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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."
One of my friends runs a music studio and is constantly fighting with turning off ACPI on Win 2000. It causes all sorts of issues with our sound cards (Dual Delta 1010s), SCSI card, and IDE controller card. Having to worry about IRQs and ACPI has got to disappear. Are IRQs treated the same under Linux? I would hope that Linux would not give the same kind of issues, the way all Mac OSs don't. I had never heard of an IRQ until we started having these problems at the studio. No wonder most studios are all Mac, we don't have the time to fsck around with this crap. No BIOS, etc.. It's better that way, it seems.
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
Now, Linux on newer Macs? I dunno. I've never used OS X, so I can't comment.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
Because MacOS X needs a shitload of RAM to run decently. If all you need is vim and a browser, fluxbox on linux is a far better solution. Especially when the last generation stuff only came with 128MB of ram by default and is increedibly cheap right now. Less swapping off the harddrive also improves battery life.
RAM is cheap now though. I'd say you need about 384MB to keep OS X running smoothly and the terminal application is fairly nice.
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
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.
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?