MacOS 9, OS X And Linux On An iBook?

zoltanse asks: "As I am changing jobs, I have to return my company notebook, so it is time again to think about new hardware. Given the recent hype around OS X I am considering buying an iBook to give it a try. More important of course is my day-to-day productivity, so being able to run Linux is important, too. Does anyone have experience with this kind of setup? What are the pitfalls of running MacOS 9, OS X and Linux side by side on well equipped hardware? Is it possible at all, practical, or painful? What about the supported add-on hardware, like wireless LAN?"

Comments

powerbook

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to be using this machine professionally, spring for the real powerbook. The smaller screen on the iBook can only do 800x600. Powerbooks have 14.1" screens that can do 1024x768.

If you use it a lot, its really worth it.

Re:powerbook

[grammar nazi]

Although the iBooks are nice looking computers that do have a good purpose. The do not have as much utility as a Powerbook. For example, there is no Svideo or SVGA outputs on a iBook, but there are on a Powerbook.

Re:powerbook

[n0cturne]

Agreed. The iBooks are great machines for some things; running OS X is not one of those things. All the iBooks come with 64MB - you'll have to at least double that to even think about OS X. The iBook has only a 256k L2 cache.

Even the base PowerBook comes with a 1MB L2 cache, and it makes a noticeable difference. The bus runs at 100MHz versus 66MHz on the iBook. The extra screen real estate (1024x768) is also something you'd miss.

I'd suggest the base 400MHz PB upgraded to 128MB or more.

Re:powerbook

[Smitty825]

Heh, this is my second attempt at this post, because the first one didn't go through for some reason...maybe Taco is working on the site?

Anyway, to the point, the 256k Level 2 cache on the iBook is significantly better than the 1MB L2 cache on the Powerbooks for this reason: The L2 cache on the iBook is placed on the CPU and runs at the same clock speed as the CPU, while the Powerbook has an external L2 cache that runs at like 1/2 or 3/5 the clock speed of the CPU...There's a quick, unscientific result at Xlr8yourmac.com

Even though the iBook is faster than the Powerbook, I agree that the other features the Powerbook offers (PC Card Slots, Better Screen, etc) are much better than what the iBook offers a professional and thus would be idea for this consumer...

Re:powerbook

[zoltanse]

Duh, didn't know that. So cannot use an iBook to do presentations on a video beamer ? Bummer !

Re:powerbook

[rthille]

The new iBooks have composite out, but not s-video. They also have Firewire, so they've got the bandwidth for TV output, digitally, but nothing cost effective would let you take advantage of that.

Avoid the most recent models

[ebenson]

If you wish to run GNU/Linux on Apple hardware your better off staying away from the most recent machines, pretty much every time apple makes a revision on thier hardware it takes at least a couple months before the support makes its way into the kernel and stabalizes. If you find an older revision you will have alot better luck. However, do be sure to get the so called `Newworld' era machines, (pretty much anything 1999 and on) the `oldworld' (beige etc) hardware is much more difficult to run OSX on, and is much harder to boot GNU/Linux without MacOS.

As for running GNU/Linux, OSX and OS9, this is quite possible, you just need to think ahead when partitioning, `newworld' Apple hardware needs a small 800K "Apple_Bootstrap" partition to hold the yaboot bootloader. see my partitioning doc at http://penguinppc.org/usr/ybin/doc/ ; ; ; along with the yaboot-faq. my bootloader installer (ybin) also lets you create a boot menu for the 3 OSes.

For newwer (G4 era) Apple hardware the best kernel source tree to use would be Ben's: http://ppclinux.apple.com/~benh/

I recommend the Debian distribution for powerpc hardware, in my experience its the most complete and stable.

--
Ethan

Re:Avoid the most recent models

[apm]

That's really not true except for the very recent models. In fact, even the Dual G4's are supported now. I run Mac OS X and 9 side-by-side on my Dual G4-450, and have a partition set aside for Linux. I haven't installed yet, though; OS X is too much fun! :)

The nice thing about OS X and OS 9 is that they can share a partition. So you really only need to worry about setting up Linux and MacOS to dual-boot, which is a common setup. Then, from within MacOS, you choose whether you want to boot OS 9 or OS X. I have a friend who does this, and it seems to work pretty well.

And yes, the Airport is supported under Linux, and presumably under OS X as well. What I'd really like to see is support for OS X under Mac-On-Linux. Then I could run Linux, with MacOS X on a virtual desktop, running OS 9 applications. ;)

Re:Avoid the most recent models

[GMontag451]

Damn! I thought that if you installed OS X on the same partition then you couldn't boot OS 9! That's why I didn't do it. Oh well. DP4 was stable on my iBook anyway.

PS There is no support for Airport in OS X at this time. Read the release notes. Neither is there support for Firewire.

Re:Avoid the most recent models

[ebenson]

Damn! I thought that if you installed OS X on the same partition then you couldn't boot OS 9! That's why I didn't do it. Oh well. DP4 was stable on my iBook anyway.

That is true, well i suppose you could but it would involve getting the OS9 system folder reblessed (a pain) which renders OSX unbootable...

The other problem is if you have separate partitions but use HFS+ for OSX, once you boot OS9 it mounts your OSX partition and sees its not really MacOS and deblesses it! making OSX unbootable.

Your much better off using UFS for OSX on a seperate partition.

And to the previous poster about dual booting, look at ybin it makes tri booting MUCH simpler then that, no fscking with boot variables and control panels, just reboot and choose your OS from the boot menu.

--
Ethan

Re:Avoid the most recent models

[A moron]

The other problem is if you have separate partitions but use HFS+ for OSX, once you boot OS9 it mounts your OSX partition and sees its not really MacOS and deblesses it! making OSX unbootable.
<P>
This isn't true for me. My Mac OS partition is HFS+ and I've booted into OS 9 several times. The Mac OS X partition is mounted. I can go in, look around, then boot back into OS X with no problems.

Re:Avoid the most recent models

[trimbo]

> The other problem is if you have separate partitions but use HFS+ for OSX, once you
> boot OS9 it mounts your OSX partition and sees its not really MacOS and deblesses it! making
> OSX unbootable.

To boot back into OS X from OS 9, you have to use the System Disk 3.3 that they included with OS X. It's in the OS X partition under the Mac OS 9 folder. Run that and you'll be fine. If you had some other kind of issue, you may try running Classic from OS X to set up OS 9 with the new extensions.

As far as I can tell, you're fine with HFS+ for your OS X partition, save case insensitivity if you care about that sort of thing.

Regarding the original question, you can do this on most machines. As another poster mentioned, you may have some issues with brand new machines and Linux. You'll have to make 4 partitions, MacOS 9, X, Linux and Linux Swap partitions. Then use BootX from OS 9 when you want to run Linux, SystemDisk 3.3 from OS 9 to run OS X.

Frankly, if you're looking for Linux, why install OS X at all on this machine? Just install OS 9 and Linux. If you're looking for any decent UNIX, then just install Mac OS X, I think you'll find most UNIX packages have been ported (except that nasty X-Windows stuff :-)).

Hope this helps, Chris, posting from MacOS X

Re:Avoid the most recent models

[ebenson]

Then use BootX from OS 9

NO! don't use BootX on newworld machines it does *NOT* work. you must use yaboot instead.

Consider VPC

[maggard]

Consider running Virtual PC from Connectix. While it's not as fast as running directly on the hardware it's stable, well documented, and generally fast enough for most folks on any reasonably modern Mac.

One of the advantages I appreciate about it is the ability to keep my Mac environment while popping in & out of others at need, no reboots required. At various times I've had RedHat & Mandrake installed, Netware, Win9x, and several NTs. Double-click - I'm running NT. Double-click - I'm in Netware. Double-click - hey it's Linux! Click - I'm back to my MacOS which never stopped running. No messy partitions, no boot managers, no shut-down-everything-then-reboot-into-whatever.

Moving from hardware to hardware is simply a matter of reinstalling VPC then copying the settings & disk image. I keep a small hub on my desk so I can drag these images between my desktop & laptop without burdoning the office LAN (routinely copying a 1 GB file on shared media isn't really a nice thing to do to one's office-mates)

Tips for running VPC: Memory and disk space, you can't have too much of either. A stock iBook would be crowded with VPC, really consider bumping up whatever you get as much as reasonably possible.

The hackers highjacked grammar nazi's account!

[blameless]

The real grammar nazi would have combined the first fragment with the sentence that follows. Like this:

Although the iBooks are nice looking computers that do have a good purpose, they do not have as much utility as a Powerbook.

Also, he would have said "...there are no Svideo...".

Mac OSL

[grovertime]

i wouldn't recommend linux for the mac if you're considering buying the ibook or any recent mac (produced within the past 18 months for sure). the kinks will make it far too annoying, depending on what type of user you are.

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