I've never really associated "Proprietary" with Open versus Closed source.
> Maybe. If the standards get completely opened, no proprietary components or drivers, it remains to be seen which one would be best.
It's been a while since I've used desktop Linux regularly so it's hard for me to say. Apple more or less designed this processor for running iOS & MacOS though so its going to have an edge regardless of quality of Linux drivers.
But that's what it's about, more or less: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_software. While exact definitions of open, closed and proprietary software vary, no mainstream definition is related to "specific to an OS". Software can be single/multiplatform and it can be FOSS/proprietary, and those two axes are independent.
> Apple more or less designed this processor for running iOS & MacOS though so its going to have an edge regardless of quality of Linux drivers.
If Apple retains some "secret magic sauce", sure. However, on a level field, with full access to the hardware for everyone who asks, who can say?
It makes sense. Just not really a term I would use that way so never occurred to me in that context.
> If Apple retains some "secret magic sauce". However, on a level field, with full access to the hardware for everyone who asks, who can say?
That's not really what I was thinking.
If you build the CPU and the OS together, you can make optimizations which aren't available to more modular systems.
Software being proprietary is independent of whether it's specific to an OS. I can write FOSS apps specifically for macOS. Drivers can also be FOSS.
> But if you want unix running on Mac hardware, the best experience is almost always going to be running MacOS
Maybe. If the standards get completely opened, no proprietary components or drivers, it remains to be seen which one would be best.