When Will Apple Notice Linux?
One thing has always puzzled me about iTunes, why isn’t it available for Linux? Now, I don’t mean “why doesn’t it run on Linux” (because with some 3rd party emulation it will run just fine) but rather, “why doesn’t Apple support it?” It seems to me that Apple is missing out on a golden opportunity. The Linux market can be looked upon as an untapped market as far as media goes. You see, if you use Windows you have two choices for purchasing music online, Apple and then everybody else. If you are using a Mac then you just have one choice, Apple. But if you are using Linux, you don’t really have any choices to legally buy and download music do you? (to all of you Linux readers out there, if there is a service out there like that please let me know, I looked but didn’t find any)
If you use Linux, you are left out of the party. Now, I am quite sure that there are more than a few Linux users out there who enjoy listening to music on their computers. And, I am also willing to bet, that they don’t all go out and buy hundreds of CDs to get all of their favorite songs. Let us further assume that they aquire their music in somewhat less than legal means, shall we? If all of that is true, then you have market conditions that looked exactly like those that preceded the ITMS. And since iTunes and its Music Store have been very popular with the general public, why is there any reason to think it won’t be just as popular on the Linux side?
So, when I go to Apple’s site and click on their “download iTunes” link, I want to see three options, one for Mac, one for Windows and one for Linux. Of course, the ramifications of such a move would be tremendous, and I’m not just refering to buying songs, music videos or TV shows. If Apple were to make this move and port iTunes and Quicktime to Linux it would vastly improve Linux’s credibility.
That isn’t to say Linux isn’t credible, it is. But the fact remains that the main software companies out there don’t generally make software for Linux. Adobe doesn’t make any of its graphics tools (Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.) for Linux. I think we can all forget about Microsoft doing anything to help Linux, regardless of how much money it might make them. Broderbund, Corel, Intuit, Blizzard, Seirra and the rest all don’t make Linux compatible products. Why?
Well, there are several reasons, but most of those excuses would disappear if the Linux community could just get one main player on board. If just one recognized Linux as a true player then chances are good the rest will follow. However, just about all of these software developers earn most of their money from applications that run on Microsoft operating systems. So they probably won’t be tripping over themselves to be the first to legitimize Linux. Because if they do there is always the chance that Microsoft might retaliate for such a move, and what company really wants to risk that? Or rather, which company could do it with the least negative reprecussions.
Apple is the logical choice. If they lead the way then the other players can rationalize it by saying “Well, Apple is hot and if they are supporting Linux maybe that is because they see something we don’t. Maybe we should get on-board.” And so if one comes then two will come and then three, then four, till most of the major players are realizing that money can be made selling their products to Linux users.
But wait, before you penguin lovers out there warm up your flamethrowers let me make this one thing clear. I am aware that there are plenty open-source applications that currently fill most of these needs. If you don’t want Photoshop, use GIMP. Don’t want MS Office, use OpenOffice. Don’t like iTunes, use X Multimedia System. Yes, there are free, open source alternatives to proprietary, closed source, actually-cost-money software. I am not disputing this. However I am saying that without the backing or support of the major software companies Linux on the desktop will never reach anything other than its current, uber-geek, niche market. To make it to the big time Linux needs mainstream applications. If for no other reason than to make the transition easier for new users. Instead of forcing them to use the tortured interface that is the GIMP why not let them use Photoshop, since that is what they are comfortable with? It might mean that fewer people use GIMP, but isn’t that an acceptable loss if more people use Linux?
There is, however, another small hurdle to jump before anything like this can happen and that is the philosophical barrier that exist for many Linux users. First, Linux is still seen as a kind of special club for all of the really smart computer users out there. Allowing Adobe & friends to play in their clubhouse kind of reduces the mystique of their little world. So, if the Linux community is really serious about expanding on the desktop then they are going to have to come to terms with the idea that a lot of non-technical, non-programming people will be using Linux. This brings me up to my second point, attitude.
There have been plenty of times that I have encountered the arrogance of the Linux community. It most often comes out as some version of this notion: “if you aren’t smart enougth to use Linux then maybe you should go back to Windows.” Another common attitude is linking “easy to use” with “selling out”. Making software easy to use requires that you limit the number of features, something most die hard Linux advocates are loath to do. And yet it is something that must be done if Linux really wants to reach the masses. So, if the penguin really does want to go mainstream then they are going to need the support of the major software companies and the current Linux user base has to be ready for the impact of the non-technical user. Ubuntu is on the right track as far as this latter point goes, but they still have a long, long way to go.
So, perhaps someone needs to buy Linus Torvalds a plane ticket to Cupertino, California. Who knows, maybe if he asked Steve Jobs nicely if he might consider making iTunes available to three operating systems instead of just two. And maybe then, finally, the ball can start rolling for the Desktop Linux.
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George, no need to play the misunderstood martyr; I fully understand the distinction you are drawing. But the kind of “open source” freedom you embrace in Linux is not what permits you to install it on the computers of your friends. It’s the “free as in beer” policy that allows you to do that.
As I have tried to get across (but apparently in vain), OS X is open source also—except for the proprietary GUI layer which Apple ADDS to the operating system. All the rest of it, Darwin, X11, and the same GNU tools and window managers you have with Linux are every bit as “free” (in the sense of speech) as it is under Linux. The only thing that prevents you from installing OS X wherever and whenever you want is the “free as in beer” restriction—which you yourself acknowledge many Linux distros have as well.
Thus you steer clear not only from OS X on this ground but also from other Linux distros ON THE SAME GROUND. And it’s not that these other Linux distros are less free as in speech; rather they are just less free as in BEER.
Now you ought to know your own reasons—after all, if you are the authority on nothing else, it’s on your own position. But as you attempt to lay it out in this thread, something is just not adding up.
To Doug, thanks for furnishing a URL on this subject. Let me add only that by the measure of _installed base_ the figures are even worse for Linux at the desktop level. Market share is one thing; and installed base is another—both measures are valid.
We also have to keep in mind regional differences. Apple is much stronger doemstically (in the USA) and I suspect Linux data look better when you control for the variable of geography. But Apple has been gaining significant ground in this category (of global market share) as well.
Of course, we can take a snapshot of a moment in time and we can also observe TRENDS. But even by this latter measure OS X seems to be doing very well indeed.
At bottom, for my part this isn’t a numbers game anyway. I maintain no correlation between market share and QUALITY—if I did, I would champion Windows XP over all other platforms. So I fail to see what market share numbers prove in any case—unless we are back on the topic of whether it would be economically viable for Apple to devote development resources on porting its applications to Linux—and the answer for this is clearly it would NOT.
I think this whole question of Apple’s support of Linux is a solution in search of a problem—a non-existent problem—and the URL you supply above helps to document this.
> Now you ought to know your own reasons—
> after all, if you are the authority on
> nothing else, it’s on your own position.
> But as you attempt to lay it out in this
> thread, something is just not adding up.
Geesh. It’s probably hopeless, but let’s try once more just for old times sake.
Think hard for a moment - why CAN’T I just install Suse on whatever computer I want? If it’s truly “open source” (your words), what prevents that?
ANSWER (don’t peek before you think!): The proprietary components integrated WITH the free (always read: free-as-in-speech) software give the copyright owner of THOSE components the power to restrict installations according to whatever terms he sets in the license agreement.
With Suse or RHES, it’s the proprietary packages bundled into the distribution. With Mac OS X, it’s the GUI among other changes. In both cases, the math is exactly the same.
Free + Free = Free
Free + Proprietary = Proprietary
Proprietary + Proprietary = Proprietary
Now, proprietary software restricts my freedom for the reasons I set for in message 35. Linux quality and ease of use is outstanding on its own merits. And so, I prefer a free Linux distro like Ubuntu over a non-free alternative like Mac OS X.
Now, if you still think my preference is somehow related to “money”, you’ve missed it again. Big time.
Nor is “compatibility with free software” some type of Apple accomplishment. Do you think ALL those FireFox users are running on Linux? My wife has more free applications on Windows than proprietary - but that doesn’t somehow make Windows special for being “compatible with free software”.
That Apple includes some free packages in their proprietary product simply means that its equal to Windows Vista in that regard.
Nor does cost play whit in my decision. I PAID for Linspire on the computer in our exercise room, and for a lifetime subscription to Click’N'Run Warehouse. I PAID for Mandriva on my previous production machine, and am still a Silver member supporting the company to the tune of $120 a year. Heck, I’ve sent money to the author of IrfanView. I LIKE sending money to people who deserve it. I feel good. They (hopefully) feel appreciated and maybe even more motivated.
But the reason I prefer free-as-in-speech distros (Ubuntu or Mandriva - I’ve never actually tried Fedora Core) over non-free distros (Mac OS X, Linspire, Suse, RHES) has everything to do with freedom (re-read message 35 again) and nothing to do with price.
I entered the forum to defend Linux against your charges that it could not be used effectively without command lines, recompiling, or editing text files (see YOUR message 27 paragraph 6; my first entry is message 29). I have done so clearly and have received no response of substance (saying “hard to use” over and over doesn’t count as “substance”).
You asked to change the topic to why I prefer Linux over Mac OS X. I listed four paragraphs of freedoms, of which you locked like an F-22 radar on sharing software to the exclusion of the other freedoms. If the above doesn’t turn on the light bulb, then it’s burned out.
And now I’ll leave you to have the last word. I’ve stated as clearly as I can what freedom means to me, why I enjoy software that preserves those freedoms, why Linux is both high-quality and easy to use, and why I chose Ubuntu for my current distro.
I trust you’ll continue to enjoy using your Mac. Certainly I’ll continue to enjoy using Linux.
Bon soir.
One difficulty is the need to support different distributions and at least provide it in .deb & rpm formats. Plus it would have to deal with dependencies on other installed packages.
Drats, while shaking off discussion-mind, it just occurred to me why you’re missing my point (I think).
You’re confusing cause and effect. The free products we’ve discussed haven’t cost money, and the non-free have. So you appear to have assumed a correlation. THAT’s where you went astray.
So here are a couple of counter-examples.
IrfanView costs nothing, but it’s not free - it’s good old proprietary software.
My copy of Mandriva cost me about $160, but it’s free - my freedoms are respected and preserved by the license that came in the box.
Does THAT help you understand why free doesn’t necessarily correlate to cost? And why freedom is the principal (and principle
) reason I favor Linux over Mac OS X?
If not, then back to my French…
George, I’ve read your last two posts but can’t summon the energy to respond just now because as it happens I have the flu, (and have had it for days actually but somehoe managed to keep up my end of the discussion until now). So I guess you will just have to wait a while for my highly coveted and sought after response and words of wisdom.
Nice article, but when you talk about “the arrogance of the Linux community” you clearly missed one important point: There is no such thing as _the_ Linux community.
> One difficulty is the need to support different
> distributions and at least provide it in .deb
> & rpm formats.
Really? I checked the actual download links for OpenOffice.org and FireFox, and both have downloadable packages for Windows, Mac, and “Linux x86”. No mention of distributions or different file formats. (OOo also listed FreeBSD, Linux PPC, and a couple of Solarises… I mean Solarii… I mean… oh, what the heck IS the plural of Solaris, anyway?)
Is Apple’s software special in some way that it would CARE what distribution it was using?
This sounds suspiciously analogous to “They would need to support Windows 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, and XP - it just costs too much!”, except of course with Windows everyone already KNOWS better.
> Plus it would have to deal with
> dependencies on other installed packages.
Only if it needed to be dependent on other installed packages (sorry to state the obvious).
Other major players such as OOo and Firefox simply provide all of the non-standard packages themselves… which, come to think of it, is the standard Windows approach (ever wonder what all those DLLs are doing?).
(Interestingly, the OOo site provides one package for all of Linux x86, but TWO for Windows. Does that mean that Linux is twice as standard?
)
George, I’m still sick with the flu, but I can’t let one of your commuents stand. You say:
“This sounds suspiciously analogous to “They would need to support Windows 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, and XP - it just costs too much!”, except of course with Windows everyone already KNOWS better.”
If you labor under the impression that it’s not more expensive to a developer go guarantee support for these multiple Windows platforms, then you are grossly misinformed. Do you truly believe that all software developed for Windows XP will ipso facto run under Windows 98? My goodness—even Microsoft’s own MS-Office 2003 cannot make this claim.
Hell, even to go from service pack one to service pack two on Windows XP “broke” a lot of software. The development costs—including extensive testing and quality assurance—rise greatly with each new Windows platform one seeks to support.
And so it goes for Linux and UNIX. For marketing purposes, a developer may claim to support “Linux” or “Linux x86,” but the fine print of the system requirements will invariably specify that only certain distros are supported.
Consider Mozilla’s Firefox. On the download page, the choices are Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux i686. This seems to support your position, right? But if one looks closer at the system requirements, one will see this for the Linux platform:
——————————————
Please note that Linux distributors may provide packages for your distribution which have different requirements.
Linux kernel - 2.2.14 or higher with the following libraries or packages:
glibc 2.3.2 or higher
XFree86-3.3.6 or higher
gtk+2.0 or higher
fontconfig (also known as xft)
libstdc++5
Firefox has been tested on Red Hat Linux 8.0 and later
——————————————
Notice that Mozilla has tested Firefox on only ONE Linux distro. Only ONE—of the more than one hundred Linux distros on the market—and the one on which Firefox has been tested happens to not be one of your free as in beer Linux distros.
Moreover, these are just the SOFTWARE requirements—the Mozilla web site goes on to detail all the hardware requirements for users of Linux. Contrast this with the software requirements for Firefox on the Mac OS X platform, and I quote:
“Mac OS X 10.3.x and later”
If this difference doesn’t make an impression on you, then there is nothing more I can do.
Finally, before I go get some rest, let me say I’m well aware of the difference between correlation and causation and the pitfalls of confusing the two. I contend in this discussion I have kept them separate.
Hello! There is at least one perfectly legal alternative for Linux… http://allofmp3.com…and it is real sweet too!
To the comments about Apple complying with the gpl, I doubt it. I’m sure that if you take libdvdread and the like out of Apples non-free software that it will work. Maybe more people need to get a clue.
Here’s that link I was talking about; it’s InfoWEEK, not InfoWORLD, making it harder to find on InfoWorld.
i.cmpnet.com/infoweek/1057/IWKLinuxOutlook-2005.pdf
wvandin says:
“To the comments about Apple complying with the gpl, I doubt it. I’m sure that if you take libdvdread and the like out of Apples non-free software that it will work. Maybe more people need to get a clue.”
Your doubts don’t qualify as evidence. If you have good cause to claim that Apple fails to live up to the terms of its open source licenses (such as the GPL), please cite a URL I can examine. Until you do this, you might hold off on the “get a clue” rhetoric.
> Notice that Mozilla has tested Firefox on only
> ONE Linux distro.
Oh, I’ll readily concede that a tightly controlled proprietary universe such as Apple’s - where all platform hardware and software is legally required to come from a single source - is necessarily easier to test against than free-as-in-speech software, or even against Windows’ widely varied universe.
(Of course, Linux kernel 2.2.14 or higher covers darned near every Linux in the wild today (the current version is 2.6.15). In practice, I’ve loaded FireFox on a variety of distributions and never had a problem.)
But you missed my point entirely. Apple can cover over 90% of the desktop Linux market with a *single* release, and that makes more sense than to “support different distributions and at least provide it in .deb & rpm formats”, as Mike suggested. It makes SO much more sense that most major open source application releases (I just picked two of the biggest to illustrate) take that approach.
One commercial iTunes competitor who understands this is Rhapsody for Linux (http://www.real.com). They offer one download that supports ALL distros of significance. (Of course, Add Applications -> Sound & Video -> Real Player is even easier, but again I digress.)
Ultimately Apple has to make a business decision whether to support Linux. Since I don’t use iTunes, I don’t care.
But I care very much when folks make obsolete assertions that imply Linux is not commercially viable despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
George, please. Overwhemling evidence that Linux is commercially viable? Is an example of this how in 2004 the Linux market share was 0.29 percent and rose a whopping 0.01 for the following year? Or just how do you define “commercially viable” anyway?
As you and others have so vigorously pointed out, this is an OS which is free of charge; it’s a simple download. So if this product were so commercially viable—AND FREE—why is its market share so low?
How low would a platform’s market share have to get before you would find other phrasing than “commercially viable”?
As for the free (as in speech) question, you REALLY should do yourself a favor and visit the Darwin web site. It has been freely available (in BOTH senses of the word) for several years—and on both the PPC and Intel platforms I might add. It is fully open source and the source code itself is freely available. (Just try getting the source code to any part of Windows.)
Your problem is that you keep talking about OS X as being not free when in fact 80 percent of it (if not more) is precisely that—FREE. Take away the proprietary GUI Apple added to Darwin and a proprietary file system, and basically you have a fully functioning operating system very much on par with Linux.
Here’s the link for the Darwin home page:
http://developer.apple.com/darwin/
On this page Apple gives full disclosure about its compliance to the licenses of open source and the terms of its participation in it. Apple also lists all the open source projects at the company. You can download the complete Darwin operating system from here and you can also download the source code.
Now in my book that’s pretty damn free—what do YOU call it?
If despite the foregoing you want to harp on the fact that OS X is not one hundred percent free, then I put it to you—find a Linux distro out there which has added a proprietary graphics layer and window manager on top of the Linux/GNU bundle—and yet which STILL is cimpletely free and open. Then you can talk. Otherwise, you are comparing apples and oranges.
If you want another source independent from Apple, here it is:
http://www.opendarwin.org/
Maybe this will help to educate you a bit on precisely how open Apple truly is—not bad for a Fortune 500 corporation.