• A retrospective look at Mac OS X Snow Leopard

    From ant@ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) to comp.sys.mac.software,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac.systems,comp.sys.mac.vintage on Monday, March 01, 2021 17:41:49
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    http://morrick.me/archives/9220
    --
    "Ants never lend, ants never borrow." --unknown
    Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly.
    /\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://aqfl.net & http://antfarm.home.dhs.org.
    / /\ /\ \ Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail.
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  • From super70s@super70s@super70s.invalid to comp.sys.mac.software,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac.systems,comp.sys.mac.vintage on Monday, March 08, 2021 07:18:52
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    In article <X6ydnXue7Jgg5qD9nZ2dnUU7-amdnZ2d@earthlink.com>,
    ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:

    http://morrick.me/archives/9220

    Snow Leopard was very stable but so was Tiger, if you're going the retro
    route I never saw an advantage of Snow Leopard over Tiger as long as you
    have a machine that can still run Tiger. With Tiger you have the
    advantage of the regularly updated TenFourFox and its better security
    than Firefox 45.9 on Snow Leopard. Unfortunately the developer of
    TenFourFox doesn't develop for anything past Leopard and the Power Mac
    but he must have a good reason.

    I do have Snow Leopard on the hard drive of my 2009 iMac (which it
    shipped with) but always boot it up in El Capitan on an external SSD,
    that seemed like the most stable solution.
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Lewis@g.kreme@kreme.dont-email.me to comp.sys.mac.software,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac.systems,comp.sys.mac.vintage on Monday, March 08, 2021 19:00:53
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    In message <super70s-C1D707.07185208032021@reader02.eternal-september.org> super70s <super70s@super70s.invalid> wrote:
    In article <X6ydnXue7Jgg5qD9nZ2dnUU7-amdnZ2d@earthlink.com>,
    ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:

    http://morrick.me/archives/9220

    Snow Leopard was very stable but so was Tiger, if you're going the retro route I never saw an advantage of Snow Leopard over Tiger as long as you have a machine that can still run Tiger. With Tiger you have the
    advantage of the regularly updated TenFourFox and its better security
    than Firefox 45.9 on Snow Leopard. Unfortunately the developer of
    TenFourFox doesn't develop for anything past Leopard and the Power Mac
    but he must have a good reason.

    Nope, the reason is he wants to write for PowerPC.

    There are MANY reasons to prefer Snow Leopard over Tiger, but both of
    them as so ancient no one should be using either,

    --
    'What good is a candle at noonday?' --Sourcery
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From super70s@super70s@super70s.invalid to comp.sys.mac.software,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac.systems,comp.sys.mac.vintage on Wednesday, March 10, 2021 07:52:26
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    In article <slrns4ct35.ero.g.kreme@m1mini.local>,
    Lewis <g.kreme@kreme.dont-email.me> wrote:

    In message <super70s-C1D707.07185208032021@reader02.eternal-september.org> super70s <super70s@super70s.invalid> wrote:
    In article <X6ydnXue7Jgg5qD9nZ2dnUU7-amdnZ2d@earthlink.com>,
    ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) wrote:

    http://morrick.me/archives/9220

    Snow Leopard was very stable but so was Tiger, if you're going the retro route I never saw an advantage of Snow Leopard over Tiger as long as you have a machine that can still run Tiger. With Tiger you have the
    advantage of the regularly updated TenFourFox and its better security
    than Firefox 45.9 on Snow Leopard. Unfortunately the developer of TenFourFox doesn't develop for anything past Leopard and the Power Mac
    but he must have a good reason.

    Nope, the reason is he wants to write for PowerPC.

    There are MANY reasons to prefer Snow Leopard over Tiger,

    Like what, some video conferencing app? Even the OP says that's become outdated on Snow Leopard now.

    but both of them as so ancient no one should be using either,

    If you can be productive on Snow Leopard or Tiger with apps that won't
    run on newer systems that's a reason to use them, there's no law that
    says you can't use them and newer systems also.
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Lewis@g.kreme@kreme.dont-email.me to comp.sys.mac.software,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac.systems,comp.sys.mac.vintage on Wednesday, March 10, 2021 17:04:54
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    In message <super70s-AEA43D.07522610032021@reader02.eternal-september.org> super70s <super70s@super70s.invalid> wrote:
    but both of them as so ancient no one should be using either,

    If you can be productive on Snow Leopard or Tiger with apps that won't
    run on newer systems that's a reason to use them, there's no law that
    says you can't use them and newer systems also.

    I did not say there was a law, but no rational person shuld be using an
    OS that old and that far out of support. It is foolish, and it is
    dangerous to you and to others if you connect machines with known remote exploits to the Internet.

    But you be you.

    --
    'Sometimes there has to be a civil war, and sometimes, afterwards,
    it's best to pretend something didn't happen. Sometimes people
    have to do a job, and then they have to be forgotten.' --Men at
    Arms
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  • From super70s@super70s@super70s.invalid to comp.sys.mac.software,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac.systems,comp.sys.mac.vintage on Wednesday, March 10, 2021 17:57:34
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    In article <slrns4hv1m.1egk.g.kreme@m1mini.local>,
    Lewis <g.kreme@kreme.dont-email.me> wrote:

    In message <super70s-AEA43D.07522610032021@reader02.eternal-
    september.org> super70s <super70s@super70s.invalid> wrote:
    but both of them as so ancient no one should be using either,

    If you can be productive on Snow Leopard or Tiger with apps that won't
    run on newer systems that's a reason to use them, there's no law that
    says you can't use them and newer systems also.

    I did not say there was a law, but no rational person shuld be using an
    OS that old and that far out of support. It is foolish, and it is
    dangerous to you and to others if you connect machines with known
    remote exploits to the Internet.

    But you be you.

    "Foolish" and "dangerous", lol. TenFourFox gets thousands of downloads
    with every update which are very common so many others also like to live dangerously I guess.
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Wolffan@akwolffan@zoho.com to comp.sys.mac.software, comp.sys.mac.system, comp.sys.mac.systems, comp.sys.mac.vintage on Thursday, March 11, 2021 09:14:53
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    On 2021 Mar10, Lewis wrote
    (in article <slrns4hv1m.1egk.g.kreme@m1mini.local>):

    In message<super70s-AEA43D.07522610032021@reader02.eternal-september.org> super70s <super70s@super70s.invalid> wrote:
    but both of them as so ancient no one should be using either,

    If you can be productive on Snow Leopard or Tiger with apps that won't
    run on newer systems that's a reason to use them, there's no law that
    says you can't use them and newer systems also.

    I did not say there was a law, but no rational person shuld be using an
    OS that old and that far out of support.

    Hmm. Looks at beige G3, still working, running Jaguar (I put Panther on it once. Bad idea. Put Jag back.) in 768 MB RAM, 20 GB UltraSCSI and 5 GB SATA internal HDD, working floppy drive, working DVD burner, maxed out internal video driving a 20” CRT (yes, a CRT...) and Classic is still up. It also
    has a USB 2/FireWire combo card. And certain old hardware is connected via FW to that G3. It’s irrational to want to run old, but still working, and expensive when new 20+ years ago hardware? Tell me more about the universe
    you live in. What colour is the sky there?

    And, oh, there are also two eMacs which were maxed RAM, maxed HDD, and
    running Leopard (can’t run Snow Leo) also operational, feeding various devices... and in use when I want to play the Greatest Tactical Game Of All Time, Harpoon. Long Live the Glorious Red Banner Northern Fleet, Yankee Imperialist carrier battle groups come within Backfire range at their peril!
    It is foolish,

    nope.
    and it is
    dangerous to you and to others if you connect machines with known remote exploits to the Internet.

    Who said that they’re on a LAN segment which can see outside the building?


    But you be you.

    You made a number of unsupported, and unsupportable, statements, and several unwarranted assumptions.

    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Wolffan@akwolffan@zoho.com to comp.sys.mac.software, comp.sys.mac.system, comp.sys.mac.systems, comp.sys.mac.vintage on Thursday, March 11, 2021 09:21:57
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    On 2021 Mar10, super70s wrote
    (in article<super70s-4A1A68.17573410032021@reader02.eternal-september.org>):

    In article<slrns4hv1m.1egk.g.kreme@m1mini.local>,
    Lewis <g.kreme@kreme.dont-email.me> wrote:

    In message<super70s-AEA43D.07522610032021@reader02.eternal-
    september.org> super70s <super70s@super70s.invalid> wrote:
    but both of them as so ancient no one should be using either,

    If you can be productive on Snow Leopard or Tiger with apps that won't run on newer systems that's a reason to use them, there's no law that says you can't use them and newer systems also.

    I did not say there was a law, but no rational person shuld be using an
    OS that old and that far out of support. It is foolish, and it is
    dangerous to you and to others if you connect machines with known
    remote exploits to the Internet.

    But you be you.

    "Foolish" and "dangerous", lol. TenFourFox gets thousands of downloads
    with every update which are very common so many others also like to live dangerously I guess.

    There just aren’t that many exploits out there for old versions of OS X.
    And lots of newer stuff will not run on PPC CPUs, they gotta have Intel. And if you segment your LAN you can, if necessary, temporarily let a system see outside the building and then lock it back down... and, frankly, being able
    to use certain older, but expensive when new, and not supported beyond Leopard, hardware is worth the risk. No doubt when the last of certain devices, mostly printers, finally dies or when getting toner for them becomes too much of a hassle perhaps I’ll retire to old machines. Maybe. Or perhaps I’ll use ‘em to play Marathon. Or Harpoon. Or both.

    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From JF Mezei@jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca to comp.sys.mac.software,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac.systems,comp.sys.mac.vintage on Thursday, March 11, 2021 14:46:46
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    I am in the process of upgrading my Snow Leopard Xserve.

    I am essentually transitioning it to a vanilla Unix environment. This
    means building much of the server apps and middleware from open source
    such as OpenSSL that is current (the OS-X version on Snow Leopard is no
    longer supported by many remote sites), rebuilding middleware such as
    PHP, Postfix and Apache. (and to do that, you need to rebuild Perl, and
    small items like get-config (sp?) which are used to build the packages.
    I now need to look into libxms2 because the PHP build complains about it missing, but may be an option to specify where it is.

    Since this is a server, the client apps are not important. And when
    Apple purposefully disabled the client server management apps (actually
    deleted them during upgrades on other machines), I've learned to manage
    the machine at command line.

    Ironically, moving all the server software to /user/local via open
    source builds is a pre-requisite to ever upgrading OS-X since upgrading
    past Snow Leopard removes much of the server stuff which then needs to
    be re-installed. However, when the xserve dies, my next server will be
    Linux since Apple does not want to be in the server business and is
    making it increasingly harder and hardwer to bring in apps from outside
    its little app store designed for client, not server

    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Scott Alfter@scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us to comp.sys.mac.software,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac.systems,comp.sys.mac.vintage on Thursday, March 11, 2021 22:46:06
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    In article <Hsu2I.83$GI5.24@fx43.iad>,
    JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca> wrote:
    However, when the xserve dies, my next server will be Linux since Apple
    does not want to be in the server business and is making it increasingly >harder and hardwer to bring in apps from outside its little app store >designed for client, not server

    Why not throw Linux on the Xserve? I dug up my G4 Mac mini a while back
    and, after replacing the hard drive (with an SSD) and DVD burner and loading Tiger back on part of the SSD, I used the rest of the space to bring up
    Gentoo Linux. It wasn't much more difficult than installing on x86
    hardware, other than that you're compiling everything on a processor that's maybe about as fast as a Raspberry Pi 2. That way, your software is as up-to-date as anyone else's, even though you are running on older hardware
    (and my sig should make clear I have no issues with older hardware :-) ).

    _/_
    / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
    (IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
    \_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From JF Mezei@jfmezei.spamnot@vaxination.ca to comp.sys.mac.software,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac.systems,comp.sys.mac.vintage on Thursday, March 11, 2021 22:07:46
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    On 2021-03-11 17:46, Scott Alfter wrote:

    Why not throw Linux on the Xserve?

    Because that would disrupt service as I boot one or the other. Also, the
    Xserve is a dead end as it requires proprietary disks Apple no longer
    sells. (the SATA interface may be SATA but lacks negotiation so you
    can't put modern drives of identical capacity.


    So when I have a new server, I can transfer service by service as
    progress in configuring the new server.

    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Lewis@g.kreme@kreme.dont-email.me to comp.sys.mac.software,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac.systems,comp.sys.mac.vintage on Friday, March 12, 2021 03:27:50
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    In message <O4x2I.10$ts5.3@fx46.iad> Scott Alfter <scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us> wrote:
    In article <Hsu2I.83$GI5.24@fx43.iad>,
    [Apple] is making it increasingly harder and hardwer to bring in apps
    from outside its little app store designed for client, not server

    Complete and utter horse shit.

    Why not throw Linux on the Xserve?

    Linux is a reasonable choice for old hardware.

    It wasn't much more difficult than installing on x86 hardware, other
    than that you're compiling everything on a processor that's maybe
    about as fast as a Raspberry Pi 2

    I'm not sure any Mac mini was ever quite that slow.

    --
    Demons have existed on the Discworld for at least as long as the
    gods, who in many ways they closely resemble. The difference is
    basically the same as between terrorists and freedom fighters.
    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Dr Eberhard W Lisse@nospam@lisse.NA to comp.sys.mac.software,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac.systems,comp.sys.mac.vintage on Friday, March 12, 2021 08:20:59
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    ProductName: Mac OS X Server
    ProductVersion: 10.5.8
    BuildVersion: 9L34
    8:18 up 337 days, 19:47, 1 user, load averages: 0.00 0.00 0.00

    el
    On 2021-03-11 16:14 , Wolffan wrote:
    On 2021 Mar10, Lewis wrote
    (in article <slrns4hv1m.1egk.g.kreme@m1mini.local>):

    In message<super70s-AEA43D.07522610032021@reader02.eternal-september.org>
    super70s <super70s@super70s.invalid> wrote:
    but both of them as so ancient no one should be using either,

    If you can be productive on Snow Leopard or Tiger with apps that won't
    run on newer systems that's a reason to use them, there's no law that
    says you can't use them and newer systems also.

    I did not say there was a law, but no rational person shuld be using an
    OS that old and that far out of support.

    Hmm. Looks at beige G3, still working, running Jaguar (I put Panther on it once. Bad idea. Put Jag back.) in 768 MB RAM, 20 GB UltraSCSI and 5 GB SATA internal HDD, working floppy drive, working DVD burner, maxed out internal video driving a 20” CRT (yes, a CRT...) and Classic is still up. It also has a USB 2/FireWire combo card. And certain old hardware is connected via FW to that G3. It’s irrational to want to run old, but still working, and expensive when new 20+ years ago hardware? Tell me more about the universe you live in. What colour is the sky there?

    And, oh, there are also two eMacs which were maxed RAM, maxed HDD, and running Leopard (can’t run Snow Leo) also operational, feeding various devices... and in use when I want to play the Greatest Tactical Game Of All Time, Harpoon. Long Live the Glorious Red Banner Northern Fleet, Yankee Imperialist carrier battle groups come within Backfire range at their peril!
    It is foolish,

    nope.
    and it is
    dangerous to you and to others if you connect machines with known remote
    exploits to the Internet.

    Who said that they’re on a LAN segment which can see outside the building?


    But you be you.

    You made a number of unsupported, and unsupportable, statements, and several unwarranted assumptions.


    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113
  • From Scott Alfter@scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us to comp.sys.mac.software,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac.systems,comp.sys.mac.vintage on Friday, March 12, 2021 16:39:58
    From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

    In article <slrns4lntm.27ee.g.kreme@m1mini.local>,
    Lewis <g.kreme@gmail.don-t-email-me.com> wrote:
    In message <O4x2I.10$ts5.3@fx46.iad> Scott Alfter ><scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us> wrote:
    It wasn't much more difficult than installing on x86 hardware, other
    than that you're compiling everything on a processor that's maybe
    about as fast as a Raspberry Pi 2

    I'm not sure any Mac mini was ever quite that slow.

    1.5 GHz, 32-bit, single core, maxed out at 1 GB RAM. About the only opportunity for a speedup was replacing the spinning rust with an M.2 SATA
    SSD (inside an adapter that converts it to a 2.5" PATA device).
    Subjectively, building code on it (which Gentoo does a lot :) ) seems about
    as fast as building the same code on my Raspberry Pis. Objectively, I don't have benchmarks that can confirm or deny the assertion, though.

    _/_
    / v \ Scott Alfter (remove the obvious to send mail)
    (IIGS( https://alfter.us/ Top-posting!
    \_^_/ >What's the most annoying thing on Usenet?

    --- Synchronet 3.18b-Win32 NewsLink 1.113