Slashdot Mirror

The iBook does have a number of advantages:

• A sleek enclosure (if you like it)
• Low price
• It's a Mac. That's an advantage for me and a lot of other people, because I have Mac OS programs that I need to use. I can use them in Mac-on-Linux or I can boot into Mac OS or (when I get it) Mac OS X.
• It probably runs cooler than most Intel laptops

• It's a new machine. Give it some time, and the sound drivers will be written.
• No one said DVD didn't work: he just didn't try it yet. I've gotten DVD working on my AGP G4 running LinuxPPC without problems. (It's a bit slow for me, but my box is only 350 MHz.)

of course, the one mouse button thing really sucks. thats why im using a PC laptop instead despite the nice long battery life of those powerbooks.

Since the core of the OS X is unix. Does this mean that quicktime will be ported to other *nix systems?(i.e. linux)

People keep asking this, and the answer is probably not. The BSD layer is in the middle, underneath all the GUI stuff. Anything graphical is written using Apple's proprietary APIs.

I can imagine, though, that if you're running on PPC, something like Wine might work out. And of course, you can run MacOS under Linux/PPC right now with Mac-on-Linux. (Hey, anyone know if MacOS X will work under that?)

Wouldn't it make more sense to compare two OSs that actually run on the same hardware

Absolutely, and mention that you can have Mac on Linux too. Why wait for OS/X ?

Unfortunately CNET articles are always this bad.

You can just switch to a PPC computer of some sort, run linuxppc, and run iCab under mac on linux. Of course, most of the machines that fit that description are macintoshes....

This being known, I picked up a standard PC one-unit rack-mount case with power supply, fans, and drive mounts. A custom-wired power adapter, a little modification of the back panel and some 3/4" stand-offs and I managed to successfully mount the motherboard and get the machine booted. The only remaining complications were constructing some longer cables for the monitor plug and CD-ROM, the latter of which required some special-order high-density connectors from good 'ol Digi-Key. Total price: the rack case and about 50 bucks in parts.

dood, he gives you all you need right here. pull the motherboard out, grab a multimeter, and go to work... if you dont want to do it, its fine, but all you need to do is read up on the specs for the imac, and you should be able to figure out the rest.

isnt it always more fun to do-it-yourself? if not, like the prev poster said, "its only $40"... that shouldnt break any of us.

for that matter, you dont *need* to worry about the cdrom... which would solve some of the problem, just drop it into an existing cluster, and there you go... another processor for your use.

personally, i've always preferred macs, and currently using an 8500/200 with linuxppc (though often still use the mac os because of my job... which will hopefully change with the mac-on-linux dev). i would love to try this... now where can i pick up a really cheap imac?

.sigs are dumb!

check out mac-on-linux.

LinuxPPC running MoL (Mac-on-Linux) ... akin to vmware from the Dark Side (although MoL is fully GPL'ed)

I'm still waiting for a PowerPC emulator for PowerPC's.... Like VMware. Mac users now have a few choices in OSes: OS 8.x, OS 9, OS X Server, OS X Consumer (soon), Linux PPC, MkLinux, MacBSD... It'd be nice to have a way to run them all without having to repartition drives....

That paragraph is just specifically about mac-on-linux, which is an independent project whose gpled software is getting bundled by LinuxPPC and heretofore has not been a normal part of the distribution. It'd be like RedHat bundling Apache and saying "If you have questions about Apache, please direct your questions to the Apache website or to this mailing list we have set up over here." LinuxPPC's support in general is quite decent.

I'm only saying all this because your post was ambiguous as to whether you knew they were just referring to mac-on-linux.

According to this page it probably will allow you to run MacOS on CHRP platforms (but NOT smp systems if I read it correctly)

Man, I just installed YDL CS1.1...looks like I'll be getting LPPC2K! With the built-in Mac-On-Linux support (I'm having trouble with MOL on YDL), RH6.1, and the GUI installer, I'm wicked impressed.

First things first, Mac OS X is not going to be fully open sourced. The core system based on BSD and the Mach kernel is already open sourced under a project called Darwin. You can find more info on that at Apple's publicsource site.

Second, WINE will not work on PPC. It will only run Windows apps under x86 Linux. IIRC the WINE team has written several of their own DLLs and just send the Windows app calls to those sections of code using the processor as usual.

A similar project for PPC to make Mac apps available under Linux would be Mac On Linux or sheepshaver.

Hope this helps...

Actually you may not be necessarily out of luck, as long as you install LinuxPPC and have access to an Apple PowerMac so you can download the rom image using numerous utilities found on the web. Then install Mac-on-linux which can run off the rom image, and, bingo, you have MacOS under Linux.

Like it was mentioned, Wine and Vmware probably won't work. But if you don't have anything against Mac applications, maybe Mac-On-Linux or even SheepShaver (a commercial product) may work, if a port can be done. Anyone out there knowledgeable about the various PPC architectures have an idea on how feasible this would be?

Sounds like a nice project. I hope you guys think about coordinating with the Mac-on-Linux people, who are creating the equivalent thing for running MacOS on Linux/PPC. (They already have something running, too.) I realize that quite a lot of this stuff is processor-specific, but I would hope that there is a fair amount that generalizes, too.