I'm curious as to why an apple user would use Linux rather than Darwin. I've dabbled a bit with Darwin, and it works fine. But I'm not really a *nix user at all, so maybe there's some obvious reason I'm missing.

Okay, now I've thought of one--if you've got an old Mac and don't want to pay to upgrade to OS X--or if you don't have the RAM/HD space to do it. Actually makes quite a bit of sense for that application--I expect you could upgrade an entire "obsolete" lab and get a couple extra years out of it.

Any other uses?

Well, die hard "Apple users" won't, but there are other reasons why some people might:

• it's a cross platform OS
• it's open source
• some Linux people like Linux better than Darwin, but like the Mac hardware (see the Slashdot comments and you'll see that some prefer PowerBooks over x86 laptops)
• because they can optimize the kernel and the application builds
• and the geek reason, just because they can :)

FYI:

Darwin is Open source.

Also, according to Apple's Web site, it's being ported to the X86 platform.

I'm really just curious, though--why do people prefer Linux? Just because they're more accustomed to it? Are more drivers, etc. available for it?

I should point out that Darwin is not copyleft--which means, I think, that Apple could choose to close its source code at any time. From a philosophical perspective, I could see some users objecting to this.

And many of the apps are not open source at all. Is the GUI closed?

And many of the apps are not open source at all. Is the GUI closed?

I'm not sure what you mean here. Darwin is the Unix portion of OS X. You can download it for free and install it on any mac (even if OS X is not installed). The GUI portion ("Jaguar") is proprietary software that runs on top of Darwin. However, I can install most any Unix program and it will run in Darwin--X11, Open Office, whatever. I could create a Unix box for free using an old Mac and Darwin. However, I don't think it would be as easy as using one of the CDs mentioned in the original blog post.

Just that because most of the apps supplied by Apple and the GUI are closed, it limits innovation. Even if Apple allowed others to see the source, but not use it (not really open source), imagine how that would open up Jaguar for others to create new apps.

So you're saying that because a company puts out both closed and open source products, you shouldn't use even their open source products?

If that's the case, then you shouldn't use Mozilla either, because it's an AOL product.

I agree that in an ideal world, all software would be open source, but on the other hand, I'm not willing to sacrifice utility for an inferior (or nonexistent) product.

1) Don't recall saying that. I was only pointing out that Apple could create a better atmosphere for innovation if they made the source available, even if it the code was not made available to be reused. It would allow developers to better understand how Jaguar works.

2) Mozilla is not an AOL project, although it does happen to have some AOL people involved, among many others. Netscape is the AOL project based on Mozilla.

1. Yes, I agree--I was just pointing out that in a perfect world, all software would be open source, but it's not, so I'm not going to use open source as the sole requirement for choosing software. Similarly, even though I'm committed to open content, I still buy books.

2. From the site you link: The project is maintained by employees of Netscape (now a division of AOL). Yes, others work on it, but Mozilla would not exist without the support of AOL (and Netscape, before AOL bought them).