Excitement about BootCamp

There's been a massive buzz about BootCamp, the new software from Apple that
allows OSX users to run Windows.. It is a software that can potentially shake
up the OS market.. There's been plenty of people analysing it's possible
effects.. It gives people more reasons to switch to a Mac, and to slowly wean
people off Windows.. However, there seems to be little comment on how this'll
affect Linux..

I personally like Linux.. I like Macs as well (they're very cool looking
machines) but I would probably install Linux on a Mac instead of using OSX..
Not that I think that OSX is a crappy OS, but I believe in freedom, and my
choice is Linux..

Some people on the net have shown that it might be possible to run Linux using
the BootCamp software as well.. I don't see why not.. And even if it wasn't
possible now, someone will make it possible.. But I digress..

Let's start with games.. Mac gamers are excited because it will allow them to
play both Windows and Mac games.. From the outset, it sounds like the Mac
users will have more games to play with, however, most Mac games can probably
be found on Windows as well.. So, not much there.. What it does mean however,
is that, it will probably be more appealing to switch to the Mac now.. On
this sentiment, Apple shares rose almost 10% with the announcement of
BootCamp..

If it does end up selling more Macs, more game developers will start paying
attention to the Mac.. Meaning that they will start developing games for the
Mac as well.. The fallout from this is that it would be easier to port games
that are designed for the Mac to Linux.. For one, the Mac doesn't use
Direct3D.. So, the developers would probably develop in OpenGL, or use some
sort of fast compatibility layer.. Linux uses OpenGL as well, and that means
that at least on the graphics end of things, porting would be easy..

Add to that the fact that development on Macs would be done in Xcode, and the
heart of Xcode is the GCC compiler, which is incidentally the main compiler
for Linux applications as well.. So, code written once could feasibly be
re-compiled.. Although, there might be some issues with platform specific
libraries, these are probably less differences between OSX and Linux than
Windows and Linux..

And once we start with games.. everything else will just follow.. Most people
i've asked to switch to Linux, have complained to me about gaming.. Granted,
I play lots of cool games in Linux (some native and some with WINE), but I
won't say that we have the same kind of library as Windows has..

So, in conclusion, I believe that BootCamp spells something good for Linux in
general.. It just means that developers will probably start noticing and
developing for an alternative platform, which happens to make it easier to
port to Linux than from Windows.. Which hopefully means that the barriers for
making them develop a version for Linux will come down..

Just my 2 sen..

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