BSD & OSX86

[davijordan]

Well you can buy OS X from Apple, or pretty much any other online retailer. But keep in mind, Leopard requires an 867MHz G4 or better. No G3 support, either.

This License allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time

As of now all my intel computers are 486's and will have Apple labels on them (tongue in cheek).

Aside:
I have no plans to run osx on a regular pc. With linux why would anyone want to slum. I installed qemu on a 350mhz g3 under edubuntu, I was able to get xp to run, but then immediately replaced it with reactos. Rumor has it that reactos is working on a ppc version.

[dann]

As he says Ebay likely is probably the best solution. I have bought an Imac on ebay for as low as $20 dollars. but It runs debian now. Most but not all of the macs I have seen on ebay do not come with the os.

Fry's sells a version of os/x that is not an upgrade. I think even Microcenter did for a while also. People sell original disks of os/x on ebay all the time.

Doesn't matter; according to Apple policy, you can install the OS that came with the system; so in essence they do come with the "license to use the OS." How you are going to get the discs, if they were not included, is another question.

Also, from speaking with Apple reps; again; all boxed versions of OS X are upgrade versions (even though they are essentially full versions of the software) as you must install the OS on an apple system which already came with a version of Apple OS. You cannot buy an Apple system from Apple without Apple OS installed.

[davijordan]

All new apple machines I am sure do come with the os. However most of the machines on ebay are used and my not have the os on the hard drive. I have a dead white beige g3. I may pull the apple tag and put it on my 486 pc. Ask the esteemed Apple rep about how mac users were cut off by Apple not allegedly letting umax continue to build clone macs. I wonder if the same happened to Franklin. If Apple was smart they would ride the small window of a popularity wave for the igadgets and sell osx separately to put on regular intel boxes. Considering how popular MSWindows Vista is, they might win a majority of the pc os share excepting possibly the linux community. I dare Mr. Jobs to do it.

[spotslayer]

He is a graduate and is working as a lab assistant. It is a medical research lab. The PHD that runs the lab that he is working for want's them to use apple since he does and is familiar with it. Chris does not have much choice. Like at my job I am required to use windows(spit) even though I hate it.
David

There is no required machine. He is using mac computers at work now supplied by his work. He is working in a research lab. There are times when he would like to take things home and go over them there. He graduated in March 2007 and this is his first job. Started repaying student loans and paying rent. That means he is broke. He has looked into used machines. A&M will even sell him a refurbished one. He agrees with Wally Balljacker, as do I, they are way over priced. Refurbished 12" 256 ram 800mhz laptop $800. I think he said it was a macbook. He was just asking me what I thought about OSX86 and since I have no knowledge of anything Apple (except for an ipod that was a gift) I thought I would pick the brains of the folks here. So much to learn and so little time.

David

[davijordan]

I looked at pearpc, but it looks like they stopped development a few years ago.

The apple tv is only 229 dollars.........
ttp://revision3.com/subsystm/osxatv/

[Tsuroerusu]

I looked at pearpc, but it looks like they stopped development a few years ago.

Even if they had not, PearPC would still be slower than dirt.

[davijordan]

Machines are a lot faster now and development tools I am told are much improved. With what vmware, codeweavers, wine, mame, qemu, virtual box and etcetera have done, I would tend to want to disagree and say that pearpc might be a bit better that you presume. It is a moot point anyway. Personally I think the operating systems as we know them will be different. Future machines with come with a basic os virtual engine so that any desktop or app can be run. Systems will not be hardware driven anymore. Over the years I have seen things merging. if you are old enough, remember when you could not even use for example word processing files between programs on the same platform unless you saved work in ascii? Microsoft Word, WordStar, and Word Perfect said they would never be compatible with each other. That changed. I remember when you could not even use media between machines. Apple could not read PC and vice versa. Actually that had been going on for years with other platforms with a few exceptions. I remember having to null modem ascii data files for customers when they changed platforms, That changed, Now you can easily move usb drives between platforms. I see the same thing happen in operating systems. It almost happens now with recompiling of code. It is just a matter of time.

[allix]

davijordan , i totally agree, because troels tends to buy loads of computers that are freaking old instead of saving up for something new , he tends to see the progress of computers slowly. Ive not tried PearPC but as the saying goes , when something is slow you add more hardware to it and get it to work faster.

Windows vista is slow as dirt with less than 2GB ram and a recent cpu however with the latest dual cores its usable.

[davijordan]

There was no intent to say that old equipment is useless or to put anyone down. Even though my computer wizard younger brother gives me heck about it, I have quite a few antiques myself that are still running. I do once in a while buy equipment such as thin clients or hard to get replacement parts. Ironically, I acquired have most of my used equipment free from helping people move to newer systems. Women have been the most generous. I use a lot of that old junk for parts in projects. If I had to buy all the electronic parts and whatever from those old machines separately, it would cost a small fortune.
Save the code and re-purpose the machine.

[allix]

Sorry, i did not mean to be demeaning to you or Troels .

One thing that does kind of annoy me is that many people present linux as a operating system with an extremely light footprint.
What there are usually referring to is running fluxbox or similar windows managers with some xterminals open and firefox.
Stick on a modern desktop environment like kde or gnome , play with the filters in gimp with family photos , render some animation in blender, watch some h.264 high definition rips , play quake 4 , run azureus , use compiz fusion and you will notice that linux is not that slick as you may have thought.

[davijordan]

Actually, I have found the opposite to be true. Anyway you can bog any machine down if you try hard enough. Do that on an "equivalent" mswindows box and see how far you get. oops windows and osx can not do compiz yet. One thing you may not realize is that a lot of application programs were written as if they were to be the only software used on the machine at a time. Therefore efficiency may not be as great as it could be. An operating system can not fix that nor should it. Application programmers should be addressing this issue. Recently, I upgraded a system for a client. Her motherboard and p4 class 3g cpu are quite a bit faster than my several year old amd 1.5 cpu desktop. I felt like I was in slow motion on her xp machine compared to mine. She told me that with the new motherboard and cpu it was quite a bit faster than it was.