Endless Paradigm

ive been thinking a lot lately about linux, windows, OSX, and the like.

the main problem that i have with linux is the fact that i can't get the good proprietary apps that i love in a linux environment. i am left without itunes, photoshop, fireworks, etc, left to load them in wine, which works enough, but eats a bit of processor, and sometimes doesn't support what i need.

i realize that OSX is bsd based, which means it works much like linux, and has UNIX at its heart. would this mean that with a bit of work, i could get linux programs compiling and running on a mac? and with further work, also desktop environments like kde and fluxbox? and in the end, could i get the things i love in linux to run on a mac natively throught its UNIX base, while using the OSX ability to run CS5 and such natively? i think if i could, the perfect system would be pretty simple to develop.

any one have any thoughts?

again, this is just a brainstorm, but do you think its possible?

You can compile a number of Linux apps on OSX.  I don't know about the desktop environment though, but maybe.
You may wish to check how well apps like Photoshop run "natively" on OSX - it may be a bit of a different experience.

Also, unless you own a Mac, running OSX can be tricky due to limited hardware support.

trademark91 Wrote: [ -> ]i realize that OSX is bsd based, which means it works much like linux, and has UNIX at its heart. would this mean that with a bit of work, i could get linux programs compiling and running on a mac?

I don't think it's as simple as that, no, you won't just be able to compile Linux stuff to run on a Mac, not for all things and not without changing the code at least.

I know a few programs which works for Linux but takes significant amount of effort and recoding to get it to run on Mac.



But all in all, I don't know much about Linux, and next to nothing about Mac, so I'm not the best person for this.

^ Actually, I'd say most command line apps should work fine due to OSX having a POSIX environment.
OSX is just a bit more restricted and less flexible than Linux/BSD though (probably inability to change kernels or do kernel modifications), so if those aren't really an issue, you should be able to get most Linux stuff on there.

Look into Mac Ports, most linux donkey do run on OS X with some work. I had KDE installed on my Mac a few years ago. It will not replace OS X, but run on top of it. It's more of a Finder replacement. GTK also works in OS X and a lot of Linux have been ported to OS X. Mac Ports in source based so it will compile everything from source, kinda like Gentoo does. It's a bitch, it takes hours to install something like KDE, and it will never be like a Linux deskop.