[ILUG] Mac's and Wintel and Linux....

[Twomey_Mark at emc.com]

>What about if I update the macs to MacOs X? Does it look the same to the
>users, and can they run existing apps? I heared its based on Java and has a
>BSD 4.x core so it has to rock, no? 
No it does not look totally like OS9, 8 or System 7, but recent builds have
made the Finder more MacOS like and enabled a NeXT style dock with Apple
menu functionality. A competent Mac user can get up to speed with Aqua [The
UI layer], in a matter of minuets. The admin stuff will take an hour or two
to work out where everything has gone. 
It will run existing apps in the Blue Box compatability layer which is a
modified version of MacOS 9.1. However, as they are using the Mach
Microkernel any old MacOS applications that attempt to access the hardware
will crash the system. As such all the old direct to hardware calls have
been removed from the MacOS ToolBox or masked. It's not based on Java but
has very low level [And screamingly fast] Java support. 
When thinking OS X, think Mach Kernel, BSD on top of that, Quartz [The
QuickDraw replacement], OpenGL & QuickTime on top of BSD, The Frameworks
Classic [Modified OS 9 toolbox] Carbon [Mach/BSD Enabled ToolBox, protected
memory and all that nice stuff] and Cocoa [Openstep stuff using Objective C
or Java] and Aqua the UI layer at the highest level. 
In short, it's a superpowered NEXTSTEP+ as well as being everything Copland
& Gershwin promised to be. 
>Surely this way I could mount the samba server and Windozs PC's at the same
>time? After all, it unix... 
I think Samba comes on the CD as part of the optional BSD utilities install
but if nott many of NeXT developers and some BSD folks are systematically
porting everything they can port to OS X. It has all the core BSD stuff so
NFS mounting is as simple as point and click or taking firing up
Terminal.app and doing it from the command line [tcsh].     
>Does anyone have any experience with this, is it as fast as the mac-os? The
>machines are those coloured ones, can't remember the models but are recent.

What iMac, G3 tower/G4 Tower???? 
It's all PowerPC native, there is no 68K code, so no emulation but being
Unix-like RAM is a very big deal, more is better but you'll no longer have
to manage it yourself so to everything there's an upside.
Mark.