Sure. But it seems to be as old as the last Knoppix PPC. Come to think of it, since XFree86 4.3.0 has been out for quite some time, and doesn't support Mobile Radeon 9200, Gentoo would be the safest bet. XFree86 4.4.0-RC1 came out just two days ago, and Gentoo will be the only distro to support it for some time(I installed Gentoo on an SGI Indigo^2 a couple of days ago, and noticed there was some support for PPC in the pre-releases of XFree86 4.4.0. 4.3.0 still isn't in Debian Sid!). Apart from the live CD, Gentoo is far from the most newbie-friendly distro out there, though.
She's not much of a nerd, so I think she wants to learn Linux for cultural and political reasons. I think it's Linux as Linux she wants to learn, but I'll obviously point out the similarities and differences between OSX and Linux (not that I'm very familiar with the former myself). And there's always Mac-on-Linux if she wants to use both at the same time. Anyways, I think learning Linux will make her appreciate the Unix in OSX more, at least I'm pretty sure it'll do her no harm. A Knoppix for PPC would be nice, though (I know it exists, but it hasn't been updated for many months).
How are the partitioning tools for OSX? Is repartitioning without data loss easy, or should I expect to have to reinstall OSX?
My sister just got new iBook G4, and for some reason she wants to learn to use Linux, which means she wants me to teach her. I'm normally a Debian-guy, but I'm not sure I'd recommend her to use Woody (it'd have to use backports of XFree86 and more), and Sid is like a boot with a built-in shotgun for newbies, and Sarge is an annoying peace of slush.
So maybe Yellow Dog is an option. However, I have no experience with it (I don't own any Apple hardware), and it seems to lack support for the Radeon 9200 in the iBook. Is this something I can expect to see RPMs for soon, or will I have to wait for the next release to get proper support for video? Any other problems with the distribution?
Yes.. but think again.. rsync.gentoo.org runs a round robin type load sharing system so there could be a hundred servers under that domain. You just netcrafted one or the control host.
A Netcraft search for rsync.gentoo.org shows more than one server. Two of them run Gentoo, two run Red Hat, one runs Debian, three run unknown Linux, and one runs FreeBSD (some of the servers are listed twice). There are more servers (14, if one is to believe 'host rsync.gentoo.org|wc -l'), but Netcraft is only interested in those with web-servers.
Just choose a smaller size for the icons. Start the config app, choose Icon Preferences, and size. 24 pixels is ridiculously small. OTOH, XFCE should possibly be nice on small screens. Autohide (or do without) the panel, and make the panel really thin (and autohide that too), and choose a thin and light theme like Microcurve (sorry, can't find a screenshot). It's nice when you're used to WindowMaker, since it's much of the same, only with lots of extra features.
And that's probably why Jon is being retried. You know, it's just a question of avoiding to give Bush two reasons to invade...
And we're (yes, I'm Norwegian...) also a member of NATO, so Bush has an even better reason not to invade. It's not very wise to attack a country you and your allies also have an agreement to protect. Not that Bush is a wise man in any known sense of the word.
Hard to believe, but there are a whole bunch of honest people still out there. If there weren't, who would all the dirtbags rip off?
The idiots, the morons, the feeble of mind? (I don't think, for example, Nigerian scammers primarily rip off the honest people, but they're still definately dirtbags.)
As we all know, SCO Unixware doesn't support SMP on M68K, and never has. And now: Neither does Linux. Obviously, the lack of support for SMP on M68K Linux must have been stolen from SCO! It's not like some random hacker in his parents basement can code something that doesn't do SMP, is it? (And yes, that's the complete file. Sue me, SCO!)
Have you tried "pci=noacpi" at the boot prompt? I had complete crashes (no kernel panic) when the keyboard was initialized before I tried that. Maybe your problem is related? (This is for a PS/2 type keyboard, BTW.)
I don't think I have any problems with 2.6.0-test9-mm1 at all.
Not necessarily. I thought FLAC used the Ogg container, and just renamed some.flac-files to.ogg: xmms refused to play them. It turns out that FLAC by default uses its own container, but, according to Debian's man page for flac (1), you can also encode with the --ogg option:
When encoding, generate Ogg-FLAC output instead of native-FLAC. Ogg-FLAC streams are FLAC streams wrapped in an Ogg transport layer. The resulting file should have an '.ogg' extension and will still be decodable by flac.
A friend of mine lost his 2 Mbit ADSL connection a couple of days ago due to a fuck-up at the ISP (they had some fantasy that he hadn't paid the last bill). His connection won't be back before monday. This guy is a complete internet addict, even though he doesn't read Slashdot. I'll be sure to send him the link on ICQ.
If I was a gambling man, I'd put money that the 7-head terminal in Swordfish was running linux or *bsd.
You mean the 7 head terminal with all the SGI logos? Pity you're not a gambling man. (Not that SGI doesn't use Linux, but most of their real, MIPS-based, computers still run Irix.)
Yes, it's moderated funny, so I'm not supposed to take it seriously anymore. But personally, the main reason why I want a silent computer is that I want to listen to music without having to turn the computer off. I'm not a total audio nutcase, but I have a fairly good stereo (you know, those old things with only tho speakers), and I listen to all sorts of music. Some of which is fairly soft. Trying to silence the computer noise will limit the choice of music severely.
For me, the 2.6.0-test*-mm* series has been a marked improvement to 2.4.*-ck* (which has some of the scheduler improvements backported), especially under load. A couple of hours ago, Gaim hung and used 100% CPU. I didn't notice at all. The system starts to feel sluggish when the load reaches 1.80 or there about, with heavy disc activity.
Oh, and burning CDs is so much better now that I don't have to use ide-scsi. Faster, and I don't even have kernel panics! (My system has always been horrible with CD burning. Some kernel versions would panic by the mere thought of using ide-scsi.) Don't know how it performs as a server though.
If 2.4.x is any indication, you're not safe until 2.6.13 at least.
That's almost true (wasn't 2.4.14 broken too?), but personally, I've had as few problems with 2.6.0-test* as I've had with late 2.4-kernels (with the exception of ACPI, which needs 'pci=noacpi' at the bootprompt, or the computer won't boot at all (a fairly major problem, I must admit, but not after I learned how to solve it)).
The correct answer to the question is: test it now, and see how it works. If it's broken, submit bug reports. If it works, submit success stories to/., and troll about how dead *BSD is, how much anything from Microsoft sucks, and how stable Linux is, even when it's beta. And so on.
I just got a teal Indigo2. Can't wait to get it into a usable state - I need Irix, and I need more RAM (a friend of mine will supply me with the latter, and hopefully also let me clone his Irix install). It still looks like a sensible computer to me - it doesn't run hot, makes little noise, has good audio and video capabilities and it's fast enough for most everyday tasks (I bet even OpenOffice runs adequately, given enough RAM).
That's quite old. I used a keyboard that originally came with a 12 MHz 286 until quite recently, when I had to sidegrade to a modern PS/2 keyboard because my keys got stuck when I played Quake 3 Arena. I will use ut again when I finally get enough RAM and an OS (IRIX, that is) for my SGI Indigo2 (That's even better nostalgia). I still use the floppy drive from the 286, though. It boots into GRUB every time I've had to reinstall Windows.
Linux is i386 only. It is not portable to other platforms, like MIPS, Alpha, PPC, etc. Windows NT is a modern, portable 32 bit operating system.
Linux does not support SMP. The Linux hackers are just kids with too much time on their hands, and they will never be able to afford serious hardware.
Linux is obsolete. The monolithic kernel is a joke, and will never scale past the level of a play-thing. In a couple of years, most people will run the GNU Hurd on 64 bit Sparc CPUs.
I can probably come up with some that are still true, but right now I'm too tired. Oh yes: The Gentoo Linux Installation Manual is sure to create some Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt among those who want to look into Linux as a replacement for their pre-installed Windows.
Until Firebird gets faster and uses less memory, why not use Opera? Really - the version of MozillaFirebird in Debian Sid uses more memory than Opera, even when Moz is just started, only has one window showing about:blanc and Opera has two windows and is used for this posting. The difference isn't staggering, though. Use what you like best.
Long term sales are the best indicator of a game's quality.
Not at all. System Shock 2 is a good example. It never sold well, but it's in my top three of modern games, the others being Deus Ex and Half-Life. All these games are somewhat artistic, being extremely artful in their storytelling. None of these had original stories to tell, but neither had Shakespeare. They didn't even have the most flashy 'artwork' - graphics - but creating shiny things has never been considered an art, has it? An artistic expression isn't very good if it has nothing to express.
Bill and Steve have never shown much ability running a business. They saw an opportunity, took advantage of it, and then ruthlessly defended their position. But every attempt to diversify their business has failed.
Yeah, right. They still only sell BASIC for homebrew computers. Remember, they actually did survive a couple of years before Office became their big money maker. Before Windows 3.x squeezed Word Perfect out of the market (because WP for Windows was late and as bug-ridden as an English brothel), very few people used Word. I don't about the rest of the Office apps, but they hardly dominated. You have to agree they've diversified a bit from the OS business.
Ah, and the X-Box too. Yes, they sell each unit with a loss, but they make money from -- guess what? -- controlling the standard, that is the X-Box hardware, and selling licenses to those who want to make money from software for the platform. Yes, we all hoped that the console would be a gigantic failure for MS, but it's really just business as usual for them: go in, grab a "fair" chunk of the market, and make money from controlling that market. That's also why they decided to squash Netscape, who, by the way, tried to use exactly the same tactics: dominate on the client side to make money from the servers. And to dominate on the client side, they introdused a lot of new "standards", like frames. Netscape failed because Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are better at running a business that way, and came earlier to the game of domination.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure. But it seems to be as old as the last Knoppix PPC. Come to think of it, since XFree86 4.3.0 has been out for quite some time, and doesn't support Mobile Radeon 9200, Gentoo would be the safest bet. XFree86 4.4.0-RC1 came out just two days ago, and Gentoo will be the only distro to support it for some time(I installed Gentoo on an SGI Indigo^2 a couple of days ago, and noticed there was some support for PPC in the pre-releases of XFree86 4.4.0. 4.3.0 still isn't in Debian Sid!). Apart from the live CD, Gentoo is far from the most newbie-friendly distro out there, though.
She's not much of a nerd, so I think she wants to learn Linux for cultural and political reasons. I think it's Linux as Linux she wants to learn, but I'll obviously point out the similarities and differences between OSX and Linux (not that I'm very familiar with the former myself). And there's always Mac-on-Linux if she wants to use both at the same time. Anyways, I think learning Linux will make her appreciate the Unix in OSX more, at least I'm pretty sure it'll do her no harm. A Knoppix for PPC would be nice, though (I know it exists, but it hasn't been updated for many months).
How are the partitioning tools for OSX? Is repartitioning without data loss easy, or should I expect to have to reinstall OSX?
My sister just got new iBook G4, and for some reason she wants to learn to use Linux, which means she wants me to teach her. I'm normally a Debian-guy, but I'm not sure I'd recommend her to use Woody (it'd have to use backports of XFree86 and more), and Sid is like a boot with a built-in shotgun for newbies, and Sarge is an annoying peace of slush.
So maybe Yellow Dog is an option. However, I have no experience with it (I don't own any Apple hardware), and it seems to lack support for the Radeon 9200 in the iBook. Is this something I can expect to see RPMs for soon, or will I have to wait for the next release to get proper support for video? Any other problems with the distribution?
A Netcraft search for rsync.gentoo.org shows more than one server. Two of them run Gentoo, two run Red Hat, one runs Debian, three run unknown Linux, and one runs FreeBSD (some of the servers are listed twice). There are more servers (14, if one is to believe 'host rsync.gentoo.org|wc -l'), but Netcraft is only interested in those with web-servers.
Just choose a smaller size for the icons. Start the config app, choose Icon Preferences, and size. 24 pixels is ridiculously small. OTOH, XFCE should possibly be nice on small screens. Autohide (or do without) the panel, and make the panel really thin (and autohide that too), and choose a thin and light theme like Microcurve (sorry, can't find a screenshot). It's nice when you're used to WindowMaker, since it's much of the same, only with lots of extra features.
And we're (yes, I'm Norwegian...) also a member of NATO, so Bush has an even better reason not to invade. It's not very wise to attack a country you and your allies also have an agreement to protect. Not that Bush is a wise man in any known sense of the word.
The idiots, the morons, the feeble of mind? (I don't think, for example, Nigerian scammers primarily rip off the honest people, but they're still definately dirtbags.)
Well, SCO did release a list of files containing stolen IP. Among them were
Anonymous Coward for president!
Have you tried "pci=noacpi" at the boot prompt? I had complete crashes (no kernel panic) when the keyboard was initialized before I tried that. Maybe your problem is related? (This is for a PS/2 type keyboard, BTW.)
I don't think I have any problems with 2.6.0-test9-mm1 at all.
A friend of mine lost his 2 Mbit ADSL connection a couple of days ago due to a fuck-up at the ISP (they had some fantasy that he hadn't paid the last bill). His connection won't be back before monday. This guy is a complete internet addict, even though he doesn't read Slashdot. I'll be sure to send him the link on ICQ.
Or maybe I'll just print it.
Sorry - I fucked up the link to the SGI logo.
You mean the 7 head terminal with all the SGI logos? Pity you're not a gambling man. (Not that SGI doesn't use Linux, but most of their real, MIPS-based, computers still run Irix.)
That's a great tip! Thanks. You're going on my friends list, Mr. Anonymous Coward!
Yes, it's moderated funny, so I'm not supposed to take it seriously anymore. But personally, the main reason why I want a silent computer is that I want to listen to music without having to turn the computer off. I'm not a total audio nutcase, but I have a fairly good stereo (you know, those old things with only tho speakers), and I listen to all sorts of music. Some of which is fairly soft. Trying to silence the computer noise will limit the choice of music severely.
For me, the 2.6.0-test*-mm* series has been a marked improvement to 2.4.*-ck* (which has some of the scheduler improvements backported), especially under load. A couple of hours ago, Gaim hung and used 100% CPU. I didn't notice at all. The system starts to feel sluggish when the load reaches 1.80 or there about, with heavy disc activity.
Oh, and burning CDs is so much better now that I don't have to use ide-scsi. Faster, and I don't even have kernel panics! (My system has always been horrible with CD burning. Some kernel versions would panic by the mere thought of using ide-scsi.) Don't know how it performs as a server though.
That's almost true (wasn't 2.4.14 broken too?), but personally, I've had as few problems with 2.6.0-test* as I've had with late 2.4-kernels (with the exception of ACPI, which needs 'pci=noacpi' at the bootprompt, or the computer won't boot at all (a fairly major problem, I must admit, but not after I learned how to solve it)).
The correct answer to the question is: test it now, and see how it works. If it's broken, submit bug reports. If it works, submit success stories to
Yes, but "A working PlayStation" isn't a good theme for a 12,000 word article.
I just got a teal Indigo2. Can't wait to get it into a usable state - I need Irix, and I need more RAM (a friend of mine will supply me with the latter, and hopefully also let me clone his Irix install). It still looks like a sensible computer to me - it doesn't run hot, makes little noise, has good audio and video capabilities and it's fast enough for most everyday tasks (I bet even OpenOffice runs adequately, given enough RAM).
That's quite old. I used a keyboard that originally came with a 12 MHz 286 until quite recently, when I had to sidegrade to a modern PS/2 keyboard because my keys got stuck when I played Quake 3 Arena. I will use ut again when I finally get enough RAM and an OS (IRIX, that is) for my SGI Indigo2 (That's even better nostalgia). I still use the floppy drive from the 286, though. It boots into GRUB every time I've had to reinstall Windows.
Linux is i386 only. It is not portable to other platforms, like MIPS, Alpha, PPC, etc. Windows NT is a modern, portable 32 bit operating system.
Linux does not support SMP. The Linux hackers are just kids with too much time on their hands, and they will never be able to afford serious hardware.
Linux is obsolete. The monolithic kernel is a joke, and will never scale past the level of a play-thing. In a couple of years, most people will run the GNU Hurd on 64 bit Sparc CPUs.
I can probably come up with some that are still true, but right now I'm too tired. Oh yes: The Gentoo Linux Installation Manual is sure to create some Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt among those who want to look into Linux as a replacement for their pre-installed Windows.
Until Firebird gets faster and uses less memory, why not use Opera? Really - the version of MozillaFirebird in Debian Sid uses more memory than Opera, even when Moz is just started, only has one window showing about:blanc and Opera has two windows and is used for this posting. The difference isn't staggering, though. Use what you like best.
Not at all. System Shock 2 is a good example. It never sold well, but it's in my top three of modern games, the others being Deus Ex and Half-Life. All these games are somewhat artistic, being extremely artful in their storytelling. None of these had original stories to tell, but neither had Shakespeare. They didn't even have the most flashy 'artwork' - graphics - but creating shiny things has never been considered an art, has it? An artistic expression isn't very good if it has nothing to express.
Yeah, right. They still only sell BASIC for homebrew computers. Remember, they actually did survive a couple of years before Office became their big money maker. Before Windows 3.x squeezed Word Perfect out of the market (because WP for Windows was late and as bug-ridden as an English brothel), very few people used Word. I don't about the rest of the Office apps, but they hardly dominated. You have to agree they've diversified a bit from the OS business.
Ah, and the X-Box too. Yes, they sell each unit with a loss, but they make money from -- guess what? -- controlling the standard, that is the X-Box hardware, and selling licenses to those who want to make money from software for the platform. Yes, we all hoped that the console would be a gigantic failure for MS, but it's really just business as usual for them: go in, grab a "fair" chunk of the market, and make money from controlling that market. That's also why they decided to squash Netscape, who, by the way, tried to use exactly the same tactics: dominate on the client side to make money from the servers. And to dominate on the client side, they introdused a lot of new "standards", like frames. Netscape failed because Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are better at running a business that way, and came earlier to the game of domination.