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Linux PPC Boots On The Powerbook G4 Titanium
Therlin writes: "As this article explains, LinuxPPC 2000 Q4 succesfully boots on Apple's new PB G4. The Linux Kernel, X Windows and the LinuxPPC work. They also indicate that the internal modem and ethernet will probably work, but it hasn't been tested yet." It's really sad to see
such a sweet machine crippled by lack of proper mouse buttons.
Second, the article you linked doesn't even compare "liquidmetal's" strength to titanium. It says it's "very strong and very hard," but not any more than another metal.
What it does say:
- the liquidmetal alloy transfers more energy when striking a ball than either titanium or steel.
- Lighter than stainless steel but heavier than titanium, Liquidmetal Golf officials assert the alloy has a lower vibrational response than the other two traditional materials. That should translate to superior feel and less shock at impact.
- Liquidmetal is non-crystalline, and thus bears no weak and inconsistent spots.
- a proprietary alloy
- exclusive licensing agreement with Cal Tech
Since it's heavier than titanium, you probably wouldn't want to use it in a notebook computer, where every ounce counts.The fact that it's non-crystalline just means that a sample of liquidmetal is uniform, so it won't have a weak spot that fails before the rest of the sample.
It's unfortunate that universities now enter exclusive contracts, instead of publishing their findings to benefit everyone.
Finally, the golf clubs are over $400 each! If liquidmetal was so great, why aren't all golf clubs made of it now?
...to see such a sweet OS crippled by lack of proper GUI design.
/. has shown just how far downhill we've come. The sad thing is that it's the editors that are dragging Slashdot down.
This is obviously a troll. So is this:
Its really sad to see such a sweet machine crippled by lack of proper mouse buttons.
When the Slashdot editors insist on trolling on the front page, why do we expect to see rational commentary in the comments area? The recent Hooters link and other total crap posted on
This post has so many factual errors that it's comical. Ironically, he bashes "Classic" Mac OS when the story itself is about LinuxPPC. I'd love to hear the rationale from the people that marked it up as "Insightful" and "Interesting."
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
yeah yeah yeah, Macs only have one mouse button: big deal. sure it's a pain in the ass if you're using Linux, but the MacOS (including MacOS X) is designed to operate effectively with only one mouse button.
i hated it at first too, so when i bought my first Mac a few years ago (after using Linux and Windows exclusively) i ran out and bought a 3-button mouse. i found however, that after using the MacOS for a while you start to realize that if things are designed with a 1-button mouse in mind, using the standard apple mouse actually made things more convenient. to this day i have two mice plugged into my computer: the standard Apple mouse and a 4-button scroll mouse. i use the 1-button mouse the most, as it's just so much more convenient (and easier on the carpal tunnel) to just click one mouse button, esecially when i'm using photoshop or illustrator. in fact, the only time i use the 4-button mouse is when i'm web browsing as it's got the scroll wheel and the metakey-click combinations map to convenient functions in IE 5.0.
so in closing quit your bitching. it's been discussed here before that if you want to run Linux, you should be using an x86 anyhow. if you're buying a Mac, you'll probably want to (eventually) run OS X, and it works perfectly well with only one button. you can still of course attach an external x-button USB mouse, but again, i find that using the one button is pefectly convient the majority of the time. it's certainly no reason dismiss the Titanium Powerbook G4.
- j
The mouse buttons can be VERY easily emulated via the yaboot boot manager. Just pass it the boot varible for the adb mouse button keys, and wa-la, you're there. Besides, you've got your hands on the keyboard, so emulating the 2 mouse buttons is NOT a problem. LinuxPPC/Yellowdog/DebianPPC _all_ have support for USB mouses and keyboards, so just plug in a friggin' mouse.
It would be REALLY nice to be able to take advantage of the Apple hardware without feeling like a second hand mouse user. Some people use their mice a lot. Some people use their keyboard a lot. You, apparently, are one of the latter. Good for you.
But the ergonomic benefits of actually having an intrinsic 3 button mouse should not be lost. I have two buttons on my HP Omnibook, and I REALLY REALLY wish it had three. In fact, so much so that I was willing to pay a little more for three buttons. Unfortunately, I wasn't willing to pony up for a Thinkpad, which is the only real option given my other constraints.
So take it easy on someone who actually appreciates having three buttons on the dern laptop. It could be a benefit, despite the fact that you live happily without it.
It's really sad to see the poster of an article so poorly informed, and such is often the case with Mr.Taco's posts.
An ad hominem attack is poor taste. Say something meaningful. Don't troll.
Anyway, that said, just because a new material makes a good golf club doesn't make it a good choice for a laptop enclosure. The primary advantage of the amorphous metals (LiquidMetal is a trade name) in golf clubs is their ability to store elastic energy. The alloys themselves are denser than titanium (translation => heavier laptop), these alloys are more expensive than titanium, and there is the problem of beryllium being toxic. Plus, titanium forms a protective oxide that makes it corrosion resistant, whereas beryllium oxide is even more toxic than beryllium metal. The fact that beryllium is toxic is really the killer. Even though you would have to grind the case up and inhale it for it to kill you (eventually, mabye 10-20 years down the road), the public perception that it is toxic would cause serious problems for Apple.
--
--
The internet is the greatest source of biased information in the history of mankind.
From what I can tell, he knows that OS X is the last chance for Apple.
I suppose... but only in the way that Earth is the last chance for humanity.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
According to Moores lesser known second law, the number of mouse buttons will double regularly.
I never thought I'd see the day that a machine outclassed the Sony Vaio .. this thing blows it away. I want one, bad.. this machine kicks some serious ass. 1GB of ram? eeek!
All we need is for some big Linux sugardaddy *cough* RedHat *cough* *cough* to pick up LinuxPPC and make this line of notebooks fully supported under Linux.. That would be sweet. It'd be nice if they did the same for something like the Apple G4 also, and then brokered getting hardware drivers set up and whatnot - that'd give Linux a "home" architecture to work from, and allow you to fully exploit the capabilities of the hardware.
Oh well, I can dream.. damn, I want one of those though :). Match a titanium PDA case from Rhinoskin really nice, too.
..don't panic
Not only does it feel right, it's symmetrical, so you don't have to worry about which hand to use.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
well, the mice that ship with macs are now are nice, oval-shaped, "no button" laser mice.... the only reason i upgraded to 2.4.0 on my laptop was to use the damn thing.... of course gnome heartily subscribes to the "keyboard on wheels" theory of mice, so it's useless... oh well...
here's the deal: the mouse is a pointing device, not a mini-keyboard. If people want "added functionality" with extra buttons and levers and foot-pedals etc that's fine, but we should remember that that's supposed to be added functionality... as in "extra." The fact that most operating systems now can't be operated unless you have a 3-button frankenmouse shows a screwed up sense of design. Take windows up until fairly recently: files would get their names truncated at 8 characters all the time, but the os could support a mouse with 9 buttons, 3 wheels a lever and a trigger. It's all about adding needless complexity and calling it innovation.
2 1337 4 u!
For God's sake. I love Linux. I do. But Linux geeks complaining about anything GUI-related from Apple have no leg to stand on, and doing so sounds just plain silly.
Be sure and let me know when Linux has a simple GUI where every app can do the simple task of copy and paste among them - twenty-year-old technology by most standards. Every time I copy text in one app, paste in another, and see nothing, I roll my eyes and shake my head. And this with the very latest bleeding-edgest GNOME/Sawfish/Enlightenment/whatever.
Maybe if the Linux world only had one mouse button to worry about, it could get it right. Then add more buttons once the first one works.
Maybe OSX is scaring the shit out of Linux partisans because it's going to put the world's most advanced GUI on top of a rock-solid kernel, which the Linux world has never managed to even come close to?
Sheesh.
TomatoMan
-- http://frobnosticate.com
The PBG4 has a USB port.
:)
Buy a USB three-button mouse.
Plug it in.
You may have to run mouseconfig or something like that to get it to see all three buttons.
And enjoy.
Haaz: Co-founder, LinuxPPC Inc., making Linux for PowerPC since 1996.
-- haaz.
MacOS is designed for one button
Windows is designed for two buttons
X is designed for three buttons
The point is that someone buying a Powerbook intending to run Linux and hence X on it would find it nicer to have 3 buttons; but since Apple expect people to be running MAcOS they only put one button on the thinkpad.
I'm not sure what is so extraordinary about this. I mean, my Dell Lattitude has the same problem; Dell expect me to be running Windows on it so the trackpad only has 2 buttons.
Look at the positive side - at least you have the possibility of changing Linux so it supports less buttons (as indeed Emulate3Buttons does on my Dell. Try running Windows on a single-button mouse and see how far you get.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
holy cow, everytime the word apple is even breathed in passing someone (hundreds of someone's actually) bleat off about the mouse button count... honest to god, i am starting to get sick of it.
1. plug in a mouse in the usb port in the back. 2.4.0 supports usb quite nicely (osx does as well, wink wink)
2. start a group on sourceforge to "fix" gnome to actually be functional with one mouse button.
sheesh
flame if you must
2 1337 4 u!
I love seeing otherwise intelligent commentators pumping a dry well. CmdrTaco, Apple seems completely unphased by your assault on it's supply of mouse-buttons. If that's the only resource that comes up short in your assesment of the new Apple HW, then I guess that's the kind of shortage we can live with. Microsoft itself has found that only 10% of users even use a right click AT ALL, EVER. Such a biting condemnation from a community that devotes space to such earth-shttering topics as hacking the Furby...
I guess you don't know how to use a modifier key? Ctl-click for contextual menus too complex a sequence for you to remember?
I admire the rest of the comments about Mac acceleration (newtonian, not processor), alternate booting sequences (the leather kind, not the startup kind), and the endless litany of lame jokes that reaveal that the Open-Source movement and the Slashdot crowd aren't above their own sort of bigotry. Why did you even post the story and link unless it was to offer a punching bag to the trolls? Are you just jealous that OSX is gonna do more to bring *nix to the masses than your 6+ years of obscure forum posting and mutual masturbation have? Can't bring yourself to admit that cool and stylish counts to some folks?
I look forward to being moderated down as flamebait. That seems to be the only way the moderators can respond to a true reflection.
-- Why oh why didn't I eat the Blue Girl?
The mouse buttons can be VERY easily emulated via the yaboot boot manager. Just pass it the boot varible for the adb mouse button keys, and wa-la, you're there. Besides, you've got your hands on the keyboard, so emulating the 2 mouse buttons is NOT a problem. LinuxPPC/Yellowdog/DebianPPC _all_ have support for USB mouses and keyboards, so just plug in a friggin' mouse. It's really sad to see the poster of an article so poorly informed, and such is often the case with Mr.Taco's posts.
A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I wanted a Logitech Trackman marble. It just looked damn cool and seemed like it would be much funner than a mouse to use. But luckily I tried one before I bought one, and was sadly disappointed at how awkward it was in comparison to a mouse. Well, that and I was just getting good at Quake at the time...
Mice, to me, still seem like a kludgy and hacky implementation of a pointing device. But I guess I can't bitch too much since they do their job and I haven't invented anything better.
>>Mac OS X is, without question, the first UNIX that will break into the mainstream desktop market. But unless they start thinking about being a little more practical with it and with their hardware designs, people just won't care enough to continue buying Mac>>
The entire move to Mac OS X is based on practicality. The ability to run BSD applications is finally going to kill the 'not enough apps' argument because somewhere in Cupertino, is somebody porting WINE to OS X. Right next door is the group that is taking all the open source standard bearers and creating automated ways of taking the code and wrapping a Mac OS X compliant interface on them.
As for their hardware designs, what is impractical about a 5 hour battery life? Or does 5.3 pounds in a notebook strike you as too flighty? Is adding a PCI slot to their desktop line and upping their bus speed to 133Mhz something that is a problem for you?
Apple may occasionally come out with something like their twentieth century machine or the cube but, on average, they have a higher percentage of hits per design risk than most other computer companies. This is partly because so much of the industry is made up of commoditized herd followers.
Whenever you innovate, you are going to have your share of duds and your share of hits. Apple's salvation is keeping the ratio of hits to duds as high as possible. These new machines are likely to further that goal.
DB
Rather than whine about the lack of multiple mouse buttons, program the trackpad to recognize taps in the corners as different events. Program them to do whatever you want..."right mouse" button, control click, command click, whatever. Program it like the Thinking Mouse I've been using on my Mac for five years-different button mapping, designed by me, for each application.
In other words, why are all these people so willing to work around the limitations of commercially available hardware unless it has an Apple logo on it?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Last I've heard, in the non-server edition, they've obscured the *nix parts enough that only someone who wanted to get to them could.
/etc, /bin and such by default when the user is in the GUI. Just launch Terminal and you can see everything. You can change the default behavior of the GUI (at least in the beta), by flipping a bit in an XML file.
/etc and bash. It's going to consist of taking the functionality and features of Unix, and wrapping them in a consistent, approachable user interface. The masses aren't going to change for Unix. Unix will have to change for the masses (I know I sound like a broken record).
I don't know what this means, exactly. OSX hides things like
You should also get up to speed on the differences between Mac OS X (shipping in March) and the new version of Mac OS X Server (shipping April/May). They are from the same codebase, and are considerably different that Mac OS X Server 1.2 (essentially Rhapsody), which is currently available.
Bringing "Unix to the masses" isn't going to consist of expecting everyone to become comfortable with
This thing also runs on Mach, which is SLOW. (MKlinux anyone?)
There is a big difference in between MkLinux and Darwin.
- Scott
--
Scott Stevenson
WildTofu
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Why are people complaining about one button mice and odd chipsets? The fact of the matter is, Linux runs very usable on a mac, even for a PC convert as myself.
:/ But I have my Thinking Mouse when I need it.
:)
Mice - the Linux kernel naturally supports 3 button mice. 2 button is usable, 3 is great. in the proper environment, a single button is still valid, though in general, a PC user is just to used too multi-button to even try single button for more than 5 minutes. Now, since Linux knows what a 3 button mouse is, all you need is drivers that do those buttons right. Guess what... they're already there. the Kensington Thinking mouse (4 button) has support for the three standard buttons. 4th, who knows. hack in support if you like clickers and it isn't already there. As for powerbooks, of which I own one (a "PDQ"), there are ways of emulating two or three buttons. This can be done using meta-click combos, or keys, like what I use, F11/F12. no problem. As for USB, Linux/PPC had decent usable USB support a couple stable kernels before x86 had rudimentary USB support, including the "new input layer" and all the normal USB. Conclusion: the only gripe about buttons one can have is that multi-'s aren't standard included, and in the case of a powerbook, because its built in, you suddenly feel obligated to use complicated finger combos, or as with mine, two handed...
"Proprietary" chipsets: some chips in the mac are similar to x86, like the USB controller, and are fairly well supported accross x86 and ppc in parallel. Firewire support is coming along, and most other features tend to be well supported within maybe 6 months of their release, often with little help from Apple. ATI did work with Ben Herrenschmidt on an issue that came up, and I commend them on taking that initiative. There also tend to be endian issues here and there, like in pcmcia (which works fairly well) and video. x86 have a habit of looking the other way.
Looking at Apple's released specs, the block diagram looks similar to the iBook and Cube, in that it has the core IO board "KeyLargo" and other ASICs are similar. just a matter of time before this bad boy works perfectly.
Basically, in terms of hardware support, the only thing hindering the Linux/PPC crowd is that it isn't trendy enough that things go quickly, and there is also the fact that Linus is quite obviously x86-biased. Binary-only distribution of programs also tend to hurt usability, if you go for those sorts. MTVp is still antique and unsupported, and since the open-sourcing, OpenOffice has been coming along, but is not quite there yet. (No, OpenOffice doesn't just compile on linux/ppc straight. It is to be considered a port, as it is taking that sort of effort to get it there)
I think the next big step in linux/ppc's development is user support. i've noticed small annoying issues that nobody addresses. User support is growing, now thanks to new stable distributions like Suse, Debian, etc, and the continued improving efforts of LinuxPPC Inc. and TerraSoft. But we have a way to go yet before it stays on par consistant with x86.
my $.02
(Using Linux 4 years, converted from PC to Mac hardware 2 years ago.)
Lycestra