine or DosBox, then they'll run in Linux on a Mac (if you can get it installed).
Linux isn't for everyone...
That mentality is self-reinforcing. *I* want Linux to kick bloated spyware MacOS and Windows in the nuts 'til their heads pop off.
but the same can be said about MacOS for people that have only used Windows.
Not at all. To start with, most Macs already have the MacOS on them when you buy them, you can Cmd-R to reinstall it, and, unlike Windows, it's free.
I will say that Linux has come along way in the last 25 years and is easier to install and use now than it was back then.
I wouldn't say that progressing from CDs to ISOs represents a great deal of improvement. Sure: running more polished software on better hardware is nice, but the procedure of getting it on a machine is still many steps short of prime-time from the perspective of a user who's used to just click-launching a MacOS installer dmg file. (And, as mentioned, there's little excuse for a Linux installer not to be accessing a common repository of drivers for the total finite list of machines out there. Especially older machines. There shouldn't be any excuses for not having wifi drivers for any platform that sold millions of units if most of them are still topside of the landfill.)
 

bapegg

macrumors member
Sep 11, 2019
75
26
Missouri
I find installing Linux no harder than installing Windows onto a new PC with no OS installed. Either way one must use a cd-rom/DVD disk or USB drive to boot from.

A small inconvenience of installing Linux on a MAC is one does need an ethernet port hooked up. Once a Linux distro is installed, it will recognize the Broadcom WiFi but a driver will need to be downloaded and installed. That is no different than adding some hardware to Windows. I have had to download and install drivers in Windows too. The drivers Windows will try to use at first are not always the correct ones. Installing a driver is pretty easy either way.

Back to the Broadcom wireless drivers. Every flavor of Linux that is based off of Debian/Ubuntu has recognized the chip and downloading/installing the drivers were very simple. I tried running Zorin OS from a USB last night and it already had the correct drivers for the Broadcom chip so WiFi worked without doing anything.

As far as running Windows programs on a Mac or Linux, I have never had much luck with WINE, DOSBox or any other emulator. Plus I don't want to mess with virtual machines, been there before when running networks.

I run a program called HamClock that is for Linux only. I did install Windows WSL and Ubuntu onto my Windows 10 computer and it then ran HamClock just fine. But it was more steps that had to be done versus just installing Linux on a different drive to dual boot the computer. Less steps to run HamClock that way.
 

Minghold

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 21, 2022
453
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I find installing Linux no harder than installing Windows onto a new PC with no OS installed.
That's damning-with-faint-praise. (Windows is the sort of bollocks whose own support team will eventually give up and direct users to massgraves when support can't figure out why licensing isn't working.)
Back to the Broadcom wireless drivers. Every flavor of Linux that is based off of Debian/Ubuntu has recognized the chip and downloading/installing the drivers were very simple.
Yes, and rebuilding a carburetor is "very simple" once you have the bloody directions and parts and are aware that your car has a carburetor and that something is wrong with it, which won't occur to you if you're not a mechanic. The average user trying to install a distro will, after surpassing the rigmarole of Etcher failing to burn ISOs on half of their ought-to-work-fine USB sticks, be met with the mystery of why their WiFi isn't working, and have to spend tens of hours self-educating themselves as to what needs to be done. --But the average person isn't going to do that; they will simply conclude that the distro is garbage. And they'll be right, because its devs put zero thought into broad adaptation.
I tried running Zorin OS from a USB last night and it already had the correct drivers for the Broadcom chip so WiFi worked without doing anything.
I haven't heard of this one, and will try it right now on a variety of Macs, and get back to you.
As far as running Windows programs on a Mac or Linux, I have never had much luck with WINE, DOSBox or any other emulator. Plus I don't want to mess with virtual machines, been there before when running networks.
Wine is not an emulator.
 

bapegg

macrumors member
Sep 11, 2019
75
26
Missouri
I can see that I am wasting my time even replying since you have your mind set.

Like the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.
 
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RandomDSdevel

macrumors regular
Jul 23, 2009
153
76
Kokomo, IN
The average user trying to install a distro will, after surpassing the rigmarole of Etcher failing to burn ISOs on half of their ought-to-work-fine USB sticks, be met with the mystery of why their WiFi isn't working, and have to spend tens of hours self-educating themselves as to what needs to be done. --But the average person isn't going to do that; they will simply conclude that the distro is garbage. And they'll be right, because its devs put zero thought into broad adaptation.
…Trying Ethernet would be an obvious next step when your WiFi isn't working, I'd think. Hopefully, anyway. It's within spitting distance of 'is this cable plugged in correctly' or 'is the machine's power plugged in' on the problem difficulty/complexity tier scale.
 
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