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Linux beats Windows to Intel iMac
Ctrl+Alt+De1337 writes "The Mactel-Linux folks have now successfully booted Linux on a 17" Core Duo iMac. They used the elilo bootloader, a modified kernel, and a hacked vesafb to boot from a USB drive. No GUI pictures for now, just white text on a black background. The distro of choice was Gentoo, and instructions and patches are promised this weekend."
...that the TPM is not "preventing" alternate OSes from booting, as some conspiracy theorists have begun to suggest.
Yes, I agree, the OSX GUI is awesome, and why would you be excited that someone booted Linus onto a MAC and got a b/w screen!?!?!
I can answer that- Because this is an important step into something we have all been interested in, i.e. whether or not we can boot something other than an apple os onto an intel mac...
A thousand mile journey begins with a single step, and all that jazz...
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Cause he sure wouldn't want to sell hardware that ran the world's three most popular O/S's would he? Oh, wait... yes he would.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
From Apple's website, 1002:71c5 *might* be the Radeon X1600. (This is the PCI vendor:device ID for the video chip.) An ATI Radeon X1800 is 1002:7109, but ATI doesn't always number their devices in any reasonable way.
The ATI linux driver should support it ... let's wait 'til the weekend and see if they get the graphics driver working. Should be SWEET!
(drums fingers impatiently...I'm at work)
I miss the PowerPC too, and if somebody came out with a G5 notebook with OS X, I'd buy one of those in a heartbeat. I'm not too fond of the Intel switch, either, due to the same reasons (even though I would buy a PowerBook Core Duo^W^W^W MacBook Pro if I had the money). However, Apple still has OS X. OpenBSD and OS X are two different beasts (even though OS X is a BSD derivative) OpenBSD is a standard Unix derivative that is designed for security. (I am personally a FreeBSD and Windows user). OS X is a Unix derivative designed so that way nobody would know it was Unix until somebody opened the Terminal. The Mac OS has always had a wonderful interface (OS 8 and 9 are still very usable and had wonderful applications, albeit a bit unstable), and OS X improves on it by a mile. There is also a lot of support for important proprietary software whose OSS equivalents still have some improvement or nonexistant (e.g, Photoshop, MS Office, Java [yes, it works in BSD, but not without spending a good half of a day compiling, and forget Java on an non-x86 platform in BSD], certain software required for work/school, etc). OpenBSD is a fine OS (especially for security and for CS majors), but it isn't a hallmark of usability. (I can say the same with OS X; OS X doesn't focus on security as much as OpenBSD does, and sometimes OS X is suspectible to little but annoying security issue that OpenBSD patched up years before)
Of OS X was merely BSD with lipstick, then why are so many PC users are willing to either pirate OS X or buy it for $129 and break EULAs and even the DMCA to install OS X on their vanilla PCs? For those who don't feel like cracking DRM, why are they using emulators like PearPC to run OS X that only run OS X at the speed of an old Power Mac 8600? Heck, we still have Rhapsody and NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP users. Turns out that the lipstick makes a huge difference. Put it like this, if you had a choice between asking somebody out who is very intelligent and nice, versus somebody who was not only very intelligent and nice, but also so beautiful or handsome that you dropped everything that you were carrying when you saw her or him, who would you ask out? There are many people at the Apple store shelling out hundreds or thousands of dollars itching to have their hands on a white or aluminum object running BSD with lipstick, because that lipstick makes BSD easy to use and supports all of the applications that they need. Heck, I'd buy OS X on my PC if Apple decided to release OS X on vanilla PCs (but that will never happen, so I'm content with sticking to FreeBSD for my Unix stuff and Windows XP for compatibility with the outside world, until I switch to the Mac. Besides, my fastest machine is a 950MHz Duron; OS X for x86 requires SSE2).
So yes, Apple lost the PowerPC (which was a great chip, it was just the G4's performance stagnated over the past year or two), but Apple still has the Mac. As long as Apple still continues to sell Macs (even if those Macs are just PCs with pretty cases and BSD-with-lipstick), then people will still demand them, and I will still lust for them ;)
Because Apple laptops are prettier and have more features than similarly priced laptops from Dell, HP, Toshiba and IBM. I'd pay more for an Apple though luckily I don't have to; they cost roughly the same.
Because Linux is a better system than OS X. Although I appreciate that some of you are infatuated with the sparkly lights and whizzy animations in OS X, I tire quickly of such things and prefer the practical productivity of Linux. I like my Fullscreen button for every application (proper fullscreen, not the half-arsed attempt in OS X). I like automatic security updates for all the software on my machine. I like the fact that Linux is faster on the same hardware (subjectively and objectively it is faster). I like the fact that my servers and my laptop run the same software - even the same Linux distribution - so I don't have to "change gears" in my network. I like the fact that I'm not bound to the shaky future of a single company; Linux will always be around even if my particular distro goes under.
I also like the fact that my Linux distro cost $7 for 6 compact discs, it included every piece of software I needed including the office suite, and upgrades are free. MacOS X is surrounded by shareware vultures for trivial items - like $29.99 for what is effectively an untar utility for DMG files. No thanks. I left all that nonsense behind when I dumped MS-DOS 3 and I've no intention of going back to that particular hell.
PS: I also like the 1-second sleep, better battery life, and slick windowing system in OS X, but I don't like them enough to give up all the benefits of Linux.
Am I the only one that is less excited about the Linux part than about the fact that the Intel Macs can apparently boot from USB drives? Up until now Macs have only been capable of booting from Firewire drives, something about the USB bus getting reset during the boot process. This means it will eventually be possible to carry around a single USB drive from which you can boot your choice of Windows, Linux or Mac OS X on any available computer hardware that supports booting from USB, whether it's a "PC" or a Mac. This is very cool.
But maybe I'm the only one crazy enough to imagine having a drive with bootable partitions of Windows, Linux, "LinuxIntelMac", LinuxPPC, and Mac OS X, and being able to carry around my entire computing environment without carrying any computer hardware with me. Put it on a 2.5" notebook drive in a small USB 2.0/Firewire drive enclosure and it will fit in a shirt pocket. Notebook drives go up to 120GB and 7200rpm these days too, so it's not like it would be slow. Wherever you go, you're home. I've even seen some drive enclosures with integrated fingerprint readers. The whole disk is encrypted so you wouldn't have to worry about losing information if it's stolen. Keep an identical drive in a computer at home and you can probably even keep a backup of the entire multi-OS drive with something like dd.
Someday I'm going to actually turn this from a pipe dream into a reality, just you wait.