Does that mean all the others will be running on Apple hardware in September for comparison purposes?
Phoronix: Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" Benchmarks
Earlier this month we shared that we would be doing a big operating system benchmark comparison consisting of Linux (perhaps a few different distributions), OpenSolaris, some BSDs, and Mac OS X. With the news today from Apple that Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" will be shipping this Friday, the 28th of August, we are now one step closer to carrying out this large OS comparison...
http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NzQ3NQ
Does that mean all the others will be running on Apple hardware in September for comparison purposes?
I thought its only purpose was to ease the pain of being ripped off on underpowered proprietary hardware![]()
Well there is some opensource hardware if you are insane enough to spend the money on it.
http://www.traversaltech.com/products.phtml
I doubt that stan is running that one.
Compared to a PC, Apples are more proprietary and harder to run Linux on. The whole HFS+ based disk partitioning, firmware that can only be updated from their proprietary OS 9 (yes, you have to reinstall OS 9 on some powerPC iMACs if you want to update the firmware, even if you already have OS X running), video camera firmware, DRM-ed EFI BIOS, you name it.
Ubuntu's official position is to discourage people from buying Macs because of the nightmare it is to support them.
OS 9 to upgrade firmware you are talking about REALLY old Macs. G3-G4 days which are systems that originally came with OS 9. Any system that came with OS X you can update the openfirmware from OS X (or in the case of intel macs, it can be done completely without a OS installed just a firmware CD.) Intel macs that have a isight are UVC class devices and as such use the linux-uvc module unlike the crap load of webcams out there that are still not uvc class. The DRM-ed EFI BIOS is complete bullshit of course. DRM is in the OS not the firmware.
I would really like to see this "Ubunutu official position" as it seems if that is what you are basing your idea's on it's either extremely outdated or fabricated bullshit.
Lets not forget until relatively recently you had to drop to a much older OS to update a bloody BIOS in a PC. DOS.