"""Standard""" software (was: Re: Early-2014 Macbook Air and Linux Mint Cinnamon)

On 2026-06-24, Your Name wrote:

> On 2026-06-24 10:36:04 +0000, The Natural Philosopher said:
>> On 24/06/2026 06:45, Marc Haber wrote:
>>>> Technically, you've got that almost-backwards.
>>>>
>>>> Linux is a "Unix-like" operating system. MacOS X is built on Darwin
>>>> derived from BSD, which is also another Unix-like operating system.
>>>> Although neither is true Unix, MacOS X is certified by Unix, while
>>>> Linux is not ... so legally MacOS X can call itself Unix and Linux
>>>> cannot.  
>>>
>>> Noone cares about the brand any more.
>>
>> Exactly,. we have and operating system that works pretty well
>> available for free across many hardware platforms. With a cute
>> little mascot.
>>
>> Let's call it the Penguin Operating System (POS) and have done with it :-)
>
> "PoS" is definitely he correct term for the numerous different Linux
> varities. None of the standard software runs on it for a start - no
> Adobe, no Microsoft, etc., so if you need to use any of those to be
> fully compatible ("alternatives" are never fully compatible, despite
> what they like to claim), then you need to use a proper operating
> system: MacOS X.

And who declared Microsoft products "standard software"? The utilities
available in UNIX MacOS under GNU/Linux and on BSDs are more "standard
software"[1] than whatever commercial closed-source product Microsoft
comes up with. As for Adobe, if anything they have Postscript and PDF,
but I don't think they've managed to make usable PDF software for UNIX
systems (a heavy acroread certainly won't count as such), and Postscript
has had at least Ghostscript for ages. And, if they did manage to make
something usable, it'd probably be closed-source and with a bunch of
features locked without a paid license.

Were it still in wider use, Shockwave Flash, which they acquired at some
point, could perhaps be better supported by improving Gnash and
Lightspark, as Adobe's own software for it wasn't - IIRC - known for its
quality and performance. Or was the quality part more rumour than
reality?


[1] cf. ISO 9945:2009 / IEEE 1003.1:2008 Vol 1 §3.361, and the whole of
    Vol 3.

-- 
Nuno Silva