InfiniteMac OSx86 - View Single Post - Something I noticed that rather irked me...

cmdshft · 12-25-2008, 07:43 AM

I was reading a thread on InsanelyMac, and Dense posted something that irritated me a bit.

Quote:

Most people don't have the vision to see that forking of projects in the long term is a bad thing. The chameleon project is extremely active and has a number of developer contributing nearly daily to the sources. Taking Chameleon to the next level has required massive internal restructuring and just breaking the 64k limit was a difficult and long process. The chameleon project now is part of the Voodoo team and other than the kernel work there are a number of other projects in development.

The long term goal is to create quality alternative implementations of the key foundations of OS X. This was why the kernel was dealt with first and the boot loader is in the process of being made much more modern and expandable. We also have a few other extensions that will resolve some very outstanding and troublesome issues for users. Also some of the smaller extensions which have been required have become integrated into the boot loader (SMBIOS enablers, EHCI ownership problems etc). We also hope to have PCI probing added to allow device properties to be added (to fix problems such as GMA 950 on some systems as well as networking problems - time machine).

While the source code for all these projects will be open to everyone, during development we have found that its better to keep the sources closed. The truth of the matter is that most people have no interest in enhancing and fixing problems with OS X. The kernel sources we put together have had practically no interest (and even with a simple building tool to make kernel compiling easy for those looking to learn). The majority of the advancements in OS X running on normal PCs has been done by a very small group of people. I wish I could say it was a community achievement but that really hasn't been the case at all.

While its possible for the community to continue to toss out DVD's with a million different options (just look at the new iPC DVD) practically no user will know what option to choose and end up with a system that doesn't work. Is this the direction we really want to go? Alternative extensions with a quality boot loader and kernel will give a much simpler install and a much higher compatibility. If the OS X community wants to grow up, it has to move in this direction. This is what the Voodoo team is trying to do. We hope others are willing to join us.

The undelined bolded part is what really sparked me. I had the following to say:

Quote:

The problem, though, in the end, is that the community will eventually move more and more towards trying to create a "vanilla" experience. While I think this is great, the problem becomes people with older hardware, like me. Already with the 10.5.6 update, my obsolete FX5500 has been phased out by Apple. The new iPC DVD aims to create a distro that allows a user to empower themselves with all the greatness of what the "community" has created, in both Vanilla and non-Vanilla scenarios. For the first time, I personally, after helping devd it, had a system that worked 99% OOTB at first boot, the 1% being caused by my aging GFX card with 10.5.6 running with 10.5.5 drivers. Nothing else has enabled that for me, though, and going the "vanilla" route is not possible for me.

We can't just grow up with one set direction, we're not all headed the same way. We have to grow forward in all aspect, with both tools of new and tools of old. I think that a lot of people forget this, even the developers who make such great tools.

Anyone else wish to add their views on this? I am all for advancement, but leaving users in the dust whom we know we can still support is what I am against, and such is the purpose of iPC OSx86 (not trying to use as a plug, just stating a fact that we are supporting the advancement while still supporting the old hardware).