Re: Mac OS X and Linux
From: Robert Heller (heller_at_deepsoft.com)
Date: 07/20/04
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Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 22:17:15 +0200
Grant Edwards <grante@visi.com>,
In a message on 20 Jul 2004 19:55:01 GMT, wrote :
GE> On 2004-07-20, Bats <nomail@no.way> wrote:
GE>
GE> > I was thinking (perhaps wrongly) that if app X is already
GE> > running on OS/X and that means it's hooked-into a Unix-like
GE> > kernel
GE>
GE> More likely it's hooked into the MacOS toolkit, and Apple
GE> ported the MacOS toolkit from their old, proprietary kernel to
GE> the new BSD kernel.
GE>
GE> > - then surely all the developers would have to do is to
GE> > re-code the GUI stuff.
GE>
GE> That's huge. Your average office/design app has orders of
GE> magnitude more code dealing with the GUI than with the basic OS
GE> services like filesystem I/O and networking.
GE>
GE> > (Maybe not exclusively GUI, but a damn sight less work than
GE> > going from a pure Windows/Apple API setting.)
GE>
GE> I wouldn't be surprised if the jump from the MacOS toolbox API
GE> to Linux/GTK is at least as big as the jump from Win32 to Linux.
GE>
GE> > Hook it into Gtk or WxWindows or QT (or all of them) and then
GE> > start selling to the Linux market. How much would it really
GE> > cost them to do it, just as a shot-in-the-dark off-chance?
GE>
GE> You've never shipped anything, eh? :)
GE>
GE> It would cost a lot. The actual porting is the tip of the
GE> iceberg. Testing staff have to be hired and/or trained. Manuals
GE> and other documentation have to be written. Support staff have
GE> to be hired and/or trained.
GE>
GE> Then the expensive part starts...
GE>
GE> Linux products require *constant* updating to keep up with the
GE> whims of distribution maintainers -- none of whom seem to care
GE> much about backwards compatibilty.
GE>
GE> Assuming you have to release updates to a Windows or MacOS app
GE> once every year or so, you would have to release Linux updates
GE> at least once a month to keep up with constantly changing
GE> kernels and distributions [mainly the latter unless you're
GE> writing device drivers as part of the deal]. Even then, if you
GE> try to support more than one or two distributions you'll drown
GE> in support expenses.
The usual 'cure' is to statically link everything. It turns out to be
not so bad (at the cost of disk usage and application size). Several
commerical vendors seem to manage: RSI (IDL/ENVI), Matlab, and a some
others. The *only* way to keep up with kernels (drivers) is to just
ship source code -- NVidia does this -- the installer just re-compiles
the driver if it can't find a pre-built driver for the current kernel.
Of course NVidia is making its money selling the video *cards*
(hardware) -- NVidia's software (driver) is just 'widget frosting' to use
Eric Raymond's terminology, so shipping the driver source is not a big
deal, since the driver is worthless without the video card.
Actually, applications built under RH 6.2 generally run just fine under
RH9 or WBL 3.0 or even FC1 (I won't comment about FC2). I do this all
of the time. Once you get past the basic libc5/glibc 'hump' there is
generally not too much problem. One can always ship 'legacy' shared
libraries.
GE>
GE> --
GE> Grant Edwards grante Yow! It's NO USE... I've
GE> at gone to "CLUB MED"!!
GE> visi.com
GE>
\/
Robert Heller ||InterNet: heller@cs.umass.edu
http://vis-www.cs.umass.edu/~heller || heller@deepsoft.com
http://www.deepsoft.com /\FidoNet: 1:321/153
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