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Installing Linux On The New Apple iBook
Jack Moffitt writes: "I just bought one of the new apple iBooks, which I then proceeded to install debian on. There are some installation problems, but it works well. I wrote up my thoughts and notes here. Sound isn't working, but I've started driver research and work. This is probably the best Linux laptop one can buy right now, so go get one!" He includes an excellent rundown on installing Debian, and talks about what's known (and what's being worked on) to get sound to work. Does this mean that Ogg Vorbis tracks will soon play through the new iBook's speakers?
why is this one of the best linux laptops one can buy if it doesnt even have everything working? im totaly confused.
stuff
--
Free Mac Mini
Don't end your sentence a preposition with.
...that I can't get Debian to use sound on my boring old Stinkpad 600E.
Crystal 4280/461x + AC97 Audio, version 0.13, 10:39:21 Feb 27 2001
cs461x: Card found at 0x50100000 and 0x50000000, IRQ 11
cs461x: Thinkpad 600E (unsupported) at 0x50100000/0x50000000, IRQ 11
cs461x: Unsupported configuration due to lack of documentation.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
IMHO, laptops are too unconfigurable to be of much use other than business trips. Also, not having sound is quite horrible. Why bother with linux on it when you can just use the preinstalled OS and use linux at home?
Is it really that important to run linux everywhere?
---
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Sig
So far, it looks like Apple hasn't been all talk in their support of the community, and this may bode well.
-------
"To hope's end I rode and to heart's breaking: Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!"
...unless you want sound and other misc. frivolties.
Who needs sound anyway? Back in my day, we only had sound it put a boombox beside the computer and put in a Wierd Al tape. And we Liked it!
Back in my day, you were considered a god if you had a newfangled computer with a built in speaker that made beeps and boops. And we LIKED it!
Back in my day, the SID chip on a C-64 was only for snobs and rich sissy boys who needed fancy stuff like color and sound on a PC. We didn't need it then and we dont need it now and we LIKE it that way!.
D
Mad Scientists with too much time on thier hands
The first, last, and only tech news site on the net
My work just got a new iBook in doing the dual boot OS 9/OS X thing. It's a fast little laptop. Much faster to configure for our NT network than even the IBM A21 Thinkpads running Win2000 was.
No, I've not tried Linux on the iBook yet...but OS X was nice on it.
MP3 players like Panic's Audion can already play Obb Vorbis tracks in OS 9 or OS X.
--
...or am I missing something?
Forgive me, but I tend to disagree with this quite heavily. While I wouldn't say it's the best, the Dell Inspiron 8000 blows this out of the water for compatability. I'm partial to Mandrake 8.0, but any distribution is supported on this machine, and the ATI M4 Mobility or nVidia GeForce GO video, ESS Maestro3 sound, and Intel EEPro100 onboard ethernet are all supported out of the box. Hell, even the Lucent Winmodem is one of the supported models on www.linmodems.org and works great. Dell's support is great, their options are extremely configurable, and I've been enjoy watching my DVDs with Xine on trips for a while now. I'd recommend this laptop to anyone for Linux use, and would definitely pick it well ahead of an iBook.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
Wow, this guy has taken the "CmdrTaco School of Loaded Statements". :) There's an adage in the computer game reviewing industry that is summed up nicely in a writer's guideline I received recently: "Do not spend two-thirds of an article picking a game apart and then, in the final paragraph, say 'But it's fun. Four stars.'" A majority of his "thoughts on the iBook2 page" revolves around various parts of the laptop not working in Linux, the (trivial) problems of dealing with a 1-button mouse in X, and the benefits of playing DVD's -- in MacOS 9.
"Even without every piece of hardware being completely functional, this is one of the best laptops for linux use that I have ever seen or used."
Right. Well, my two cents. I purchased an Inspiron 4000 from Dell, installed RedHat 7.1, and EVERYTHING worked right out of the box. Sound card, networking, everything. Didn't even have to go through the command line setups. And getting DVD playback in Linux was easy after downloading a program to do so. And I've got more than one mouse button. :) That's a great Linux laptop, in my mind.
This is probably the best Linux laptop one can buy right now
Is it just me or there some reason an iBook would make a better linux notebook than a G4 Powerbook?
there are these little distributions, I think you all have heard of them, called LinuxPPC and YellowDog Linux... you know, the one's designed explicitly to run on the PowerPC platform, you know? the processor inside said iBook...
Nope, not me, I must be someone else...
This is probably the best Linux laptop one can buy right now, so go get one!"
:)
How can this be the best laptop for Linux when it doesn't even have sound? I think the best laptop for Linux will actually support Linux for all of its hardware.
I'll be the first to give this guy a nod for a cool hack, and the first to recognize that sometimes hacking ain't really about practicality.
But I'm wondering... of what practical use is this, when OS/X is already pre-installed? If you just want UNIX, it's already there... and if you're a you-better-put-a-capital-F-on-it-mister Free Software advocate, you probably won't buy into Apple's mostly-proprietary hardware anyway.
To me, running Linux on an iBook seems pretty silly when Mac OS X is available. Yeah, yeah, I know, it's Linux and it's free and it's the Right Thing to Do, because it Can Be Done... but c'mon, you can get pretty much any software you'd expect under Linux via Fink and the Darwin Ports collection. Run a nice window manager and rootless X, and you can get pretty much any app you like.
:)
And then you can start looking at Cocoa and all the nifty things that are going to be coming from the NextStep/OpenStep legacy... IMHO, Apple's gotten the job done in creating a solid, usable UNIX desktop, as well as a mature, unified app framework.
Blah. Anyway, if you want Linux, don't waste your money on Apple hardware. Just stick with some cheap ol' Intel stuff. Go buy a used Sony Vaio, like my old one I'll be eBay'ing soon.
As for Ogg Vorbis, it's coming out of my iBook speakers right now. I use
Unsanity Echo, and sometimes Audion.
Many people already jumping all over Taco's ass that there are other laptops better than the iBook, but look at the price! For the cost of some of those "better" laptops, you could buy 2 or 3 iBooks!
Reality has a liberal bias
Try a Dell Inspiron 8000.
1600x1200 screen, 1GHz Intel, 512Mb SDRAM, option for 2 32Gb UDMA drives (RAID-0, urgh urgh urgh) and a combo DVD/CDRW drive, USB, Firewire, touchpad and mousestick, internal 10/100 NIC and (Win)MODEM, Maestro 3 sound (in the latest Linux kernel) and GeForce2GO video, all whilst two batteries are installed and leaving the PCMCIA slots free for even more goodies.
Then tell me the iBook is "the best Linux laptop".
You really wanna use a single button mouse in the X Window environment?
I love the look of the ti Book, but compared with the i8000 and the single mouse button of the ti, I just cannot come at the price of it, the Dell on the other hand, can you put a price on a mobile system of this incredible spec!?
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
..because Dell is one of those Intel-only companies, aren't they?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Now I can replace my refined desktop interface, hardware support and native applications with LinuxPPC! I've been trying to cripple my iBook unsuccessfully for the past couple months.
/.!
Thank you
Why not check laptop ratings at the Linux Hardware Database? For the most comprehensive resource I've found, visit Linux on Laptops. Individual laptops aren't rated, but you'll learn if anyone's had success with the hardware you hope to use.
Helevius
Would be nice to have buttons 1, 2, 3 emulated by (command-)click, option-click, control-click (...thus allowing combinations) -- a bit as happens in OS X if you use XonX / XDarwin.
Has anyone managed that in Linux?
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
Other people have already commented on the "best Linux laptop one can buy" statement. Being quite annoyed with my aging ThinkPad 365X only having two mouse buttons, I can't understand how a laptop with one mouse button could be a good buy if you want to run Linux (and presumably X)?
However, if you want three mouse buttons, most (all?) the new IBM Thinkpads have three mouse buttons. And though the Thinkpads are considered expensive in the PC laptop market, I'm certain that they compare nicely with the Apple offerings.
I use both Linux and OS X, so I feel that I am in fair position to comment. OS X is a great way to have the power of Unix, while not necessarily having the experience of Unix. Linux on the other hand requires a bit more experience, but at this moment in time benefits from a mauch larger user base and availability of support.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
mac unices page
its a good adventure getting it working well but once it is...
Unless you are using MacOS X ( there are still issues with the energy manager ), then the battery life of these things are incredible. You can get around 5 hours out of these things, compared to around 2.5 for my Dell. This means that I can use the portable for most of my cross-Atlantic flight ;-)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I agree. I've got both a Compaq Armada M700 and Armada 7800 (Pentium III 700 and Pentium II 300, respectively) and thus far I haven't had a problem getting anything linux-related to work perfectly on them. How can this not-completely-functional Apple be considered the perfect Linux laptop when there are plenty of completely-supported x86 notebooks / laptops out there? I don't understand...
-Steve
If you want to use Linux on a laptop, my opinion has always been to pick up a used Dell. The hardware is going to be well documented and there are already thousands if not more people who have tried running Linux on them. Personally I can't see the need to really run Linux on a laptop, especially when OS X is available.
'Same speed C but faster'
There's only so much customization you can do in a commercial OS. Some of us happen to like our chosen window managers (I happen to like Window Maker, thanks). Also, the command line environment (where I spend much of my time on Linux) just seems clumsy on OS X still.
Yeah yeah, unifying perfect OS blah blah blah. I'll stick with Linux, and Mac-on-Linux (for running some very useful software on the MacOS side - like Lexmark's MarkVision for Mac, which we use pretty regularly at my work). If you want OS X, great, go for it. Maybe at some point, MoL will be able to run OS X in a window, and then we can have the best of all worlds. Until then, I'm happy.
Besides, in Linux I can burn CDs. And I can watch DVDs (or could, if not for the 350 MHz PPC - just a bit too slow for DVD watching yet, but maybe more PPC optimizations will be added to Xine - I hope).
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
The point is, if you do get an iceBook (say, because the hardware or OS X appeal to you), then why not run Linux on it also? Why do those holy wars always have to involve exclusion?
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
Does Linux support Firewire on those things? Last time I checked the FW in the kernel was still fairly beta - has this changed?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Since this is my first PPC machine, I chose to take the easy path and install a PPC-only distribution... I chose Yellow Dog 2.0, and I had an easier time installing than Mr. Moffitt indicates. Everything worked "out of the box" for me (pardoning sound, which as he mentions is still forthcoming) except for suspend, which locked up the laptop on resume. A little bit of web research revealed that resuming the new ATI Mobility chipsets was more difficult than some other chipsets, but the problem had been solved in 2.4.x; I snarfed one of BenH's fabulous kernel trees and built 2.4.6. Suspend was fixed, just like that.
Yellow Dog isn't as up-to-date as the distros I'm used to using on x86, but with a little legwork I'm getting it pulled into mid-2001.
I haven't found any documentation on how to turn off the AirPort card when it is not in use (I'm not sure about these 802.11 cards, but I know that regular 802.11 cards suck battery power like its their job; turning the slot off when they're not in use is a big bonus), but the battery life still seems to be 4 hours or so of light usage, less under heavy load.
I don't have the latch problems Mr. Moffitt mentions, either... The magnetic latch thing is SUPER cool in my opinion. It's cool just to mostly close the lid and watch the hook jump out.
All in all I'm very pleased. Time will tell if my pleasure is well-placed, I guess.
Ethan
While LinuxPPC is a decent OS (I prefer OpenBSD) my LinuxPPC discs went to the back of my closet once OSX came out. Certainly it's a nice hack, but will Adobe make Photoshop for it? (no, Gimp is *not* quite Photoshop, despite what the zealots say)
Apps are what the machines need, once the companies start releasing their flagship[0] Mac products for OSX I think this will be relegated to the "cool hack" pile
grub
[0]- IE is not what I'd call 'flagship' :)
Trolling is a art,
Well since Apple actually runs an open source kernel (and command line stuff) on these machines it does help them a lot to publish the specs for their hardware. Plus even if they don't, you could at least look at the source for the darwin drivers...
So far they have been doing quite well at publishing up to date versions of source of what they said they would. I'm happy. Oddly they have been doing worse at getting the DVD video playback working then I expected.
I'm not sure how well they are doing on incorporating 3rd party changes to their OS though. For example I know people have darwin booting on very old macs, but I don't know if the release version will.
Are you kidding?
You have to jump through install hoops, the sound doesn't work, and it's only got one mouse button.
If that's the best, then all the rest must suck pretty bad.
Sorry, my Thinkpad 760EL works a lot better than that.
I don't doubt that it's flaming fast for a laptop with that processor, and I'll even give you "the prettiest", although a lot of people find the iBooks to be butt-ugly (I'm not among them), but "the best"? Cut back on the crack, yer startin' to hallucinate.
-
Oh my. Parent gets a silent "overrated" mod within 3 minutes of posting (hence before it's even been "rated" by anyone). Making the "holy wars" point for me, perhaps...?
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
Oddly they have been doing worse at getting the DVD video playback working then I expected.
Rumour has it that most of the problems Apple is having with DVD support in OS X is related to the fact that the MPAA is very concerned about the possibility of intercepting the decoded data stream through their player (since OS X is considerably more "open" for tricks like this with the UNIX layer). I don't know if there's any truth in this rumour but it does explain the serious lag time for DVD support. Playing DVDs isn't that difficult (especially when they already have a DVD player for OS 9) so perhaps this really is the reason why it's taking so long.
Another thing to note is that if you take a screenshot in OS 9 while playing a DVD you get a big magenta rectangle where the DVD screenshot is supposed to be. Is there a technical reason for this or are the MPAA really that paranoid?
- j
One could argue that Microsoft has pulled that off with NT/2000/XP, considering how much stuff they've stolen ... I mean, "borrowed" from Unix. Nah, I really shouldn't say that. I actually sorta like XP.
I think my main complaint with OS X is that the minimum hardware requirements were way too low. I purchased it for my original iMac (upped to 128 MB RAM) and it still runs excrutiatingly slow. It's all the window manager. Of course, the funniest thing I've seen is killing the window manager in a terminal window and not being able to get it back in OS X (in that OS, the window manager is everything). :)
I think it does support your point. I agree- a huge majority of those x86 Linux people out there have some flavor of Windows on another partition, but they seem to be in denial of it. On my G4 (selling it soon to buy an iBook), I have Mac OS X, Mac OS 9.1 and Linux installed. They can co-exist, and there's no reason for them not to!
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
For a fraction of the cost? Have you seen the specs? Name one name brand laptop that will offer you this (or comparable):
500MHz G3 (256KB on die L2)
64MB RAM soldered on the board
CDROM drive
10GB HDD
10/100 ethernet
56k modem
12.1 TFT
8MB 3d video chip
5 hour battery life (with one battery)
builtin firewire
video out.
$1299
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
Is there a free rootless X server? I've been using VNC, but a rootless X would be nice...
iBooks come with a proper unix already installed. What would be the point of running linux on it?
That's like buying a BMW and replacing the interior with that of a twelve-year old nissan bluebird with minor fire damage.
"Look! It looks like a Nissan!"
"You are a dumbass. Please drive through."
It used to be at ppclinux.apple.com but the site isn't around anymore. Might try this site penguinppc.org/files/users/beelers/ibook.html or contacting Benjamin Herrenschmidt penguinppc.org/~benh/.
Another good site is www.imaclinux.net/
I paid 1,799 sterling for it, making it only incrementally more expensive than the DVD iBook, and a little cheaper than the top end iBook with a "combo" DVD/CDRW drive. I actually went to the store intending to purchase the DVD iBook to replace my Lombard class G3.
Bigger screen too - seems like a far better *nix notebook computer to me.
A message from our sponsor
The real problem with Linux is, due to the hardware manufacturers miscommunication of their specs, it is quite hard to have up-to-date stable drivers as soon as some new product is available.
Hence the lack of sound on this iBook.
I just checked its price on http://www.apple.ch and it is comparable to 14 or even 15" TFT screen-PC laptops.
So, how much do we pay for its design too (and maybe for the *bundled* OS and apps which you won't necessarily want to keep) ?
OK, we've got the battery life and... well, it seems it is all.
I personnally went for an "old" (one year old) PC Laptop with a P3, 3-hour battery life and DVD (dezonable) laptop.
Debian Linux installs itself automatically and anything I have tried worked immediately.
So, my advice on choosing a good laptop for Linux would be that if this is your first Linux laptop, just take a not-so-old second-hand one that might be very cheap and have fun.
Now, if you feel like experimenting and kernel hacking, well, OK, this is the best machine you may find.
I'd have really appreciated to read a proper description of what this guy does with his laptop : coding, surfing, whatever else ?
Maybe this'd have helped a lot relativizing his superlative point of view.
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
1GHz PIII :-(
128MB RAM (144pin DIMM), expandable to 512MB
8xDVD-ROM
20GB HDD
10/100 ethernet
56K modem
12.1 TFT
8-32MB 3D video (using shared RAM)
USB
2.5 Hour Battery life
So aside from battery/firewire/video-out, I think I prefer this one! (Advent 6412).
The iBook costs IEP 1,470 here, whereas the Advent costs IEP 1,599...so it does cost a little more...
Now, in addition to the fact that you can run MacOS 9 in MacOS X, you can also run MacOS 9 in LinuxPPC, which means dig those discs back out of the cupboard and install Photoshop. Get the best of both worlds.
As for the gimp arguement, I won't go there. Personally, I find gimp infinitely easier to use, but as with everything, everyone's different! ;)
If you want IrDA, you'll have to get a little fancier and go with apple's powerbook. Which is a much nicer machine by the way. Getting online with GSM phones is a sinch. I have GSM here in the US (thank you VoiceStream), and it works great.
So the iBook supports more RAM, has firewire, better battery life, video out, standard video chip not using standard RAM, AND it's cheaper? I think you inadvertently made my point. Thanks.
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
as I understand it, this is pretty common. the dvd software is using an "overlay" function of the graphics card to stick the moving image there, kinda like a chromakey. it does this for efficiency and speed but normal screen capture program's only capture the normal screen and not the poverlay unless they specifically know about it.
this is kinda how I understand it, any more expeienced ppl please chime in.
dave
And, by the way, why should I be using Windows on that particular notebook? My company could give me a separate desktop machine for breeding Outlook virii and playing Solitair.
my 7500 weighs in at nearly 8 f-ing pounds. yes, the 15 sxga screen is great. but everytime i pick up one of the ti books laying around the office, i think about the purpose of a laptop... please dell, shed some weight off of this thing!
Nothing wrong with tinkering and getting more hardware supported, but is it a good idea to recommend that anyone choose a new iBook as a machine to run Linux on?
Let's see. Out of the box you get a pretty laptop that comes preloaded with OS X, which is an open source BSD variant down low, with a lot of polished sophisticated commercial goodies up top like display PDF, the most seamless GUI/command-line config synchronization ever done on a Unix, and, well, the elegance that is the Mac UI. And you can run any legacy Mac software at near full-speed simultaneously.
And if ease of use and closed-source software give you hives regardless of how good they are, you can load up XFree86 and a swiftly growing number of your favorite "Linux" apps while you're at it. You've already got Perl, gcc, Emacs, vi and their friends ready to run. Don't like tcsh? Load up bash. Don't like their terminal-window app? Load up another. Want to recompile their (well-configured) Apache? Go ahead. And you have solid Firewire support and the most hassle-free USB plug-and-play support around, bar none.
But then you load up Linux and drop the sound support, the decent video playback, the easy CD burning and video editing, the display PDF, the Mac application support, the polished configuration tools, the decent web browsers, any hope of running a usable office suite any time this year or next (since you're not on an x86).. and the only UI that works well with the one-button trackpad you've got. There are dozens--maybe hundreds--of x86-based laptops out there in all shapes and sizes that are better-suited for running Linux than an iBook.
This is a nice hobbyist project, and certainly getting the new hardware supported by Linux is a good thing. But it's a lousy use for a new iBook.
"Another thing to note is that if you take a screenshot in OS 9 while playing a DVD you get a big magenta rectangle where the DVD screenshot is supposed to be. Is there a technical reason for this or are the MPAA really that paranoid? "
br.I have an older mac, from 96, with a tv tuner card. It does the same kind of thing when you try to take a screenshot. You end up with a black square basically I think. From what I understand tho, this has more to do with the way the card bypasses the normal system routines of drawing than any kind of copyright concerns. Of course this was 96, before dvds were real big and the mpaa was some kind of unstoppable force, so the reasons you cant take a screenshot may have nothing to do with the technical aspects anymore.
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
> Another thing to note is that if you take a screenshot in OS 9 while playing a DVD you get a big magenta rectangle where the DVD screenshot is supposed to be. Is there a technical reason for this or are the MPAA really that paranoid?
It has less to do with MPAA paranoia than the bandwidth of video being sent down the bus.
From the rec.video.dvd FAQ...
[4.4] Why can't I take a screenshot of DVD video? Why do I get a pink or
black square?
Most DVD PCs, even those with software decoders, use video overlay hardware
to insert the video directly into the VGA signal. This an efficient way to
handle the very high bandwidth of full-motion video. Some decoder cards,
such as the Creative Labs Encore Dxr series and the Sigma Designs Hollywood
series, use a pass-through cable that overlays the video into the analog
VGA signal after it comes out of the video display card. Video overlay uses
a technique called colorkey to selectively replace a specified pixel color
(often magenta or near-black) with video content. Anywhere a colorkey pixel
appears in the computer graphics video, it's replaced by video from the DVD
decoder. This process occurs "downstream" from the computer's video memory,
so if you try to take a screenshot (which grabs pixels from video RAM), all
you get is a solid square of the colorkey color.
Some decoders write to normal video memory. In this case, utilities such as
Creative Softworx, HyperSnap, and SD Capture can grab still pictures. Some
player applications can also take screenshots.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Sounds like the best of both worlds, if you ask me. A mature and mainstream GUI with a healthy number of commercial apps on top of that old, familiar Unix we all love.
Sounds to me like ripping all that out to run LinuxPPC is a downgrade, unless simply having the name "Linux" is the feature you most look for in an OS.
Ok, no problem (although not much of a fraction :)
........[ +US$50.00]
........[ +US$125.00]
Dell:
$1,288.00
Date: Monday, July 09, 2001 10:08:28 AM CDT
Catalog Number: 04 04
Base: Pentium®III Processor,700 MHz 12.1 SVGA TFT Display
CG70STM - [220-8914]
Memory: 128MB,SDRAM,2DIMMs
128M2D - [311-1309]
Primary Hard Drive: 10GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive
10GB - [340-2786]
Floppy Drive: Modular Floppy Drive
FD - [340-6353]
Operating System Software: Windows 2000 SP1
W2KSP1 - [313-7222] [412-2901] [420-2581]
Modem: 10/100 + 56K Capable V.90 NIC/Modem, Internal Mini-PCI
PCI1010 - [313-9795]
Fixed CD/DVD Drives: 24X Max Variable CD-ROM Drive
24XCD - [313-0452]
Bundled Software: Microsoft® Office XP Small Business
IXPSB - [412-1201]
Primary Battery: 27 WHr Lithium-Ion 4Cell Battery
LIION4 - [312-0155]
Service and Support Options: 1 Yr Ltd. Warranty-1 Yr Mail-in Service + 1 Yr Phone Support
I111YRR - [900-9054] [902-0120]
Internet Access Service: 6 Month AOL Membership (add $0)
AOLSMB - [412-0252]
Digital Imaging Software: Image Expert® 2000, Dell Edition ($0)
DPS - [412-2108]
Gateway:
Screen
12.1" HPA Color Display with 800 x 600 Resolution (SVGA) at 256K Colors
Processor
Intel® Celeron(TM) Processor 700MHz with 128K Cache
Memory
64MB SDRAM
Hard Drive
6.0GB Ultra ATA Removable hard drive
CD-ROM or DVD
Integrated 10X min./24X max. CD-ROM drive
Video
Silicon Motion SM721 Lynx3DM Graphic Controller with 4MB SGRAM
Multimedia Package
Integrated 16-bit Sound, Stereo Speakers, Headphone/Speaker Jack, Line-In and Line-out Mic Jacks
Keyboard
Full Size Keyboard with MS Windows Keys
Mouse
EZ Pad® Pointing Device
Expansion Slots
One type II, or one type III PC Slot
External ports
RJ-11 port, SVGA port, 2 USB ports
Dimensions
13.28 inch (W) x 10.50inch (D) x 2.17inch (H)
Certifications
FCC Class B, UL and CSA certified
Modem
Internal V.90 56K Modem
Operating System
Microsoft® Windows® Millennium Edition
Application Software
Microsoft® Works Suite 2001 - Including Microsoft® Word and Encarta
Anti-Virus Software
Norton Anti-Virus Software
Rebate
100 Mail-in Rebate Offer (Rebate Coupon will be mailed separately). For purchases made between 7/2/01 and 7/31/01. While supplies last.
Floppy Drive
USB Floppy Disk Drive
Battery
8-cell NiMH battery and AC pack
Network Card
3COM 10/100 Ethernet
Internet Service Provider
1 Year America Online Internet Access
Limited Warranty Program
1 Year Limited Warranty, Limited Hardware & Software Tech Support as long as you own your system
*Prices quoted in U.S. dollars
and exclude applicable taxes. Sub Total: $1074.00
It is a nice machine, I will grant you. If you need firewire and video out, it's a very good choice (maybe the only one) but hardly the only thing in that price range with that level of features.
it's nice to see cheaper laptops out. I can't wait til the 15" screen become this cheap.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Hmm - you did? When I finally got my ibook triple installed with OS X, OS 9, and LinuxPPC, I tried re-booting into Linux, and it died. Not kernel panic, not crash... just shut off. I couldn't turn it on either. No - the only way to recover was to unplug the power, remove the battery, and try again. Now I have to re-format the linux partition.
- passion
It's not much good for the latest 3-D games, but perfect for progamming, writing papers, and accessing the Web.
AlpineR
As far as wasting money on Apple hardware is concerned, the point is that the iBook is actually cheaper than any comparable Intel based laptop at this point, and is an all around great little box.
The IBM Think pads make excellent Linux Laptops... I have had great succes with my 570E. Linux runs on all their eservers. check out http://www.ibm.com/eserver/xseries This site also has sizing guides to determine what IBM hardware is needed for a particular application. There are several Linux appz sizing guides on the site, and lots more to come. I know because I will be producing them. Hope this helps tollieman
Runs Linux too
As of Perfs, It'll leave you blazing horrified in comparison to your G something.
Of course the price is right too, but then...
Mess with the Best / use Windows like the Rest .
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
There was a discussion of this on MWJ some time ago, and the editor indicated the reason is MPAA paranoia about DVDs being played on any machine where a debugger (e.g., gdb) can be used to examine the decoding code when it's executing. Hence no DVD playback on UNIX, Linux, or Mac OS X, and MacsBug is disabled when you run the Apple DVD Player under MacOS 9. So it's not a rumor.
Xfree86 is available now for OS X natively (version 4.1.0). They are working on rootless X, but I believe it's still in the testing phase. There are a lot of gimp people looking into rootless heavily over at Mac Gimp
Another thing to note is that if you take a screenshot in OS 9 while playing a DVD you get a big magenta rectangle where the DVD screenshot is supposed to be. Is there a technical reason for this or are the MPAA really that paranoid?
They are really that paranoid. In Windows, if you take a DVD screenshot (on my player, at least) and paste it into Paint Shop Pro, you get an image up that is magenta if you close the DVD software, but you see the image if you leave the software open. If you then move the image around in the PSP window, the movie screen doesn't move with you.
Presumably the software puts a big magenta block in the OS's what-to-show memory, then it goes to the video buffer and rewrites everything that particular RGB value of magenta as the appropriate movie pixel colour.
That's my guess at least.
Michael.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
PowerDVD does too. You appear to be slightly mistaken, I'm afraid.
They have already been playing through the speaker (singular, unfortunately) on my original edition iBook.
Both Audion and MacAmp support the Ogg format.
Okay, one reason: iMovie. iMovie and Firewire was one of the major selling points of the iBook, for me, and digital video takes up a lot of disk. I'll put Linux on a cheaper machine where disk space isn't at a premium. (And I have already cleaned out a lot of the cruft that Apple put on the disk for me. Like Outlook Express.)
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Its good that a few people are realizing that Mac are not always an expensive solution. People tend to think Macs are the most expensive computer solution. This is not always the case. As for the one button mouse issue you can easily go out and buy a three button mouse for any mac.
I'm in the market for a laptop. I want a laptop so I can take my Unix machine when I go on vacations, to do PHP development. Of course, I want to be able to run Apache with mod_php and mod_perl, and MySQL on that same machine.
So, what are the relative merits and demerits of OS X and Linux? I am considering an iBook running OS X - I didn't realise until this thread that Linux was available for it. I am also considering an Intel-based laptop running Linux, of course.
It'd be fun to have DVD and CD playback, but those aren't necessities. Pretty much all I want it for is remote (i.e. on vacation) PHP development.
I also don't really want a dual-boot machine, regardless of the benefits to doing that, and regardless of underlying hardware.
So, any thoughts?
The Gateway you quote has the same issues, and is almost a full inch thicker than the iBook.
It's true that there are some things that Windows is better for (gaming and interoperability with other Windows machines are two good examples...and whatever fruityloops is, I guess :)
It's also true that there are some things Linux is better for (doing scientific research, professional typesetting (LaTeX), all kinds of development).
It all depends on what you need out of your computer.
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
How can this be the "best" Linux if sound does not work out of the box?
I just bought a winboox X1. Aluminum Alloy case, 1ghz P3, 320mb, 30gig, 13.3'' screen, DVD/CDRW combo Drive. It only cost $2399 and is worth every penny. Only problem is I cant get X configured to run on it. The video chipset should be working (supported sis 630) But I cant get this damn thing to make it through Xconfigurator succesfully. I cant even get 640x480 x8 to run. This would definitely be the baddest little linux laptops on the planet if I could just get X to run.
Build XFree86 from CVS. It's not in the release but if you pull from cvs and make World && make install, then
startx -- -rootless
it works for the most part. I have had some problems with the cursor disappearing, but no worse than with Classic.
.sig: file not found
In past discussions on Slashdot, I have had the opportunity to quietly raise my finger from the corner of the room and whisper "Why not run Mac/OS X?" only to get completely bombarded by Linux zealots who tell me that, in addition to OS X being a terrible operating system (which it isn't, of course) they say "Hey I've already got a K6 box that I built myself for $23.48. Why go out and buy a Mac for a grand or more?"
Well that argument doesn't seem to hold any water when somebody goes out and buys a brand new iBook and installs Linux on it, and then everybody TAKES HIM SERIOUSLY!? Come on, folks! OS X shipped with the machine he bought! And it is so clearly superior to Linux (in addition to being much easier to install) that installing Linux instead is just plain ridiculous.
So it boils down to one of two modivations: Doing it because it's possible, or doing it because it's Linux. Doing anything simply because it's possible is not only foolish but can be downright irresponsible. Doing it because it's Linux reveals that the decision to use Linux is not based on feature/function or any other sound, objective rationale but rather on some other unquantifiable, subjective notion like "Linix is COOL man!" or some such nonsense.
Which is fine in it's own right. Linux as hobby. I once saw a Ford Pinto mounted on top of four enormous tractor tires. Logical? No. Practical? No. Waste of time? Most definetely. But it entertained the builder and even entertains passerbys. A freak show, if you will.
But the owner of that Ford Pinto made no attempt at convincing passerbys that his vehicle was the BEST vehicle ever and anybody who doesn't have a Ford Pinto mounted on four enormous tractor tires is JUST PLAIN IGNORANT. Similarily, I just wish you Linux zealots wouldn't take yourselves so seriously. It's a hobby and you enjoy it: Fine. But keep in mind that there are frequently more practical and useful computing solutions out there than just Linux. And that there are people who use computers to get work done. Please quit trying to pass of Linux as the best solution for EVERYTHING. It's not.
Well when the MPAA has this much say on what happens on our machines this begs the question: Whose computer is this, anyway?
Never has there been more reason for GNU.
Besides, why would you buy such an overpriced piece of crap to run linux, when there are tons of choices with AMD chips (kick ass!) for probably half the price?
I too went down the road of the Mac/Linux dual boot box. For me it was LinuxPPC...basically a rework of Redhat. Once I had it running, I was truly satisfied with my accomplishment (its no small feat, so kudos). Certainly in the documentation with LinuxPPC, it was noted that software for intel boxes was not going to run on my LinuxPPC box unless it had be ported to do so. Has this changed??? All in all Linux lasted about 5 days on my Mac. I went and scooped a cheap PII and everything worked out of the box. IMO the community of people interested in running Linux on Mac hardware is too small to have the kind of work, support and stability seen on other hardware. With the release of OSX, this will only get more true.
I don't know where you got that price, maxed out like that it's pretty expensive.
:)
Although, you can save a lot by getting the 512MB ram from www.crucial.com rather than from dell.
In the UK, crucial will sell 512MB of compatable ram for £150, while dell charges £600 !
I'm expecting mine on Friday
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
The PowerPC chips are vastly supperior to Intel when it comes to portable applications. They give lots of power while consuming under 5watts. There are also lots of other really cool chips out there (like ARM) that just don't make it into laptops because Windows only runs on Intel.
Now if you look at the iBook and you see that Apple made a pretty damn good laptop. They could do this because they don't have to worry as much about cooling or battery drain. Intel notebooks - dispite being well designed - have that CPU handicap which results in larger, heavier notebooks that don't last as long on a charge. Crusoe chips sound promising but they're still a hack and you'll get more performance/power-drain from a smarter design - like ARM. But this requires that your software be re-compiled for the new CPU architecture. Linux allows this... Linux rocks!!!!
Willy
Another thing to note is that if you take a screenshot in OS 9 while playing a DVD you get a big magenta rectangle where the DVD screenshot is supposed to be. Is there a technical reason for this or are the MPAA really that paranoid?
this is because the decoder is hardware-based, and it writes directly to the video card's buffer, bypassing quickdraw altogether. when you take a screen shot on a mac (presumably with command-shift-3) it copies the contents of the quickdraw graphics ports, which do not reflect what's actually in the video card's memory.
irb(main):001:0>
About 50% of posts on this thread have had something to do with a personal preference of whether to run Linux on Mac or PC hardware. Barring the argument of whether or not to use OS X (which could get ugly), can someone please give me their arguments on why someone should use Linux on Mac hardware? I'm not saying that it's a bad idea, I just want to know why (other than cool LOOKING hardware) someone would prefer Mac hardware over PC when running Linux.
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Anyone have any good links on where to get an iBook? I went on pricewatch.com and all I found were iBook's that only come with macOS9. After reading everyone's opinions.. I'd like to take a closer look and put better consideration into turning to the mac side....
Well, you can either build the latest bleeding-edge CVS checkouts, as petard suggests, or you can look here:
c le s&secid=1
http://www.macgimp.org/sections.php?op=listarti
They point you to XDarwin as based on the latest release, and then to some binaries compiled with rootless X to replace a few binaries from your X install. I've yet to really have it crash hard or anything. Only major drawback I've had so far, other than a few little wonky things, is that you need to start it from a shell rather than from an icon on the desktop.
Oh yeah, and you *will* need a window manager, and a panel of some sort would be nice so that you don't lose those minimized windows (since there's no root window to throw them on).
For something quick, I've been using this panel:
http://www.chatjunkies.org/fspanel/
And trying to decide between the PWM and Sawfish as window managers.
this is because the decoder is hardware-based, and it writes directly to the video card's buffer, bypassing quickdraw altogether. when you take a screen shot on a mac (presumably with command-shift-3) it copies the contents of the quickdraw graphics ports, which do not reflect what's actually in the video card's memory
Yeah this is exactly what I figured but I wasn't 100% sure. of course now I'm sorry I mentioned it as it has turned into a bit of a troll. What i really wanted to know is if anybody had heard anything more concrete about Apple being delayed in releasin the OS X DVD player because of copyright concerns.
And it is WAY to easy to get karma around by simply implying that the MPAA is evil.
- j
I have an Inspiron 4000 from Dell too, and used to have RH7.1 on it. I'm just wondering if, when you suspended it, and it woke up, was the screen all weird? Also, could you ever get it to write all the RAM to disk and shut down like Win2k's hibernation? If you can, please email me telling me how :).
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qslack.com
One of they guys from www.oreillynet.com had some fun trying NetBSD. Not too much luck.o ok.html
Here: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/mac/2001/07/03/ib
"Ummmm..."
Why,oh why do some people keep killing the os X "window manager" in os x from the terminal? If the Finder in os x is giving you trouble/ has frozen up the first thing NOT to do is to open up the terminal and kill its process because, like you mentioned, you will have a hard time getting the finder to start back up again. So what do you do? Force quit. *But oh no* I can't force quit from the finder *it doesn't work*. Well duh, the finder is frozen you can't ask an app that refuses to do anything to execute a command for you. That is why the dock is in a separate process than the finder. Keep a light weight application in the dock that will open quickly (like, oh say, the terminal) and when the finder freezes up launch it and use the force quit command from the apple menu to restart the finder. If the finder quits but doesn't start back up again all you have to do is click finder's icon in the *dock* (which would probably have worked too if you had killed its process from the terminal) and it will bounce in the dock while it is launching as if it were a normal application (which it is). You can do all this and guess what? All of your applications will still be, if you were online you will still be online. You can even still use all of your open apps *while the finder is off*. You can launch more apps in terminal if you want using the open command and never ever use the finder again. There are even other graphical applications that sometimes serve as replacements for the Finder. So to summarize: In os X the finder is just another app, treat it like one. Opening up a shell in the terminal is not always the best way to handle every situation. The Dock was not made a separate process so that you can kill it without losing the Finder, it was made a separate process so you can freeze up the Finder without losing the Dock (which is best thought of as a secondary method of browsing through your files).
-- from http://www.xiph.org/~jack/ibook/thoughts.html
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
has been coming out of iBook speakers for a long time. N2MP3 Pro makes Ogg Vorbis tracks, and Audion plays them. Others too.
It's cool to hear about people using the graphical loader in Open Firmware to dual and triple boot Linux, and/or BSD with a Mac. The first time I used that graphical loader to dual boot OS 9 and a developer release of OS X, I immediately thought of how Linux-friendly Macs have become. Apple's disk utilities also have a long list of partition schemes and formats for Linux. Unless your Mac is very new and drivers aren't prepared yet, it's so easy to work with Linux on a Mac. You can boot from a CD or boot from a FireWire drive.
Apple's current products are a whole level above anything that the PC cartel is making these days. It is hard to find a flaw in them except for the fact that Mac OS is in a transition right now, with Mac OS 9 being better than X for about half the things people are doing, and vice versa. In six months or so, any off the shelf Mac will be a tremendous system with a huge library of software, and easy to dual-boot Linux, too.
With MOSX, you can boot back and forth between 9.1 and X cleanly and easily- with the added advantage of both systems existing on one hard drive partition. With older version of MacOS, you can run as many versions of MOS as you have hard drive partitions- you can throw on linux if you'd like, and older versions of MOS, MOS X server, etceteras.
For example, it is entirely possible to run OS 9.1, MOSX, MOS X server (AKA Rhapsody), MOS 8.5 and, say, MKLinux on one machine.
From personal experience, you'd probably want at least three hard drives for this, though- Server gets moody without a drive to itself, and MKLinux requires a pre-existing MOS to boot-strap itself from.
In any case, it's an Apple computer- as a graphics nerd, Mac OS X lets me run Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Photoshop, Perl, and Apache on the same system without dual booting. I dig that. (and sorry, Gimp doesn't cut it. You're deluding yourself.)
I'd like to invite everyone to become a beta tester for the Mandrake Linux PPC version. Here's some tips on how to get started: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=mandrake-cooker-pp c&m=99441208917647&w=2
Here are some screenshots of the PPC Beta1 running on a PowerBook:l /pages/install32.html
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/demos/PPC/Instal
This is a list of features:
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/ppc.php3
Cheers,
Phil Lavigna
Isn't the whole idea of having a computer (according to most Linux/open source-friendly sites I visit) is the freedom to be as diverse as you want to be?
If that's the case, this iBook has come the closest to that ideal, with the ability of running so many operating systems that it would make Bill Gates' head swim. Nice as some of them are, a PC laptop can't run classic Mac OS or not--although I understand if none of us want to. I'd prefer OS X.
Or, actually, Mac OS X with X Windows up to run everything that the Linux folks enjoy until a OS X native app comes along. Or, what the hell, install Linux PPC or Debian Linux, or Yellow Dog Linux....
...ad infinitum. There's no "zealotry" in this anymore than the snobbery of Apple hardware over PC hardware. This is an area we need not touch--there's Microsoft, and there's the UNIX family (Mac OS X is still a baby but it beats the living hell out of much of what Redmond has to offer).
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
I find it funny your handle is "nofud" (which I presume to mean "No FUD") while you spread blatant lies about the MPAA. As you can read elsewhere in this thread, hardware overlay is a speed feature, not a copyright-protection feature. My WinTV card does similar things. Pretty much anything that has to draw to the screen very quickly will take similar measures - to INCREASE PERFORMANCE.
± 29 dB
It's called chroma-keying from a hardware buffer.
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
I had a great driver for a laptop touchpad that emulated buttons by how many finger you tapped with. If the mouse support in linux didn't suck this would be a must-have feature.
Considering that I cannot really figure why the I-book needs it's button, it's must be the only glitch in an otherwize good design.
Not all hardware uses a chroma key to handle YUV overlays. I believe the Matrox's, use a software defined region, without filling it with a chroma key first. And old Rendition cards didn't even handle the color space conversion as an overlay, then handled it as BLIT operation, translating between the read and write of the framebuffer, leaving the RGB output right in the framebuffer.
- RustyTaco
Ogg Vorbis tracks can be played with Audion, Mint Audio, and a number of other OS X and Classic applications.
Trev
www.trev.com
A tip: I have an early iMac DV SE (400/128 MB RAM) and it ran excruciatingly slow on my machine too. Yeah, the requirements are low, but I threw another 256 MB in there :) and I haven't heard my machine swap to the hdd since. It's probably the biggest way to increase performance under OS X.
Can someone please explain to me why a lot of the newer laptops, like the ibook and the smaller sony vaio's have no Irda? I find this extremely annoying, especially since my old vaio (505ex) has irda which I use often with my cellphone. Are there any irda options you can buy for these laptops, and do they work with linux and mac os x? Furthermore, how is the quality of the tv out of an ibook, can it be used for presentations?
I'm really glad to hear of this review of sorts. I've been wanting to get the new ibook since it came out explicitly to run linux and macosx they both appeal to my new sensibilities of what computers and operating systems should be
-
The DVD Player included with Mac OS 8.6 took advantage of the Hardware decoder. The versions of the DVD player that ship with Mac OS 9+ are all software based. This sucks because my little PBG3 used to be able to display a movie without touching the cpu.. Battery life has dropped, and the playback is not as smooth..
Less memory
Doesn't crash
You're right, Gimp isn't Photoshop . . . its better
I'm sorry. But I've used Photoshop on both MacOS 9, win98, and win2000. And I think it has only ever crashed once, on MacOS.
All most isn't good enough. Please. Get a job as a graphic designer. And tell me how long you last with GIMP. If you last more than a week. I'd consider that an achivment.
As much as I like and support GIMP for what it is (Free/OpenSouce alternative to big, mean, Adobe). In the real world, it just dosn't cut it yet.
Why run Linux? Well, because it's tons faster. MacOS X is still a bit pokey, especially the finder.
You can always kill Aqua. Of course, you can run X instead.
Many of the apps have not been fully converted to use the new APIs as well, which also causes performance to degrade a little.
This surely is a problem when you reimplement a whole system like Apple are doing from the outdate MacOS to OSX. You cannot really compalin about it because they are currently working on it.
As far as wasting money on Apple hardware is concerned, the point is that the iBook is actually cheaper than any comparable Intel based laptop at this point, and is an all around great little box.
Although I don't say iBook is the best, I can safely say that this is one of the best notebooks.
There must be a technical reason.
On my iMac DV, OS 9.1, Apple DVD Player 2.7, I can use the OS window-shooter to grab a pic.
(Don't know how this works? command-caps-lock-shift-4, click on the window. gets you a PICT.)
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
There's a pretty good technical reason for this: in the older computers (those with Apple DVD Player 1.x), all of the decoding is done in hardware. Consequently, to avoid having to pump the video through software, all the software does is denote a region of the screen to use for DVD playback. This region happens to be a magenta rectangle. I'm pretty sure that if you hid the DVD player program and opened that screen shot, you would have your DVD playing inside it.
My old 5400's TV/Video card works in a very similar way, except the color isn't magenta but a whacky black color.
If you have DVD Player 2.x, then I have no idea why this would be so, but probably to avoid going through QuickDraw (which isn't that quick) to draw the frames. Playing a DVD means pumping through a lot of data.
Hope this explains it a bit.
Correct. As has already been mentioned, rootless support is in the current development versions of XFree86, available from CVS. There are still lots of bugs to sort out, but it's coming along nicely. A first binary test release will be out soon. Watch the web site mentioned below.
The people behind MacGimp actually are not participating in the development of Xfree86. They just post news about it and sell it on CDs. Rootless mode is developed mainly by Gregory Parker. More information on the development of XFree86 for Darwin and Mac OS X can be found at http://www.mrcla.com/XonX/.
-chrisp
"If that makes any sense to you, you have a big problem."
Look here. I haven't tested this because I don't one. YET!
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
How much experience do you have with making that MultiZone, to work with the 6x DVD Encore drive? I cant seem to get them to play nicely... I installed the H+ drivers and all that stuff, it was a while ago though... I moved from Sydney, Australia to OK, USA and thus have two different zoned DVDs in my collection. Its rather annoying, actually. Any help would be great. (just interpret my email address)
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Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius