WYE, WYG: Windows Vista vs Mac OS X Leopard

elektro80 · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 7:36 am Post subject:

OS X like any real UNIX is not a monolithic system that will bog down the computer with all sorts of stuff by default. What is on the drive after installing the OS does not equal stuff that is
1. active at all times
2. stuff that is hogging the CPU
3. stuff that shouldn´t be there.

A basic OS X system will generally boot any mac that the OS version supports. You can therefore shuffle drives and images around and no matter what you will be able to get your stuff running again ASAP.

OS X comes with a lot of stuff deactivated, but it´s in there anyways. This simplifies OS updates and you will always have a consistent system.

Some stuff takes a lot of space, such as the default setting for printer drivers. I reckon the printer drivers are some 1- 1,5 gigs alone. Languages take space too. You can deselect a lot of this anyways without running into deep shit.

A UNIX will also need some disk space for swap files and stuff as well in order to run and at times Apple has thrown such stuff into the "recommended" drive space number as well. Dunno what they did with 10.5 though.

Again, a lot of what is on the drive are also uncompressed spacehogging text files. Unproblematic and nice.

The basic OS X is really pretty tiny and as you know Apple is using a polished and tweaked version for embedded devices already.

So what do you get with OS X? You do get a pretty full UNIX installation + toolboxes and shit that Apple will maintain for you. Apple will sort out security issues with say Apache and SMB and make sure that the mix won´t chew your ass off. You do in fact get full software support for the whole engine room instead of simply the nth version of yet another agent which will check that you aren´t running a pirated version of your OS. Man, now I´m really tired of Vista. Sad

I have the whole thing licensed.. but this is a license to ill ... arrrgh..

Kassen · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 7:55 am Post subject:

Yeah, that's all good and well, but I don't want 1.5 gigs of printer drivers, I don't want any printer drivers at all or even a print cue because I never print anything and never even owned a printer, I use keyboards that don't even have "print" keys (or "Windows/Apple" ones).

I just want drivers for everything that's in the computer, documented hooks to those, a compiler and a terminal to manage files/start programs, don't even need a graphical shell and I don't want to have to pay for anything I don't want, like or use. I'd like to just have this "tiny OS" and don't understand why I can't get it. I think Job's pride over having just one edition for everybody is rather misplaced.

I don't *want* Apple to manage my computer and my security policy dictates that my work computers are never connected to the net at all, when on the road I always keep my laptop with me (on my lap in taxis, I take the bag with me to the toilet when on the train), I use long pass-phrases and strong crypto where needed. I don't know Apple personally and I can't read their code hence I can't and don't trust them to manage my security.

elektro80 · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 7:58 am Post subject:

Cool! So.. I think we have settled this then! Laughing

bachus · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:05 am Post subject:

dewdrop_world · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:29 am Post subject:

Kassen · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:41 am Post subject:

Yes, but as the CPU is either calculating samples or cleaning and SC gives priority to the samples you can have the situation where the CPU can't clean as fast as garbage gets generated, at least that's what Nescivi told me. I would imagine this could be re-written but I'm not sure exactly what she was doing.

It's a interesting problem. Of course ChucK lacks any garbage collection at all which is a bit of a handicap but it does teach you to avoid generating garbage, I think that will be a valuable skill even once it does arrive

bachus · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:56 am Post subject:

blue hell · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 9:09 am Post subject:

Kassen · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 9:18 am Post subject:

Still, it pros outweigh the cons for SC where in a single session the program itself may grow, shrink and change, recordings may be made and edited... That will create garbage on a scale unlike more traditional programs.

blue hell · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 5:46 pm Post subject:

My own idea about computer slowth is that we're stacking virtualizations on top of each other, which is efficient in terms if implementation, but not so in terms of speed.

Maybe beautifully exemplified in http://www.quinapalus.com/wi-java.html (you'll need to have java installed for your browser); a very inefficient way to compute prime numbers, but if you, like I do, like "staring at moving dots on a screen" as they call it, it's beautiful Very Happy

Read here how it works.

elektro80 · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 5:57 pm Post subject:

Acoustic Interloper · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 7:34 pm Post subject:

For what it's worth, I thought the only point that blog really made was about GC

cappy2112 · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:32 pm Post subject:

cappy2112 · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 8:47 pm Post subject:

Kassen · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 9:32 pm Post subject:

Well, there is nothing stopping anyone from running BSD, BSD is notoriously hard to stop ;¬). What is a issue though is that I don't think installing pure BSD on a off the shelf portable computer with a professional soundcard is particularly easy.

My issue is that if you want that you'll need OSX which means throwing away most of your performance to chrome and bloat and I don't think that should be necessary. Stein can claim OSX isn't bloated all he wants but looking at the minimum system requirements straight off the Apple site and comparing those to the plain BSD ones I find that position a bit hard to maintain, "it's not bloated it just has 1.5gig of printer drivers"... makes me wonder how large a single one of those drivers is and exactly how many types of printers there have been in the history of computing....

I'm not sure about .net, but I've definitely seen Windows programs that behave like described. Typically when I'm going to use a Windows computer for a while I start by opening the taskmanager and killing all processes I don't know for sure I'll need. This tends to stop the hickups quite nicely :¬)

As far as I know GC originally comes from LISP and there it makes a lot of sense. In LISP in a single session there will likely be a series of questions answered where it's not at all clear up front how many resources answering the question will take, I can't really imagine how something like that would work without GC but for a video-card control panel I'm left wondering what the issue is... I never made one of those but those strike me as extremely static and predictable types of programs.

Kassen · Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 9:38 pm Post subject:

BobTheDog · Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 12:02 am Post subject:

brinxmat · Joined: Oct 24, 2005 Posts: 262 Location: Norway

God forbid that I should defend an Apple OS.

Mac OS X bloat: it's there because you didn't wise up and do a custom install. In fact, you can make OS X extremely lightweight -- especially if you get with the programme (like this http://lipidity.com/apple/cleaning-apps-mac-os-x/ and remove the unnecessary bloat from apps (anyone ever got rid of the unnecessary lprojs from the command line?)).

I'm still on linux, I regret upgrading to the last version of Ubuntu (Gutsy), simply because I have such an old machine, and little disk space. It was, however, a completely painless experience: I had to reinstate one set of packages (PHP/YAZ), but these may have got hosed previously ... I just restarted development on a Z39.50 project after a long hiatus.[/url]

elektro80 · Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 5:03 am Post subject:

Right, the default install is OK for ordinary consumers. Everyone else will do a custom install.

dewdrop_world · Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 5:21 am Post subject:

BobTheDog · Posted: Mon Oct 29, 2007 5:36 am Post subject: