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Free Software on a Cheap Computer
Shell writes "Is this the solution to free software on a cheap computer? NetBSD and Yellow Dog Linux have both begun to support the Mac Mini. This article from IBM looks at open source operating system options on this new contender in the embedded PowerPC platform space." From the article: "This article looks at the current state of Linux and NetBSD support on the Mini. If you need all the hardware and options fully supported, these open source options won't do it for you ... yet. But, if all you need is a stable kernel, a C compiler, and network support, the code is high-quality and the price is unbeatable." This is part two in the series. Part One was covered a while back.
To my knowledge and confirmed by TFA, no distro of Linux or BSD (well, apaprt from OSX) supports Airport cards (either version)
They lay the blame at Broadcom's door for keeping the spec a secret, but lots of manufacturer's don't publish specs but still end up being supported, either through reverse-engineering or emulation + non-native-driver
Can any informed person comment on why this is taking so long?
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
The computer's so cheap, Apple's pretty much undercutting themselves in the OS's cost. Those machines probably cost every bit of 2-300$ to build, which would pretty much say the entire profit margin goes to selling their operating system. Apple is a software company, that just so happens to expect the best when it comes to hardware and peripherials.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Doesn't the Mac Mini come with a stable kernel, a C compiler, and network support, all implemented in "high quality code" at the right price? And, OS X comes with excellent support for Java, in contrast to the last time I experimented with Linux on PPC (about a year ago) and found that there was no up-to-date JVM or SDK. (But perhaps I missed something.)
I would have NEVER considered an Apple product had it not been for OS X 10.3.
I stopped buying Apple right before OS 9.0 was released. When Apple decided that "beige was bad", no one should make clones and everything had to be clear plastic, I lost interest.
The Mac Mini is the first piece of Apple hardware that I have seriously considered buying since Steve Jobs returned.
It was a smart move. Now that there are linux distros trying to add support for the new hardware, it's just looking more attractive.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The real question here is:
Why would I give a crap about a free OS for a computer which already comes with a better one as a standard feature?
I mean, if I'm building a cheap AMD tower for $300, then yes, load her up with Linux or BSD and save myself the "Microsoft Tax." By all means, great idea. I get a better OS, and save myself about a hundred bucks. Fantastic.
But the mini already comes with an OS which not only works better than any of the free alternatives, but will run most "free" software (plus a lot of apps which a Linux box won't.) What would be the point, unless I'm a "free as in speech" Stallmanist cult member?
Mac hardware is excellent, but more expensive -- you could get a laptop similar to your iBook for about $300 less.
Depends on what you consider "similar".
I bought my wife an iBook for Christmas and researched it pretty thoroughly. At the end, I decided that I was paying something of a premium for the Apple hardware, but it wasn't $300.
First, if you want a small laptop (12") in the x86 world you're stepping into the realm of "ultralights", and they cost a lot more (and they're smaller and lighter than the iBook). My wife wanted small, but didn't need tiny, so in that respect I couldn't really find a truly comparable machine to her very specific needs.
Beyond that, I looked at many laptops around $800 that had similar specifications to the iBook, so on paper I figure I paid a premium of about $200 (and I was okay with that, see below). However, I don't think that's quite true, either. The iBook is a better machine than those $800 x86 competitors, in lots of ways that don't show up in the typical list of features.
One thing I noticed right away was the quickness that the machine resumes from sleep. That may be hardware-related, or it may be OS-related, I don't know, but it's very nice. From the moment you open the lid, the machine is ready to use in two seconds, tops.
The sleek design is obviously another issue, one more important to my wife than it would be to me, but it is an issue. It's a pretty computer, and she likes that. You can get pretty x86 laptops also, but not for $800. It also has all sorts of other little goodies, like the design of the power adapter -- sleek, functional, clever -- the "heartbeat" sleep mode indicator, the battery status indicator build into the battey, etc.
The machine also *feels* like a well-built piece of equipment, rather than some cheap POS. I don't know if that will translate into corresponding reliability, but I actually expect it will.
All of that said, I still think I paid a bit of a premium for the Apple logo, but less than it would appear on paper.
I did it because I knew that I absolutely did not want her to have a laptop running Windows. I had just eliminated the last Windows machine in my house, and I didn't want the support burden of adding another one. My Linux laptop is pretty high-maintenance, but that's because I choose to mess with it a lot. I pretty much ignore the rest of the Linux PCs in my house (server, media PC, my desktop, kids' desktop) except to run the occasional "apt-get upgrade", but I seemed to spend way too much time fixing Windows boxes when I had them. OS X has turned out to be as pleasantly low-maintenance as I expected. It requires a bit more than my Linux boxes but that's mainly because I don't know the OS as well.
So from my maintenance-focused perspective, an x86 laptop running Linux would probably have been ideal, except that I'd have to be careful that all of the hardware had Linux drivers available. That, plus the fact that I haven't yet found a good Printshop-like application for Linux made me opt for the Mac. Oh, and the fact that the Mac came with Quicken (unfortunately, we later found out that Quicken for Mac sucks).
On balance, she likes the iBook, and so do I (though I'd put Linux on it if it were mine), so I think it was a good purchase decision.
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