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A Power Users Look at Linux on the Mac
An anonymous reader writes "Even though most Linux users have treated Linux as an operating system for their x86 white boxes, Linux runs equally well on PowerPC machines. This article looks at Linux on the PowerPC and the appealing range of PPC machines produced by Apple, where the option of using Linux is of great value to many users."
... the OS X system is just so fucking sweet though. I *never* thought I'd enjoy it, but a student got a new Mac notebook when OS X was first introduced, and he showed me how he organized his iCal and Outlook to keep track of homework, labs, and projects, and how he could open a native terminal window and do things like ls -R | grep filename and search his system for files.
Well, needless to say, I feel in love. Things like the recent introduction of iTunes and a better browser only make the deal sweeter.
Sure, the hardware's pricier and maybe a bit modern art-deco for my tastes, but as much as I love Linux, I can't imagine running it instead of OS X on my laptop.
Even Robin Malda uses OS X!
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Because iBook+Linux = 6 hours of Debian goodness. Or it would be if Apple can sort out my logic board. And no, this is not a troll - check my posting history.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
But I would really like to see IBM announce and open hardware platform based on the PowerPC chips.
I'd like to see instant on Linux desktops, and S3 suspend-to-ram states that are 99.99% reliable.
BTW, can any mac user tell me: how well does the ACPI equivalent on MAC work?
[p]I would like to ask, as a completely serious question, aside from the matter of personal preference, the whole, "Linux is better than anything else in the world," thing, why in the hell would anyone feel a need to install Linux on a Mac?[/p][p]OS X runs on most modern Macs, and is based on a *BSD. It's stable as hell, more secure than any distro of Linux I know of, and it has a very functional GUI (if you like such things).[/p][p]I mean, I run two Linux boxen, one as a server, the other as a generic code monkey-ing machine, and if I had a Mac I would in no way see or feel a need to put Linux on it.[/p]
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
Anyway, I am planning to buy an old mac (mostly because I like its colour), and, of course, I want a Linux-only system.
Therefore, which distributions do you suggest. Are there sws that are not available for the mac-linux (openoffice?)?
Thanks,
M.
--
http://incuso.altervista.org
Here's hoping that Apple does real well, so that there are a lot of cheap used PPCs out there. I like what I see on my friends powerbook, I just can't justify the price at this time.
...will they sell me one without charging me for the MacOS?
If I buy a Mac then I'm paying for the OS and the brand. Is there another, cheaper, source for the hardware?
It's hosted by ibm, I think they can withstand a slashdotting.
The last paragraph of the article talks about running a program called Mac-On-Linux, which lets you run Mac OS 9 and/or Mac OS X while running Linux. I have heard about this before, but does it actually work? There is no way that I would give up the number of apps that I use every day in Mac OS X to run Linux. If Reason, Photoshop, Director, and HTML Face X run under MOL I'll be happy to try a Linux distribution.
...the best of both worlds under linux on Mac hardware:
http://www.maconlinux.org
-Ghostis
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
One thing that is certain: If you use a Mac, you have no exotic hardware and drivers should work quite well. Thousands of users have the same harware configuration as you. Therefore you can get the most out of the hardware - if you want to use linux on a mac - I think MacOSX is quite a nice Operating System, especially for desktop use.
Spelling mistakes: My is english spoken not tongue of mother.
i have a client who has a stack of old G3's and wanted to see if linux could rescue tem from the bin (266 g3 beige server 128mb ram)*5, i downloaded Gentoo but it would be nice to compare it with something else, any ideas what i might demo him with a live CD or even an autopartioner install (so it can be removed easily)
cheers ! .
Everyone talks about user-friendliness issues that prevent Linux from becoming desktop-worthy. Wouldn't Apple be the best platform to introduce this on? Not due to technical merit, but simply because ease-of-use is a major selling point to Apple? If people want to make a truly slam-bang intuitive GUI for Linux, code it for PPC and worry about porting it later. Hell, Apple themselves could sponsor such a project and use it as a way to garner themselves more Mac sales. "Look, the most intuitive Linux distro out there runs best on a Mac!" Maybe end-users wouldn't get it right away, but sysadmins and such types would, and there's always the "My friend knows computers, and..." factor to be considered. They'll hear about it soon enough (remember when the Internet was a geek-exclusive playground?).
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Does anyone know where I can find Knoppix for PPC? I'd love to play around with it on some old iMacs I have lying around. However I only found an old release. I would think that linux-live cds should work even better om macs than on pcs, since there is so much less hardware to configure. The knoppix homepage states that the minimum requirements include a x86 processor.
Hm - there are some interesting implications with that.
IBM wants to sell chips. Apple wants to sell hardware. If IBM came out with a "desktop" or even "workstation" PowerPC machine that ran, say, Yellow Dog Linux (or PPC Suse or the like), how would Apple respond?
Especially since most of the programs made for PPC Linux can easily be ported to Apple - whether running under X11 or adding in Cocoa portions - and I'm sure Apple would be more than happy to supply a compiler that could turn PPC-X-Windows code to Aqua code - cludgy, but it could work.
If such a system took off, Apple would be pretty happy - more programs could be converted easily. And odds are, if you're already running PPC desktop, you might be looking at OS X for ease of use issues.
On the other hand - who would use such a system? Most people would probably go for x86 Linux - x86 parts are cheaper, more software is available (even on just the Linux side alone). So a person wanting a PPC desktop would have to have a very good reason, like wanting to do high-end calculations or graphics rendering.
In which case, they'd probably just go for a Mac first anyway.
Personally, I think that Apple's best move is this:
1. Keep the high-end Powermacs/powerbooks.
2. Keep the lower-cost iBooks.
3. Make the iMacs truly cost compatible. Yes, there are the eMacs - what I think would blow away the market is a $600 headless iMac. Small base, maybe like the Cube (only upgradeable - that's what killed the little guy). Most people already have monitors, and if they could by a $600 G4 Mac they'd be estatic. Apple would make money, and could eventually move them over into the more expensive stuff - and even if they didn't, they'd gain market share, which would still mean more money.
Either way, we'll have to see what happens with IBM and Apple. The 970 chips are becoming more popular (Xbox Next, anyone? - this could be a side issue about how many Xbox games could be ported to OS X if the Xbox Next is truly G5 based....), so the future could hold anything.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
For almost any model there is an installation report about Linux on an Apple PowerBook or iBook.
... in Europe. Seriously, compare the prices at the current exchange rates, especially for Powerbooks (but do remember to substract the VAT, which is included in most European Apple stores). Apple sells it's stuff for hundreds of dollars more in Europe. Same goes for many brand stuff electronics and PCs. But with PCs, at least you can buy separate components, which are usually not much more expensive than in the US.
OK, I'm not trying to be anal here but people who don't know might be misled by the following in the article:
Apple's G5 towers are comparable in speed to the fastest x86-derived CPUs and systems; in other words, the Intel Itanium and AMD Athlon64.
Itanium is not x86 derived. It has its own novel instruction set.
If so, then that would be a real good reason to replace OS/X with it.
This is my sig.
I have two macs a Powermac 6100/66 and a Powermac 7100/80av. Which Linux is best for these? I was told they can't run Linux? I don't see why not, other macs before and after them can.
thanks
Mac OS X is so much more refined than Linux, and actually has a huge amount of produtivity software. So why should anyone in their right mind want to run Linux on a Mac, unless (s)he is a masochist?
Yellow dog linux
might very well be Mac on Linux, ironically enough. Check out this:
http://www.maconlinux.org/sshots/pic12.jpg
Running multiple versions of MacOS in parallel. Think about the possibilities for software developers. Having multiple environments immediately available for testing.
Then of course there's the ability to run all those Mac apps when needed and still have the Linux desktop to go to when they aren't needed.
Mac on Linux is what the open source world should try and create for the Windows world. Think of the possibilities if you could run Windows at work in a Window - be able to do all the windows specific stuff at need, but have Linux goodness in which to work as well. If a phb strolls in, just flip your desktop over to full screen windows. Then for the rest of the time go stealth with Xpde, good enough to fool a casual glance. Maybe some rootless window hack could even be figured out.
Of course, if your boss says you Must Use Windows, there's not a whole lot you can do. But perhaps this would be an acceptible compromise.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Exactly. It's like putting a VW Bug engine into a mid-60's porsche. Not only is it not going to work right(and LinuxPPC doesn't work nearly as well, just on a features basis, as OS X), but it'll be slow and everyone who sees it will just stare at you- and if they're not polite enough, demand to know why you did it. Even Robin Malda uses OS X!
Who cares? Slashdot is hardly an example of technical prowess; in fact, it's rotting(HTML 3?!?). The FAQ hasn't been touched since '99, and they have yet to rise to the challenge of solving any of the problems they themselves created(slashdotting for example). From what I've heard(several OSDN sales people worked where I used to work), Malda got wined and dined by one company after another hoping he'd either post about them or endorse their products. Absolutely no integrity.
Please help metamoderate.
Doesn't OS X have the 'locate ' command?
It's faster that ls -R | grep since it goes against a pre-indexed db of the file system.
Have AFS working?
Not that fun getting zero byte files when run over AFS?
And quite good.
I thought I've seen this article posted before on OS News... Like its not really recent... Ahh Well. The great thing about Open Source is usually cross platform unlike MS x86 only or even apples OS X. Personally Ive grown attached to Mandrake on my computer. The packages are pretty up to date and its stable enough. YellowDog Specializes in PPC and I've run their OS, its pretty well made for the mac. They both are free to download as ISO, which is great. I havent tried Gentoo yet but who knows maybe I will later. As far as BSD's go I think the three major ones NetBSD, OpenBSD, and FreeBSD are compatable with Apple PPC.
You cannot boot directly from OF (openfirmware) into Linux. Wrong, OF is a really a boot loader and can load any ELF or xcoff binary from many different file system formats, hfs, hfs+, ISO CD, ext2, and ufs.
Also OF can read both partion maps, Apple format and x86 format.
Of course you can still use yaboot if you want.
While the heading refers to Linux on Macs, there's a number of other PPC machines that'll run Linux
a pegasos I or II is a PPC based machine, there's also Amiga One boards - a new Mini-ITX AmigaOne looks REALLY appealing, as long as it's not slugged with the "Amiga Tax" (double the price for the privilege of being able to run AmigaOS4 if it's released). a Mini ITX board with a GHz or more G4 - not a scaled down VIA type setup, but a full honest-to-goodness G4. That's appealing.
There's also several VMEbus boards based on PPC chips from PPC440 to G4s, and a newer one out soon from Momentum computer, Dual G5s on an ATX board. Pricey, but it's just a reference board at the moment.
If prices dropped on these, especially on the Momentum board, I could see these being real alternatives to x86, especially for people a bit worried about MS's palladium plans. A mac is a wonderful thing, but if you ask 'Why bother" about putting Linux over the top of a machine that'll run OSX, one of the above solutions might be an option.
OK... maybe this note is a little karma whoring by the author of the referred article. But what the heck, I -did- write it, and I'm always pleased when things by or about me make the slashdot headline.
:-)).
/.-ing.
A question a bunch of people have raised in comments is "why bother with Linux if you buy a Mac with OSX on it"... well, read the article. I don't say that switching to or adding Linux is always desirable; but I think I do a good job of describing some scenarios where it is. That said, I certainly -do- like OSX quite a bit (where my favorite installed application is still bash
Also, contrary to some down-modded poster, IBM can INDEED easily handle the load of slashdotting. In fact, a zillion hits to my article is indirectly good for me (I'm not on commission or anything, but it puts an extra sparkle in my editors' eyes). Also, FWIW, all my articles soon make it to [http://gnosis.cx/publish/] (which reminds me that I need some updating, it's been a couple months)... which is also quite strong enough to survive
Yours, David...
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Locate just looks at files, not the content in them.
`locate foo` will turn up much different results than `grep -R foo`.
a lobster. But they are not the same.
That's why I bought an iBook.. I figured it would be a perfect linux laptop.
Then I tried OSX for the heck of it, you know, it was already installed.
And now you can pry OSX off my mac from my cold, dead hands.
That second hierarchy actually comes from NeXTSTEP, where it was called /NextApplications, /NextLibrary, /NextDeveloper, etc. Mac OS 9 did not have a particular imposition of hierarchy in the same way that UNIX might; applications can live just about anywhere.
Secondly there's a very conscious and IMHO good reason to farm off the NeXTish stuff into a different hierarchy - that is that it's a different system. All of the files in /etc, /usr, /var etc. are in the same places that you would expect to find them on any UNIX. Looking for the run control scripts? They're in /etc/rc*.
The OPENSTEP-derived APIs, the Aqua GUI, Cocoa applications etc. are orthogonal to UNIX. They just happen to be running on a UNIX system (unless you're using Yellow Box for Windows NT). Keeping them in their own hierarchies so that they don't intrude on or get confused with UNIX stuff is a good idea.
There is an anti-case-study: GNUstep does indeed put all of its files into the UNIX hierarchy, but it still partitions them into separate subdirectories, namely /usr/GNUstep and ~/GNUstep. Again, because it's orthogonal to the underlying UNIX system, it tries to keep out of its way.
IBM should make some g5 PPC systems aimed specifically at linux. If they're cheap enough I'd buy one.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
The author isn't aware that Mandrake can do the same thing by running urpmi PACKAGENAME. And the graphical front end, rpmdrake, is a competant method of installing softare. Also, it is possible to install yum or apt-rpm via urpmi if you prefer them.
Of course... Linux on a Mac presents an interesting question.
There are x86s available without Windows, but Apple will start shipping PPC based PCs without OSX shortly after Satan orders anti-freeze and warm winter woollens.
Does that make it more or less a candidate for replacement with Linux??
You cant make anything foolproof, they'll only invent better fools.
Ok, so according to Apple, iCal was introduced as part of OS 10.2 and not part of OS 10.0. This could a simply mistake or, by looking at Amsterdam Vallon (639622)'s posts, I see our friend likes to post crap that moderators will push up, gain karma and troll. Most of his posts have been modded down.
2000-01-05: Apple Unveils Mac OS X
2002-07-17: Apple Introduces "Jaguar," the Next Major Release of Mac OS X
2002-07-17: Apple Introduces iCal
Apple - Mac OS X - Features by Version
I prefer Linux, that's all. I like that it all is open source, I like the ability to chose my favorite DE ...
So what it comes down to is, while OSX is a great OS there is a OS I prefer. Now would you please tell me a reason why I shouldn't use it?
The Common Hardware Reference Platform (CHRP, aka PPCP) was released many many years ago, but it hasn't really taken off. IBM did sell some of these systems, and the modern pegasos platform offers G3 & G4 processors.
Here's some more technical info.
p.s. mac sleeping is perfect - sleep and wake are quick, and network connectivity (even when roaming) is very fast.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I just installed FreeBSD on an old but very common Toshiba laptop.
After recompiling the kernel and a hell of a lot of mods I finally got the PCMCIA (not Pccard:the default in 5.2) Ethernet working. Then there was the PCMCIA trying to grab IRQ5 which stopped the sound. Certainly all simple fixes, but why in the world would you bother (unless you had to as in my case)? The internal modem still doesn't work properly.
FreeBSD only support APM or ACPI, NOT Both at the same time...now that had me stumped for a while.
MacOSX runs some really cool programs such as Photoshop and CorelDraw which have no Linux/BSD equivalent yet. Gimp is way behind and as for some of the "k" drawing progs...give them a few years.
One thing in heavily in favour of Apple computer in general is the lack of variety of hardware in these systems which makes them less likely for "break". Same applies to the "BIG IRON" from IBM and Sun. Just for that alone Apple computers are a bargain and I'm certain Linux will run on them far better than it does on x86 computers.
I still run linux exclusively on my laptop and in the office, and on just about any server I have a say over. Some people ask why install Linux on a ppc but a lot of oss apps don't run smoothly on osx even with fink. I've had a lot of problems, where running a full fledged distro seems to run pretty smoothly on the ppc.
OSX is nice but if I was not running photoshop, garageband, or final cut, I would not have purchased a mac. I have a dual 2.8 xeon at work running gentoo that I prefer hands down over the G5 for coding, mainly for software reasons.
I like the gentoo packaging system, everything is available through portage. With OSX, I feel like I'm running windows again because most of the software is shareware. Like I just paid $130 for isight, but I can pretty much only video chat with it by default. If I want to use it for a webcam, I need to pay $30. If I want to record video with imovie, I need to pay $50 for ilife.
Another thing that bugged me about isight was the apple has hard coded the min requirements for the software. So if you plug the isight in to a 500mhz g3 ibook, it will not even attempt to work even though it could. I've never ran in to windows or linux software that will not even attempt to run if you don't meet the min requirements.
so it turns out I can use the isight with the g3 500 ibook, but I have to spend another $30 for some shareware that removes the limit and lets usb cameras work for isight. So in total, it cost me $110 in software in order to get basic functionality out of my $130 fire wire camera.
My debacle with the isight is classic case of why free software and keeping a separation between the software developers ands the company that makes the hardware, has a lot of value.
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/apple/
I doubt locate would be as useful in that situation -- if you're doing an ls in only directory, the time difference will be minimal and the results more up-to-date than locate's. If you're doing a find over multiple dirs, on the other hand, then you'd probably have need to look for a faster solution (ie, locate) -- so long as what you're looking for existed the last time locate's db was updated.
However I had a coworker who had a MAC OSX lap top. I was impressed. All the goodness of a nix shell, xwindows, plus easy-to-do everything MAC style.
Given all that a MAC 0SX gives you I can't see why anyone would want to run linux on it.
It would be like bringing bolagna on whitebread with you to a fancy restaurant you love.
Steve
I have a second hand 400mhz G4 powerbook. When OSX came out I tried it, but it seemed to run a bit too slow on the powerbook for me and watching a divx movie in osx was nearly impossible with quicktime.
After a week I was fed up with it. I've been running gentoo linux on a lot of x86 servers, so I decided to make it a gentooppc computer - with a GUI for the first time.
It took some effort at that time, since gentooppc was just starting, but eventually I managed it.
I felt proud that it worked and it made many mac addicts give me strange but cool looks.
Nowadays I run the 2.6 kernel and kde 3.2 and I must say it's perfect (only vga out is a bit of a b!tch with my graphical chipset): reliable and fast and all of the hardware is supported. I use it mainly for webbrowsing (konqueror), movies (mplayer), email (sylpheed-claws) and SSH'ing to other machines.
Only one but, if you run linux on a non x86 computer, you don't have the nice Wine things, but on the other hand you can run DOS apps with Bochs (though terribly slow on my system).
I won't swap if someone offered me a faster powerbook with OSX and I weren't allowed to reinstall my beloved linuxppc.
OpenOffice should run fine. It will also run with OSX using apple's X11, but not natively under Aqua.
Actually, the current preferred implementation is called NeoOffice/J. It uses Java to make OO.o act much more like a native Aqua app. The GUI still looks out-of-place, but it supports native fonts and printing, standard OS X keyboard shortcuts, OS X's various foreign language input methods (like Japanese), double-clickable files, and is self-contained as a .app package.
Guitars, computers, electronic parts... you name it, Canadians and Yankees have it cheaper than Europe. Why? Because just about everything in Europe is sold at full list price, also adding all sorts of levies and taxes on import of non-EU goods. By comparision, North America is used to have everything at discounts often approaching 50% of list price.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
Yes, osx has locate. It's updatedb gets run out of cron, but as I discovered for my powerbook, I keep putting it to sleep every night so it never ran. Running updatedb manually worked (of course), or one could always reschedule it.
GET YOUR WEAPONS READY! --DR.LIGHT
Mac-on-Linux is good...
but it's essentially VMWare for PPC in principle.
There are aspects of the PPC architecture that make this kind of thing easier and perform better.
even if it does, anyone who runs ls -R | grep to find a file is a moron, and no unix user.
Linux has its origins on IA32, Intel's 32-bit architecture. Every platform Linux has migrated to since then has been beset with porting problems -- Linux runs 32% more efficiently on Intel than PowerPC. This is very telling as PowerPC is in general much faster per clock than Intel. Somewhere in the translation from PowerPC to IA32 something got lost.
Mac OS is 100% native for PowerPC. The Mach kernel has been optimized for the G3, G4, and 970 since Apple began writing the operating system back in 1996. Why choose a hacked and kludged OS from another platform when you can have an environment tailor-made for the system you'll be running it on? Mac OS certainly isn't plagued by same driver problems Linux is (in)famous for.
In Linux, the development model is highly irrational: anyone is allowed to submit patches, and one man (Linus Torvalds) sorts through gigabyte after gigabyte of amateurish code, attempting to integrate it into the kernel. Apple's model is much more modern and decisive: the code for the low levels of Mac OS is available for anyone to download and modify, while the more complex parts of the system (QuickTime and OpenGL) are kept closed-source so those that know better -- the Apple programmers -- are the only ones allowed to tinker.
The results because of these differing development models are clear. Apple released a major update to the OS once a year, and releases about five minor updates to the OS, as well as several dozen security patches and driver updates, in the interim. Since March of 2001 we've gone from 10.0 to 10.2.5, while Linux was still stuck at some sort of bizarre "in-between" 2.5 kernel patch and wouldn't move on to 2.6 until well after Apple had released Mac OS 10.3.
It's not hard to see the difference here is a bunch of kids playing with source code instead of doing their homework vs. highly qualified professionals pushing their skills to the limits. The Mac OS user benefits.
I don't even think I have to touch on this. While Linux offers several GUIs from GNOME, KDE, and Enlightenment, Apple offers only one. But here we have a case of quality vs. quantity. Apple controls the GUI for its operating system while anyone can hack and modify the various Linux GUIs as they please. This has led to a lack of desktop standards and a whole lot of bickering and flame wars over human interface guidelines. Most of the GUIs for Linux are simply poor knock-offs of the Windows 95 interface.
Apple's Aqua and QuickTime graphical interfaces are faster, more elegant, and very consistent. A Mac user can sit down at any Mac and (assuming someone hasn't installed Linux) get right to work. With Linux, it's hit or miss as to whether the user will know what to do when he logs in! Getting work done is the most important aspect of a computer. After all, it is just a tool. Linux fails in this area miserably you're forced to edit and tinker and kludge and hack to make things perfect. A Mac allowes you to just sit down and roll up your sleeves and get some work done. I don't have time to play at my job.
I've used Linux before and the headache of downloading drivers and libraries and making sure the versions all sync up are too mucvh to handle, especiallly considering one has to compile these applications. On a Mac, I mount a disk image and drag the .app file to /Applications, and I'm done. Hell, most software for Mac even installs it there for you.
To put this last point in perspective, let's look at a recent task I performed under both Linux 2.4 and Mac OS 10.2.
Sendmail and sshd were both cracked recently and needed updated. The guys who code
If you disagree post, don't moderate.
Java and Flash plugins. In Brazil it is nearly impossible to find a job or use a bank in the Web without them both.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
Konqueror. That's it. Split view and tabbed browsing, flawless (compared to Finder) SAMBA browsing, better font rendering...
There's a couple of other nice-to-haves like Gnucash and Bluefish but once I finally get Fink to stop bitching about XFree86 being already isntalled I should be good w/ those.
This guy is way out there
Although obviously this person was actually trying to be flamebait, from the comments at the end (anti-americanism??), every point made is true.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I wouldn't go getting too patriotic there, don't forget that they basically "stole" the entire underlying system (frebsd==darwin). Not exactly stolen in the legal sense, more in the sense of using something that someone else develops. Anyone know how much they pay SCO?
...and don't see an incentive of using Linux. Most of my linux apps have been ported to osx , some with cocoa gui and the works, like xchat, wget, etc.
And there isn't an nvidia driver for linux/ppc.
So really, why use Linux here? I even have fink if i need some gnu/linux stuff.
I wouldn't even know how to install linux here, because i would need to repartition and don't want to lose data.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
One of the things that people have been saying with each iteration of OS X is that it is getting faster and faster. While this may be true, they still have a long way to go. I recently tried out a gentoo live cd on a friends 600MHz G3 iBook, and I was blown away. In OS X 10.3 the iBook feels responsive, but it is clear that a fast G4 or G5 would fair a great deal better. Under Gentoo running gnome 2.4 this computer was sickeningly fast. It felt almost as fast as my Athlon XP 2500. I was amazed at how much this little 600MHz G3 was capable of. If you are looking for a reason to use Linux over Mac OS X, look no further than getting to utilize the performance your system is capable of.
I know I know OS X is a more modern os blah blah blah. People used to say (maybe they still do and I just ignore them) the same thing about java, it is a more modern language and all of it's advanced capabilities are too much for todays computers. The end result? Very few modern GUI apps are written in java. I say the same thing for OS X, just because it uses a somewhat new concept for GUI (pdf-based) doesn't justify it's cripplingly slow speeds. I for one would rather have a fully functional GUI that doesn't make a decent processor suck wind every time I try to resize a browser window, than have the prettiest antialised interface. For the record I personally find gnome 2.4 with the ximian industrial theme quite pleasing to the eye. Just my $0.02.
Fear trumps hope and ignorance trumps both
I have a All in One G3, 250mhz G3 w/768 mb of ram.
OS X runs OK on it but Yellow Dog, in addition to providing a modern browser for the platform, etc., just flat flies on the machine.
Resize a window on an old machine running OS X and you will know the pain of having a kick ass OS that is unusable in normal circumstances.
Linux provides older macs with a modern OS without the bloat.
As for hardware support, at least using YDL, the volume control on the old AIO is functional while on OS X it is broken.
YDL also fits nicely on my 1Ghz G4 flat panel imac although it does not provide any additional functionality that is not already available through OS X.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
OK, someone who uses Linux on the Mac, answer this for me: how the hell do you make it come back on after the power fails? In OS 9, this is called 'server mode'. OldWorld machines have a way to enable it by catting a few bytes at /dev/adb.
Nobody has a way to do this on anything newer, which means something like FOUR YEARS worth of machines (or more!) can't reboot when the power goes out and then comes back on.
Linux on the Mac is nothing more than a toy until someone can figure out how to set the server mode flag. I don't care if I have to run it in my boot scripts. As long as it works I will be happy.
Until it exists, I know that nobody is really using Linux on Macs for anything important, since all their machines would stay off the first time they lost power (including draining a UPS)!
Yes, I'm bitching, and no, I'm not trolling. I've done a lot of work with Linux and a G4, and this has been pissing me off the whole time.
I've installed Debian on numerous Macs upgraded with accelerater cards(powerlogix, newertech, etc.,) and the one thing you must remember is to enable your backside cache by setting the correct l2cr on the boot prompt. Most g3 cards can be handeled correctly with the BootX utility to enable the backside cache then checking on the backside cache in BootX. However G4's are another matter. The only way I've managed to enable the l2cr is manually putting it on the boot prompt line since BootX only handles G3s backside cache corectly. Another thing about setting the backside cache on G4s is finding the correct init mask for the l2cr, they are not all the same. You have to do some heavy googling to find the specific value for a specific card. But once these values are found, my upgraded old powercomputing machines, espicially the 60mhz boards perform extremely well with linux. Also many of the problems with XFree86 server can be overcome by using the fbdev. You can even use dri with it.
The title should be "A Power User's Look at Linux on the Mac." The way it's incorrectly written now is confusing and it took me a moment to parse it.
After many years of using Macs under OS9, I finally caved and bought a powerbook. A Wallstreet G3, off eBay, just after the Bronze Keyboards came out. Dead cheap, specced to kill all the PC portables out at the time, and with 2 batteries, a perfectly usable mobile office.
I _didn't_ buy it to run OS9. OSX wasn't out. I bought it as a portable unix workstation. Linux machine, with ethernet, pcmcia, scsi, irda, all the stuff that was good at the time, plus a belkin USB adaptor.
It was my developer machine for the longest time, and I still have it.
However, much as I love linux, when OSX came out, I did a tentative migrate and never went back. Even 10.0 was a better and more stable user experience, and the tools were largely the same (gcc, emacs, blah blah)
I have since got myself a G4 TiBook (400 Mhz model) which runs 10.3 just fine thank you. I may migrate the G3 back to linux via gentoo, but for the moment it's running 10.2 quite happily and my wife uses it almost full time.
However, my old 9500/200 is running gentoo, and works very happily as a server. I'd migrate the Beige G3/233 (currently running MacOS9) back to linux if I could pry it from the kid's hands....
Oh, and I have an SE/30 running netBSD. Hah!
Basically, what I'm saying is this.
To make a server or usable workstation from one of those _very_ cheap older macs that can't handle OSX, linux is great. The older macs are awesomely specced for their age, reliable, well supported, and just plain nice to work with. Plus with maconlinux, you can run your os9 apps as well.
But if your hardware can do it, OSX is a better alternative. Really. It's not like you can't compile, for example, gimp for OSX, is it?
Simon
Try Jaguar on a 7300. Or Panther on a 9600. Or even Panther on a beige G3. For those of us who love Apple hardware, can't afford gear more recent than four years old, and want to get some UNIX out of it, Linux just blows OS X right out of the water.
Linux doesn't care about my video chipset. X11 DEs don't require 32 megs of VRAM. Linux runs inside of 128 megs of physical memory without difficulty. Fluxbox is just as responsive as OS 9 on the same hardware- something OS X still can't claim.
All that and here's the bag of chips: The Debian "Software Update" (apt) updates EVERY APPLICATION ON THE SYSTEM. Compare to OS X, where I get my Apple updates through SWU and have to download and install Adobe updates, new builds of BZFlag, new versions of Quicksilver, etceteras myself.
Not to say I don't have issues with various packages, but dear GODS Linux is far more useable on older hardware than OS X. On a general level- quality of applications and userland are a slightly different matter.
Except that Mac-on-Linux is free. Forever. And you can run it on any PPC based hardware, not just an Apple. So if you got some other PPC hardware, like the Pegasos, you can boot OS X in a window within Linux. You won't be able to boot said OS X without being in Linux, so its a great alternative.
OS X of course, is the greatest OS in history, but Windows XP is also far far ahead of Linux technologically speaking. Either system is an excellent choice for desktop use, and yet France, Germany, Russia, China, etc all seem to be going with Linux. It is no co-incidence, I think, that those countries populations are the ones you generally see on television shouting anti-american slogans and their governments are the ones who are screwing America over time and time again through the united nations. In fact, I would say Linux is the united nations of software. Useless, bloated and over hyped by moralizing anti-American losers.
.... but IMHO KDE (DCOP, Qt) comes closest to the whole OO-interface thing in a usable way.
;)
Or maybe I'm just too easily impressed with Liquid, KHotKey and KDCOP?
(and for whatever reason, Apple's Lucida Grande TTF looks better in KDE apps than Xft-compiled Mozilla (but not as good as in OSX)
I have a powerbook g3 (pismo, 640 ram) and OS X takes so long to wake up from sleep that, well.... I never sleep the machine. Especially since the applications I run - Photoshop - take a veeeeeeery LONG time to pick up where they left off when sleep cycled. :|
:-/
Nothing quite like watching your battery meter slowly decrease while Photoshop SPODs..... and SPODs..... and SPODs....
Linux on Sparc is the real untold story. The installation of Debian unstable on an unused Sun Ultra 5 has been a recent revelation, and given the prevalence of such hardware sitting unused in many locations, represents a low (or no, if one carries out an ftp install) way of recycling such hardware to make it truly useful. The Sun Ultra 5 recently rejuvenated in this way is running much faster than it ever did using Solaris 7 or 8, and also has none of the compilation/compatibility problems which beset Sun desktop users who don't have Sun's own (expensive) compiler. apt-get install - could life get any easier?
I've been running yellow dog linux on my old rev c imac for a couple of years now and it rocks. right now i have yd 3.0.1 and its way faster on that old hardware than os x. the only time i even bother booting into os x is if i want to run a mac specific program. i say why settle for apples half assed unix, when you can have the real thing that works way better
I feel I should clarify the OS 9 directory structure. :)
/Applications, /Library and /System, you might have noticed "Applications (Mac OS 9)", "Documents", and "System Folder" on the root disk of new macs. Those belong to the Classic Environment. As do "Desktop Folder" and "Temporary Items", which OS X refuses to hide for some reason- a fact that can make browsing shares on an OS X server kind of >. at times.
While the parent poster has done an excellent job of detailing the geneology of
UNLIKE unix, you can move all that stuff that belongs to Classic into a folder and smack it somewhere- like ~/Documents/Classic if you want to keep it all to yourself. You might have to repoint where it launches from in the System Preferences, but beyond that, Classic doesn't care.
I've been a Linux on Mac supporter for awhile... as I'm sure a few people are annoyingly aware. So let's make this simple, eh?
Not everyone has OS X ready (or practical) hardware. And of those, many are simply sick of OS 9 (and earlier) OS options.
Look, I try and keep moderately up to date, but with multiple systems it's not the easiest (financially) thing to do. My PC stays current, but my Mac's don't. My old G4 400 runs OS X and is the backbone of my sound studio (runs OS X), my G3 (Lombard) laptop however, blows chunks under the strain of OS X. So, what're my options? OS 9? Please... No, it runs YDL 2.3 and is a very usable, very stable, very powerful Linux based laptop. And by the way... the great Apple support you're talking about is the same support that drops paying customers between the cracks every few years (Lombards, Yikes, 603e's, etc...).
Also, not everyone throws systems away just because it's reached the Manufacturer's end of life estimate. Man, I've got several old pre- G3 Mac's that are very useful... as file servers, MP3 servers, web appliances, etc... primarily because they run Linux.
Also, running Linux on a Mac is no different than running Linux on x86. Some people do it because they can. Why not direct a negative anti-Linux post towards Windows users? Afterall, all of your arguments would be just as (in)valid there... Why use Linux when you can run XP?
In short... just because you don't like the idea of people trashing their Mac with a non Apple created OS doesn't mean that people will stop. Some of us use multiple OSes because we like to tinker. Some because we want to continue to have a usable product even when the manufacturer would really prefer us to spend another $2000. Who knows, maybe a few people even use Linux just to tick you off.
Silly thought, huh? About as silly as firing off a post telling other's why you believe it is pointless for them to do what they wish with their machine.
Heaven forbid anyone has an enjoyable learning experience from a piece of equipment without someone else getting an endless stream of royalties.
-------
rage
#SickNotWeak
You know, doing some reading on what hardware worked with the iSight before you bought it would have saved you a chunk of cash. Plenty of CHEAP webcams work with OS X and iChat A/V- and since most webcams are USB, then they'll work on the iMac and later.
:-)
Then there's the fact that iMovie comes installed on G5s. Already. You only need to pay for iLife if you're upgrading and/or you want something like Garage Band. If I have to shell out fiddy bux for it, why does it keep showing up in software update?
I have Puma on my 8600 and Jaguar on my Beige G3, atm. Have a look at X Post Facto.
If you want to run X11, then yes it does. Have a look at /etc/X11/XFree86Config-4 on your Linux box. Now go and install X11 on Darwin, and look at the same file. Oops! It isn't there. That's right; it doesn't need you to tell it what blinking graphics card you have, it can just ask the kernel.
Only if you only install Debian packages. As soon as you install something from another source, you have to maintain it yourself. Just as you would on OS X.
OS X also has the benefits of being a BSD: no ugly klunky SysV init, a classy signal handling mechanism, and Ceren. But it's a ++BSD; have a look at the System Starter. Marvel at the way you can compile a single binary that will run on multiple architectures. Drool over the dynamic loader. Whimper in awe at the Mach threading system.
Oh look, you're just regurgitating a pre-written troll from a troll site. Go away, troll.
For the record, my Pismo (Powerbook G3 Firewire) is four years old and runs 10.3.2 just fine. Other machines introduced in 1999, like the B&W G3s and the first of the G4s, are perfectly capable of running the latest version of OS X. Thee 9600 was discontinued in 1997, and I'd imagine that a 97-era PC running XP would have some problems as well.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
My Pismo is four years old and runs 10.3.2 like a slug on ketamine. I don't suppose you make a living in Photoshop?
I keep my Pismo in 9.2 and use an older version of photoshop simply for the speed benefits over using PS 7 or CS in OS X on the same hardware.
The Mac has been 32-bit since day one, the 68000 8MHz CPU. I don't know if that's why, but the Macs have a LOT of IRQs, one for every device, and MANY more to spare.
My IDE is on IRQ 26 on my Mac, and USB is 28, I don't know what else is in there, but I'm pretty sure the Mac has 255 IRQs and there's no sharing.
This is why hardware for the Mac is so much easier to plug-and-play.
Do you realize that even on modern PCs there's only 8 IRQs? There's another 'cascade' interrupt device that provides IRQ 9-15.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Alright, I've got a G3 decked out with SCSI as a file server, I tried running OSX on it, but found that Gentoo-PPC was way faster at serving up files to my other machines. Also, I've got 'universal' configuration files, it's a lot easier to have the same tools and configs running on all my hardware (several x86 linux boxes, one PPC linux box) than to run two totally different operating systems.
Also, I run that server totally headless, the only thing I WANT running on it is the kernel, Samba, nfsd, BIND, and OpenSSH. Anything else is bloat. I can't get OSX down to that easily, so I run Linux.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
It's an iBook G4. I'm now a happy and proud owner of such a machine, and user of both MacOS X Panther an Linux on it.
/home directory, so now I have a single home for both Linux and OS X. Same desktop, same config for common programs.
The first thing I did when I got my hands on it was to re-partition it's hard drive and install Panther. Then I followed the instructions on setting up the mother of all Linux distributions on it from here.
I did the initial install of the Debian GNU/Linux base system (not without having to use a different kernel image for the ATA support, among other things to fiddle with), but then I started to take a serious look at OS X. It's an impressive operating system, with such a lovely and responsive GUI but the real power of UNIX I'm all used to underneath. I installed lots of open source software that I've get used to and couldn't live without. It all works so smoothly and nicely along other native applications, such as iTunes, Mail.app, Safari, Keynote, etc. - you get the best of both worlds. You have fink, you have darwinports, there's even OpenOffice.org. And if you're a developer, you also got Xcode from Apple. As I said, the both of worlds. And for some extra bucks you can get back some of your most beloved features from the Linux world: WindowShade X is a fine example of it.
Panther is also packed with some neat features not present anywhere else. Finder, for example, if one of the best file manager I've ever used. And Expose - I really miss it when working on Linux. One of the most useful enhancements a desktop environment could have get, it's not only eyecandy.
But then the necessity came and striked me hard. I have a small Linux consulting company. I was in a meeting with a customer the other day, and he wasn't so convinced that Linux could be a _viable_ alternative on the desktop. He thought it was just a black screen with UNIX-y commands and such. And there I was, with my iBook with Debian loaded on it but with no desktop environment to show off. Just a black screen with UNIX-y commands and such.
So I spent the whole night that day googling around and finally got my iBook to work nicely with Linux 2.6.2, supporting almost every single feature that's present on it except for Airport Extreme and the sleep functionality, which are not supported: sound, networking, USB 2.0, firewire, the combo drive, the ATI Radeon 9200 with DRI, the special function keys, the CPU frequency scaling. I even configured it to use an hfsplus partition for the
There are still some things that Linux can do better than OS X. Like OpenOffice.org or GIMP. Certainly both programs do exist for OS X but their performance and overall integration with the rest of the system is not so good.
The conclusion of it is that, even if MacOS X is one hell of an operating system, Linux is fun. I love to use the same plataform on my x86 desktop I've grown used to for more than 6 years than on my PPC based laptop. And I still have the chance to reboot and use Panther for the amusement of it.
Regards,
Articulos para gente geek: Poleras, linux, libros y mas
Let's see: it's free, it's uniform across platforms, I'm not locked into proprietary hardware, and I don't have to support litigious bastards called Apple by constantly paying for upgrades and bugfixes.
/proc/cpuinfo | grep motherboard
(Slashdot has a bit of a blind eye when it comes to the last part, I fully realize.)
icon@fleur:[~]$ cat
motherboard : PowerBook3,2 MacRISC2 MacRISC Power Macintosh
icon@fleur:[~]$ uname -a
Linux fleur.hogwarts.jk 2.4.22-2d #2 Mon Oct 20 12:03:14 EDT 2003 ppc ppc ppc GNU/Linux
I used to have an OS X partition, but I deleted it during the last reinstall since I haven't used it in over a year.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
Of course, if your boss says you Must Use Windows, there's not a whole lot you can do. But perhaps this would be an acceptible compromise.
Apart from run Windows in VirtualPC on the OS X thats running in MacOnLinux?
^_~
Wow, someone did their homework!
Since when did FreeBSD run a Mach microkernel?
Who the hell modded this as informative? The parent was talking about "ls -R|grep" not "grep -R", just look at the subject for gods sake.
Mac on Linux is what the open source world should try and create for the Windows world.
You may want to check qemu, which does JIT compilation of x86 code for a number of targets (including x86 and PPC). I've only tested it with DR-DOS and Windows 3.1 myself, but it reportedly runs Windows 98; Windows 2000 reportedly still has problems.
I don't think I'm wrong about the following affirmation : you can't build your mac like you build your PC. You have to buy it already done ... with an OS !
Can you get your money back for mac OSX ??
has anyone tried to get such a refund ?
In fact, I do. And Quark and Illustrator and Distiller and all that crap. Is my Pismo as fast as the Dual 1.8 G5s I've worked on? No. But it runs all the programs I've mention with no problems. Having a gig of RAM helps a lot, tho.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
His problem the tech support guy didn't let him know that Airport runs its own DHCP server, that the Apple documentation doesn't mention it, or that it was one of those things that Just Runs (TM) even if you already have a DHCP server on the network (the Linux machine).
It's totally his fault that a piece of equipment was designed to be "smarter" by autoproviding certain services without checking to see if they already exist!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
winning the gold medel & having it bronzed.
Use the ppc64 kernel and you're all set.
Apps can be 32-bit or 64-bit, as with AMD64.
much love to linux, i LOVE it and use it on all the pc's at work and in my past (before i switched to mac). that said, i think OSX is a better choice right now for the macs. i'm very trained to use linux/oss and that same usage pattern i still use on my mac. i have to learn the darwin way of doing things, but it's usually pretty easy to pick up.
:-)
problem with linux/ppc for me is the java support. there simply is no 1.4 support out there and that straight up blows. OS X lags behind in their implementation enough as it is. it's also not uncommon to have difficulty with hardware, power management (laptops), etc. i think if you want to run X/KDE and whatnot to preserve your uniform UI, you may as well use opendarwin. it's just a better fit, at the moment.
besides running a few commercial apps, there's not much i do with my OS X install that i can't do on linux -- with a little effort. but i think more importantly, there's very little (nothing?) i do on a regular basis that i CAN do under linux and CAN'T do under OS X (&& fink). that realization, plus the ease of use of apple's stuff, pretty much closed the deal for me to use OS X on my hardwar.... but i do miss linux, and this 2.6 kernel looks fun -- maybe i'll build a little mini-itx/x86 box for it when i got some money to burn.
No virtual desktops. It is completely beyond me why such a simple feature is missing; clever as Expose might be, it is just a crutch for missing virtual desktops.
This is patently untrue. On my TiBook at least there is no loss of hardware functionality whatsoever under Linux and the difference in performance is obvious. There's nothing wrong with preferring OS X to Linux so why not just say so?
The company I work for writes software for wireless adapters, and Windows was our first platform. The appeal for us of porting our software to another platform would have been much greater if there was some similarity between OSX and Linux, but there is very little. The driver model, the device management, the hardware platform, the GUI, and even the main user mode languages (OC vs. C/C++) are different. I recognize that there is a fair bit of compatibility in the user, non GUI, API's and in the CLI, but I think that was the minimum possible (ie. it couldn't be avoided).
This was Apple's choice when they did the big jump to PPC and OSX: they could have gone with the PC platform, they could have built OSX on the Linux kernel, etc. I think the OSS community would have embraced the slick, polished GUI and software that Apple has if Apple had given them a reason to - it's exactly what Linux needs. But what the OSS community did not need (and still doesn't need) was to reopen the BSD vs. Linux divide (like GTK vs. Qt).
I'm sure they had solid financial and strategic reasons for staying away from any Linux compatibility, but for both Apple and Linux users (and for us developers) it was a bad choice. Perhaps they were concerned that if they did something that really benefited the OSS community then MS would get mad (ie. no more Office).
It's a shame - since Linux is focussed on the low cost, business market, and Apple is focussed on premium, brand conscious, consumers, they could have co-existed and cooperated very nicely.
In the end my company delayed, but has recently decided to port to Linux.
I've heard someone once wrote "Pong" for OF. Anyone here up for adding Reiserfs support to it?
Think of the possibilities if you could run Windows at work in a Window - be able to do all the windows specific stuff at need, but have Linux goodness in which to work as well.
Uh - you never heard of VMWare?
My last machine was a TiBook 400MHz (the original Titanium Powerbook). Largely as a result of reading so much about Linux on Slashdot, I decided to try creating a dual boot system.
I went with Yellow Dog Linux 3.0. After re-partitioning my drive, I installed it and it ran great. Fast, simple, let me do what I wanted. Mac-on-Linux is installed by default, and that ran fine, too.
I did this becuase I only owned that one machine, and I wanted to get my hands dirty a bit with Linux. This was free and fun and easy to do, and I do recommend it for those wanting to extend the life of their machine. It is also a great way to learn more about your machine in general (I'm not a real geek, just a lifelong user and musician).
In the end, I'm not using Linux on my new machine (17" PowerBook), but I would jump back to a minute if I felt the need, and have complete confidence in the OS on the PPC platform.
i bet this guy does bjs for free, or pays you
Sure fluxbox runs as fast as OS9, but it's not *NEARLY* as juicy ad OS X :)
But it's true.. every time I sit down behind a Windows XP machine I'm a little jealous of it's responsiveness.. OS X just a tad slower, but it can be really annoying sometimes.
You either need to front up $$$$ for VMWare out of your own pocket or get upper management to accept it. An open source solution is ideal.
The real weird thing is that I can run X86 Linux in Mac OS X (without dualbooting) using Virtual PC, but I can't run PPC Linux in a window sandbox ? Which would be a whole lot faster too, without the emulation...
Where's "Virtual Mac" when you need it ?
Something like Mac-On-Linux would be nice...
it really would be a lot stronger if you mentioned how long it takes to copy a 17 megabyte file at your freelance gig.
Also the software is outrageously high. When I have to spend 1000 bucks to get a decent office suite, music studio, and web server they are just as bad as ms.
Last I checked, Apple didn't make an office suite. If you want to bitch about extortionate Mac office suite pricing, talk to Microsoft.
GarageBand is a decent music app, and costs $50.
Apache comes with OS X Client. OS X Server comes in a 10-user version for $500, only the unlimited client costs $1000. If you think $1000 is "just as bad as MS," then you haven't priced unlimited Windows client licenses-- think "well into five figures." When it comes to server stuff, Apple beats the living shit out of Microsoft's pricing.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
The windows machines (two of them) are currently unpluged in a corner so I feel they're pretty safe at the moment. :)
The only effective security patch for Windows: Unplug the box.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
If you are using OSX or Linux you are at least better off than those that aren't.
The saying by Roger Ebert ( the movie review guy ) and what he said about the Apple applies here: In the saying below replace "Apple" with "OSX and Linux"
"Apple's market share does provide us with an accurate reading of the percentage of reasonable people in our society"
I know /. editors don't have time to read the articles they're linking to, and don't read other /. articles to check for dupes, but is it too much to ask that they read the actual headlines they're posting???
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
I've yet to see Debian or YDL support a new apple computer straight out of the gate. When they do support a new model, its most often in a crippled state. Like some posters here have mentioned, the nvidia Go line of graphics cards are barely supported and lack 2d and 3d acceleration. Other items still NOT supported are Bluetooth, Airport Extreme, and external video (on powerbooks). These features were all in the 12" powerbook that came out over 12 months ago!!! The powermac g5 support page just simply lists "No."
YDL hardware support page
Linux on ppc is just not worth it on a new machine. But on a positive note, by the time support is available, the computer will be too old to upgrade to the newest MacOS and will need the linux build.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Finder, for example, if one of the best file manager I've ever used
AAAARRRGGGHHH! You really ought to have a look at the OpenStep 4.2 workspace sometime, and you'll see just how much the Apple Finder people missed the point.
Linux runs inside of 128 megs of physical memory without difficulty.
Fedora core default install take just over 220MB of my physical ram on login. I know linux is "capable" of running on a toaster, but c'mon people lets get over the perception that most modern distros with the needed GUI and apps running to make them an attractive desktop environment actually use less ram/resources than other OS's, because they don't.
Actually, on my PM 7500 (upgraded to a G3 card), I have installed Jaguar (in one try) on an external SCSI drive (via XPostFacto), and it's doing fine. Panther won't install (yet), due to a known problem that is slated to be addressed, and I know (from running both on a Rev. A iMac) that Panther will perform even better.
On the same machine, I have set aside an internal hard drive for Linux, and neither Mandrake nor YellowDog will install. The Mandrake installer can't seem to figure out the 7500's original video HW (with a VRAM upgrade), and YDL just dies in mid-install.
I have had marginally better luck installing SUSE on the 2nd drive in my employer-provided (and more current) Dell laptop; it installed after multiple attempts, but it's not yet supporting the full resolution of the display nor recognizing the 802.11b card.
I want Linux to work (it will replace Windows on my work laptop sooner rather than later), but it is going to be far more demanding of my time than even unsupported installations of OS X.
I've heard that the HF+ patch to parted rocks and is able to non destructivly repartition HFS+ hard disks. So you don't need to format.
It is avaliable from:
http://xilun666.free.fr/
You should still back up really important data before repartitioning.
Daryl
-- remove NOSPAM for actual email address -- Things are not as square as they may seem
Can someone tell me what the point of Dreamweaver is? In every web development shop I've seen the front end is mocked up (and the graphics cut and compressed) in Photoshop, but the HTML and CSS are hand written to get the best performance.
Can someone who actually uses Dreamweaver commercially enlighten me? I can see it being used for quick mockups when a client wants to see how their unreasonable changes would look, but that's about it.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
You forgot to mention the fact that OS X doesn't even use X, but instead uses the heavily modified NeXT environment. Ooops!
I am no Debian user (I use Slackware-current >= 9.1), but anyone who claims the need to install package xyz "from source" and "maintain it yourself" on Debian is clearly talking out of his ass. Debian has the most comprehensive package selection (and a rabidly fanatic user base that keeps debianizing every damn packages they see), and dpkg allows you to easily upgrade, install, remove just by knowing the name (or part of name) of a program. Many a times I was amazed as a friend of mine apt-get installed a packages I was so sure was too new and too obscure to be debianized.
Also - not all Linux distros revolve around System V init - Slackware for one uses BSD style init.
Also - OS X is not BSD. Is that so freaking hard to understand? It has BSD services running on top of Darwin. Darwin is the kernel, not BSD.
Darwin is not Mach. Darwin is not intellectual property of CMU. Ok? Darwin is based on Mach. Ok? If you don't stop calling Darwin Mach, I am going to have to start calling ntoskrnl.exe Mach as well (also based-on, although to a microscopically unrecognisable level - thats what teh 1337 VMS developers do fer ya)
"Fat" binaries are nothing new, and in fact are something that Apple acquisitioned (along with the OS that was formed into OS X) from NeXT. I am sure you're old enough to remember good ol' NeXT - which ran on many, many architectures aside from the good' ol black boxen.
Drool over the dynamic loader? Roflmao... That has to be the most idiotic comment I heard by far. yeah man - what an achievement, resolving unresolved symbols, loading shared libraries, and performing relocation. Yay. Need I tell you that OS X doesn't even do ELF? Yay. *cough*
I know this is off-topic, but since I have a captive audience of specific users...
Are any of you having difficulty browsing 'slashdot' in threaded mode?
I am not able to reproduce it on another nearby Mac, so I don't imagine it is widespread, but as I burrow down a level or two in threaded comment mode, instead of being placed at the article I was 'aiming for', I end up between a half-page and a full page below the desired comment...
Just throwing that out there... any thoughts?
We apologise for the fault in this post. Those responsible have been sacked. -- Signed RICHARD M. NIXON
How would we know how much MacOS adds to the price of the hardware+MacOS package? I thought Apple stopped allowing compatibles (which might have given us an idea of how much comparable hardware could cost without necessarily coming with a copy of MacOS). I would figure the best cost estimate nowadays is to find out how much MacOS costs alone ($129) and subtract that from the price of the package one is considering.
Digital Citizen
Software freedom means more to me than price. I'm willing to pay for software freedom. MacOS X is not completely free software, but on FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, GNU/Linux, and other systems I can run software that I can share with my friends or modify as I see fit. Sharing software legally means a lot to me.
I understand that the features you want might not be in free software now, but that can change with effort. Non-free software, on the other hand, rarely becomes free software.
Digital Citizen
Parent is a troll, karma whore, not a professor, does not teach at any college, makes up credentials, is Satan incarnate, and likes to club baby seals on their heads. Parent should be modded down 12 times, then banned from the Internet.
would be to get MOL running on OS X so you could run OS 9 natively without rebooting. I have a couple apps that don't run in Classic; it would be nice not to have to reboot to run them. If MOL ran on OSX it seems a better solution than Classic, I would think.
there are pros/cons to running linux/ppc (which i do on my ibook).
osx isn't as great as everyone makes it out to be. it's a resource hog - runs terribly slow. the software tries to be too smart - which makes things a pain in the ass when you want to troubleshoot. i also think linux provides far more power in it's scripting and command line utilities. go linux!
however, macromedia hasn't released a flash binary for linux/ppc which makes some webpages inaccesable to me. also, alot of video codecs that haven't been reverse-engineered yet a layer of emulation in conjunction with the actual windows dll which obviously wouldn't work on ppc.
oh yeah, and mac hardware is ridiculously overpriced.
Apple's good at that. You can technically run 10.3 on beige G3s- assuming you use XPostFacto and a PCI video card. Motherboard video, which works in Jaguar, Doesn't Work in Panther. When Apple says "We're dropping support for $machine" they mean it. :P
:P
Not that there aren't workarounds.
As for iMovie... doesn't surprise me. Software developers are famous for leaving features out in order to sucker you into upgrading later- heck, Adobe FINALLY added 16-bit image editing support into Photoshop. Four versions after what was current the first and only time I've needed the capability.
That would be because that is incorrect. Rhapsody and the earliest release of OS X, OS X Server 1, did indeed use the Display PostScript system from NeXTSTEP, modified to present a slightly more Mac-esque user interface. But when Adobe bumped up the licensing costs for DPS, Apple were forced to go back and effectively write a new graphics system from scratch. They based it on Portable Document Format, it's called Quartz and the user interface is known as Aqua.
I find your assertion that OS X does not use X laughable. The latest version of OS X comes bundled with an X server that will run rootless right on top of the Aqua screen. The XFree86 distribution will build from unmodified source and work on earlier OS Xs too: have a look at X11 running in Aqua on a Beige G3 with Jaguar. I develop software for a network of Linux PCs, OPENSTEP PCs, NeXTs, Macs, Suns and assorted other systems. If it wasn't for OS X's support for X11 there would be much less portability between the systems (although GNUstep helps a great deal in that regard). So OS X does use X11, even if you and some other users choose not to.
Actually I'm talking from the perspective of a Debian user here. Debian's package hierarchy is good, but it's still far from exhaustive. There will come times when the program you would like has not been Debianised. And when it does, you have to install that program yourself and maintain it yourself, just as you would on any other operating system.
Darwin is not the kernel. Is that so freaking hard to understand? XNU is the kernel, which is a part of the Darwin Operating System. Darwin is a BSD operating system which includes the Mach microkernel running in monolith mode, with features from the BSD kernel added in. The BSD subsystem does not as some people think run as a personality on top of Mach; the two have been combined by Apple.
Yes indeed I am. This post comes to you from a turbo colour slab running OmniWeb 2.0 on top of NeXTSTEP 3.3. Acquisitioned is not a real word, acquired is. Yes, I know that fat binaries came from NeXT. They're still in use today, in OS X. OS X is the only modern operating system to use this technology, in which it is far superior to other offerings. It's jsut a pity that Apple don't make more of it.
No you don't, and frankly I don't give a monkey's because ELF is getting old. The Mach_O binary format provides portability as well as small executables when compiled thin. It provides superior threading by realising processes, LWPs and threads as kernel-scheduled Mach threads. It's better than ELF.
It appears that more homework is required on your part regarding the various parts that go to make up OS X. Find out about Xnu, Mach, Darwin and FreeBSD, then report back on your progress. The second assignment will focus on Cocoa, Quartz, Aqua, CoreFoundation, IOKit and possibly WebObjects if we have time.
Right now the best Virtual Desktop App for OS X is Desktop Manager. Any number of virtual desktops you can name and switch to with command-option-left (or right) arrow. The end desktops roll to each (turning your desktops into a loop). The latest rev even lets you specify the transition effect between virtual desktops -- mine set to slide, like it sliding around that loop of desktops.
Fast user switching rolls me between users with an effect like it's rotating a cube.
I've got systems running Linux and XP --with MS' virtual window add-on-- at work and the combination creates the best virtual desktop and fast user switching setup I have access to.
And expose is mindblowing. Between that desktop manager, the Dock really only has to be there so you can start apps/sometimes open docs (via a popup folder)/stash a open app to move it between virtual windows.
The three work great together.
But I'm still going to install Linux in some form or another when I get a larger harddrive. Why? Because it gives me a way to try things without fscking a production LAMP box. In general, there are always things that can only be done when you've got access to that OS.
the clock on the wall says 4 til 7
As a Mac (primarily) and Linux user, I would say Linux on the Mac or Mac clone is not ready for prime time. Just look at Yellow Dog Linux. Terrasoft sells Macs with YDL preinstalled, but, if you browse their site, there are major areas in their own Mac machines which are not supported.
I run Gentoo on a Mac clone (Power Computing PowerCenter Pro accelerated with a G3 add-on card). Getting this up was quite a chore and the video (an on-board version of an ATI Rage card) still only works in fb mode despite literally months screwing around with it. On a G4 dual processor Mac, Gentoo works better, but the DRI acceleration is still not up to snuff.
I mostly find Linux useful in bringing slow older x86 boxes to a useful speed. My main laptop is an old 400 MHz P2 Dell which runs wonderfully with Knoppix/Debian (although the Dell Rage Mobility is still a problem).
If you need audio/video stuff, then you will find more for Mac (you wil find far more for MS Windows).
You may, in fact, be technically correct; I don't know. There may really be more commercial A/V apps for Windows. However, I think you'll find that all of them that are any good are available on the Mac, and some of the very best are only for the Mac, and come from Apple.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
when apple business goin down. we dont need to argue about these anymore.
There are quite a few apps that chew up CPU while seemingly doing nothing. It's probably because the software is polling for input. Regardless, I simply issue the following command: kill -STOP pid To start the app again I issue: kill -CONT pid This stops all CPU waste from "resting" applications.
I had this problem earlier today on a Panther iBook in Safari, if that helps...
...is the reason that the author of the article chooses not to recommend the distribution...
..."However, the killer problem I found with Debian/PPC was my inability to get X11 working on it -- the installation seemed wholly unaware of any remotely relevant video card models, and some post-installation attempts at configuration proved fruitless, too. I am certain that there are Debian/PPC users who have worked out the configuration issues, but compared to the ease of installation of other distributions, I have trouble recommending Debian to many users..."
;D
I've always found X configuration on Debian to be a bit challenging myself. Anyone have some advice for a Debian on PPC newb? If DebianPPC powah users aren't on this site, I'll try the next Star Trek convention coming to town...
Quod scripsi, scripsi.
1 month ago I just bought my first Apple, a 17" G4 powerbook whit the sole purpose of running linux on it. First thing I did was to scrap OSX and install gentoo, got everything working pretty easily (light sensors and everyting) on a 2.6.1 kernel. I primarily develop java and is very comfortable whit IBM's port of jdk. So for my needs its perfect, the best laptop I ever had, I can only recommend buying one. Johan
at least its not Palladium!
I've always wondered why Apple (and Microsoft for that matter) haven't partnered with major application vendors to supply application patches and updates through the Software Update feature.
I can imagine some of the reasons - too hard, too many variables, not our problem - but surely if the free software guys can work it out, it's not an insurmountable problem.
Note that Fedora and modern Linux distros include anacron, and OS X does not.
May we never see th
Only if you only install Debian packages. As soon as you install something from another source, you have to maintain it yourself. Just as you would on OS X.
/dev/null, where they belong.
Uh, huh. Except you skirt around the little detail that Debian and other distros package a massive set of packages, and Apple Update handles a tiny handful. It's quite reasonable to use a fully packaged system. I tend to poke at my system quite a bit, and I'd say that over 95% of the packages on my system are packaged by my distro vendor. Furthermore, I use checkinstall, and when the distro vendor *starts* packaging a package, it automatically starts handling that package if I have it installed. Finally, all the important stuff to keep up-to-date as closely as possible, like servers, on the systems I've used *are* packaged by the distro vendor. Be honest -- the automatic updating situation on Mac OS X sucks. It's roughly comparable to that of Windows.
no ugly klunky SysV init,
The only people that complain about SysV init are hardcore BSDites that don't like anything that differs from The Way They Are Used To Things Working. SysV init is hardly "clunky".
a classy signal handling mechanism,
This is a new one on me. What do you like so much about BSD signal handling? I don't see too much extra stuff you could do with it without violating POSIX.
Ceren
?
Marvel at the way you can compile a single binary that will run on multiple architectures.
(Granted, I was unaware that the OS X binary format supported multiple arches in-file.) And why exactly would this be of value? Oh, it was a sexy feature back in Mac OS classic days, when package management didn't exist and Apple wanted seamless transition to another architecture. However, it's not very frequently that I rip a binary out of my system and dump it on another.
Drool over the dynamic loader.
This is not an impressive feature. Anything that *didn't* would be pretty awful, I will give you that.
Whimper in awe at the Mach threading system.
I hope you mean the awful performance of OS X compared to Linux. Instead of making random, unsupported claims, why not take a look at some benchmarks? Note the context switching time of your vaunted Mach kernel.
OS X is a UNIXy system that gets fairly poor performance compared to its peers, uses a lot of memory, and lacks the GNU toolset. It runs on expensive hardware. As a matter of fact, in many ways, it's very much like Solaris. The only real draw to Mac OS X is that it happens to have a desktop environment with a lot of eye candy, something like Enlightenment tripled or so. If you like your eye candy, yes, OS X is a nice place to be. The problem is that there are a ton of people that spent a lot of money on their Apple hardware and feel the need to *constantly* justify it on Slashdot. If they can afford and like the eye candy, great. Claims of better performance/memory usage/bang-for-the-buck/etc can go to
May we never see th
I have Gentoo Linux installed on my iBook 700. It certainly feels much more responsive than OSX.
I keep OSX installed on my G4 only for the wife and kid.
I call bullshit.
The Beige G3 came out in 1997 (7 years ago) and runs Jaguar just fine. The Blue and White G3 came out in January, 1999 and runs Panther just fine. Find me a Windows box from 5-7 years ago that can run XP.
For that matter, load up a current Linux distro and KDE3 or Gnome 2.x and see how it runs on such old hardware. People love to extol how Linux will run on really old stuff, but not generally with all of the bells and whistles of today's distros. By the same token, those old boxen scream if you use the software of their generation on them.
Trying to wedge Mac OS X on them (when it never supported them in the first place) is just asking for trouble.
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
A. AirPort [/Extreme] Base Station = Home DSL/Cable router with 802.11b/g access point.
Cross reference: Netgear WGR614, Linksys WRT54G, D-Link DI-824VUP.
B. Such products use DHCP servers and NAT to share the Internet connection. That's what they do.
C. Because of A and B, it can be deduced that the AirPort Base Station has a DHCP server.
Perhaps you weren't previously aware of point "A." I guess I could see if you thought it was just an access point?
Adjusting to OS X is hard for people who believe that the OS shouldn't be targeted at the least capable user anymore -- this is 2004, after all, not 1980. People grow up with computers. They can cope with their mouse having more than one button. They are -- on average (!) -- not stupid.
AC: Besides, Mac OS X is not "free as in speech." Want to take a look inside the Quartz Compositor? Sorry, you're SOL
You: ...I said, "essentially free".
Now you back away from that claim, saying, "free as speech was never my argument in the first place."
Now, if you would care to discuss the freedom of both speech and software please feel free to
He already tried to discuss free software with you, saying, "Want to take a look inside the Quartz Compositor? Sorry, you're SOL." The guy is into graphic's I suppose, and free (as in speech) software is so valuable to him that he's willing to give up an OS he "essentially" paid for (in purchasing Mac hardware) in order to have the freedom to tweak and learn with his OS's windowing engine.
You're obviously just trolling and trying to start a flame war. His original point in response to your question, "why should anyone in their right mind want to run Linux on a Mac?," was that OS X isn't totally free (as in open). You have yet to respond to this point of his. Either you're knowledge of four different languages has effected your ability to communicate consistently in this one, or you're just posting flamebait.
After thinking about it some more, let me add a more general answer to my first quick one about virtual desktops: Linux gives you room to grow.
Apple has one -- admittedly good -- way, "The Steve Way", which is optically pleasing and nice for beginning users or people who don't want to do more than surf and answer an email or two. However, once you are more familiar with the computer, once you want to go beyond what you know, you are stuck: The Steve Way leaves no room for growth (unless you use third-party add-ons, which in the Apple universe are as often as not amazingly expensive commercial shareware programs), because there is one and only one path on The Steve Way. Apple assumes you will stay at the same skill level that you were when you started out, and that you are unable to learn.
Your average Mac OS X users does seem happy with this -- see the answers I got to my first post about users being easily confused. Some of us, however, are not: The Linux desktop KDE will let you use only one mouse button and turn off virtual screens (to stick with the most obvious examples) if you feel that your users are not ready for them, giving you the Mac OS X level. However, once they feel they are more secure, you can enable those features and let them be more productive, or more of an individual -- they get a choice.
Apple is a lot of things, most of them good, but not very many of them are about having a choice.
Don't get me wrong: I have in fact just ordered a new 12" iBook, and I recommend Apples to anybody who just wants their machine to work. But personally, I'm going to dual boot with Linux ASAP. Some of us just outgrow the The Steve Way.
Now you back away from that claim, saying, "free as speech was never my argument in the first place."
Do you people intentionally drown out the parts of an argument that qualify statements? My original reply to him was, once again, that he qualify, "free". With the added caveat that speech is not necessarily free.
e already tried to discuss free software with you, saying, "Want to take a look inside the Quartz Compositor? Sorry, you're SOL." The guy is into graphic's I suppose, and free (as in speech) software is so valuable to him that he's willing to give up an OS he "essentially" paid for (in purchasing Mac hardware) in order to have the freedom to tweak and learn with his OS's windowing engine.
That's what you took away from his statement, your supposition on the basis of one sentence is adding a lot of meaning that might not be there. Again, I asked that he clarify. He didn't do so, but a lot of FSF dogmatics came out and did instead.
You're obviously just trolling and trying to start a flame war.
Obviously, because I've got nothing better to do than troll slashdot. Try again, sport.
His original point in response to your question, "why should anyone in their right mind want to run Linux on a Mac?," was that OS X isn't totally free (as in open). You have yet to respond to this point of his. Either your knowledge of four different languages has effected your ability to communicate consistently in this one, or you're just posting flamebait.
Orrrrr, perhaps, just maybe... he didn't define "free (as in speech)" to my satisfaction. Could that be it? Someone else in this thread did and I thanked him for it. Perhaps in your haste to have me modded down, you missed that exchange.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
Are you crazy? The great value of a Mac is Mac OS X, not installing Linux.
"...and how he could open a native terminal window and do things like ls -R | grep filename and search his system for files."
Or, while in the finder, he could go File>Find or even simpler cmd-F and never leave the GUI. The basic find function has options galore.
Sometimes some peoples' use of the terminal seems gratuitous IMHO.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
If you want to ask him why he wants to see the specific code he cited, then ask him. Or if you even want to say, "Seeing your OS code doesn't matter, just use it," then you're entilted to that opinion. But at least say something in reference to his point. Don't just sit there and backpeddle after he clarified, pretending to be stupid. It seems you're just refusing to address his point, preferring rather to continue trolling.
Quick Note: My P4 PC was literally burned because of lighting or something, donno,.
I hated MS operating systems while I loved Linux, especially damn barebone Slackware, but I couldn't use them for my usual computing experience.
The day my PC was dead, first I thought to buy new MB/CPU and still alive, 1 gig of RDRAM but I saw RDRAM was kind of abandoned by Intel on home-grade PCs
Than I figured I hate MS but because of some matters I have to use some of their software... I didn't know how long those "copy DLL" Wine method will go on, so I checked the Mac.
Personally I wanted a dual G4 but thanks to friends provocating me, it turned to be 1600 Mhz G5. Than added ram, to its funny standard 256 mb, making it 768. Oh, yes, no need to buy from apple, bought exact match of kingstons.
Now I have a desktop, which is supported by ALL major companies, the gcc and a giant like Apple behind my back. Like nobody dares not to allow Mac users to their sites since the profile is A+/AB (advertising profile).
Install linux on it? No. Why? It seems, Linux and the developers are very far away from desktop. E.g. ask some fix for mozilla, 3 morons pops up and tells 'so, you code it, where is the patch?!", I don't believe I really have to listen to such geek shit while I have money etc.
BTW, to note again, this is a home machine, used on real stupid but needed things and also I am a video editor.
The first thing I did when I got my hands on it was to re-partition its hard drive and install Panther. Then I followed the instructions on setting up the mother of all Linux distributions on it from here.
Are you kidding? There's no "mother of all Linux distributions."
Why not look into the Pegasos II?
Select PEGASOS II KONFIGURATOR, and read on from there. I didn't use THAT destination URL as it was way too lengthy.
I, myself, have an AmigaOne but if you want cheaper h/ware -- the Pegaoso II is a goer!
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
also it should be said that apple used fat binaries before OS X, when they made the transition from 68k to PPC. I am very, very sure that this was before they aquired NEXT, so teh use of fat binaries in OS X in not just part of the NEXT heritage of OS X.
Look out honey cause I'm usin' technology
Ain't got time to make no apologies
I'm not so sure about that, although you may be right; I have very little >user experience on Classic Mac. My understanding is that when the switch from M68k to PPC was made, much of the Operating System wasn't actually ported but ran inside a 68k virtual machine, especially legacy APIs that were superceded but not actually removed. It was thus possible for 68k binaries to run within this environment, but they couldn't use new system calls.
As the system was revised, through system 7, mac os 8 and 9, the crufty 68k layers were still present but even more new APIs were added on top. The original goal of the Carbon project was to strip out as much of the cruft as possible while still leaving workable APIs. In fact, according to the head honcho at Black Hole, one of the original aims of Carbon was just meant to be an assistant, to show OS <=9 developers how to properly Yellow Box (i.e. Cocoa) their apps.
I keep seeing conflicting/confusing reports on what I need to start the install. I was wondering if you could give me a cheat-sheet to what I exactly need to have in order to do the install. I think I need something called Xboot, some version of a boot flopy, a root floppy, and an install CD(s). Links to exactly what to download for my install would be sweet, if you have the time.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. My past attemtps end with some errors with the root floppy. I cannot tell if it is the wrong floppy image, or if I even need it.
... and has been running so long the uptime counter (limited to about 500days) has rolled over twice.
It's rock solid, running on an older 2.2 series kernel.
Example:
- 'free,' in this context, means as it does in 'free speech.'
... you have such trouble with English ....
--"Spank the pinks who try to drive you nuts." --Devo
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.