If you really want to run Linux, you've got enough power to run whatever you want. Kubuntu or KDE Neon would give you a nice balance of functionality and performance. I'm running Kubuntu on a MacBook 3,1 which has the garbage GMA x3100 video and it is running just fine.
The big issue with the MacBook 7,1 is trying to get the proprietary nvidia drivers to work with EFI boot. Otherwise, you are stuck with nouveau, and nouveau sucks.
I have a P3 laptop that sees regular use around the house as a portable DVD player/video player.
IBM Thinkpad 600x It's a PIII-500, upgraded to 384MB RAM and a 40GB disk. I found the optional DVD drive online and bought one.
It is currently running Mythbuntu 8.04. I found an X.org configuration file on teh interwebz to get the accelerated driver for the Neomagic 256zx to work properly instead of having it using the crappy default SVGA driver. It decodes DVDs without any problems. I can also play most video files, although not the latest H.264 encoded ones.
I also have an old 802.11b wifi card in it so it can get to the wireless router for filesharing and updates.
My next project is to get NES, SNES, and Genesis emulators up and running.
No, it can't compete with any computer made this century, but it destroys any portable DVD player out there for a fraction of the price.
I hate to sound like a fanboy, but this is exactly why I own a Mac.
Seriously. Most of the problems I've run into with both Linux and Windows are device driver related. Windows gets a bad reputation because some obscure Taiwanese company makes a crappy driver. With Linux, I spend the better part of a weekend trying to figure out how to get the pre-alpha version of a reverse engineered driver for the component made by the obscure Taiwanese company working.
With a Mac, It. Just. Works. Apple provides the hardware, Apple provides the software, you call Apple when things go wrong. Apple even provides the Windows drivers for Boot Camp.
Politicians have a poor grasp of technology because voters have a poor grasp of technology.
Even if voters did understand technology issues better, so few cast their vote on this issue that the politicians can pretty much do what they want to in this area.
The infamous "Senator from Disney", former Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-SC), is the classic case of this. Hollings shilling for the entertainment industry simply wasn't an issue the last time he was up for reelection. To few people cared for it to even come up.
AMD first beat Intel in 1997 when the new AMD K6 beat the then top-of-the-line Pentium MMX.
Two months later, Intel took the crown back easily with the Pentium II. However, AMD had established itself as an alternative to Intel on the medium to low end. It is no coincidence that this when when PC prices started falling rapidly.
Programming in C is like programming in C++ with one hand tied behind your back.
Even if you never touch the OO side of C++ and stay procedural, it makes C considerably easier. Let's see...
Stronger typing Better casting new/delete over malloc/free (C's memory allocation is a PITA compared to C++) Pass by reference C++ standard template library
And that's just what I can think of.
Sure, you can shoot yourself in the foot in C++, but you can do that in any language, feral C included.
There are more male than female Nobel Prize winners. There are also more male than female Darwin Award winners.
There are more males than females who are considered "geniuses" based on IQ scores. There are also more males than females who are considered "profoundly retarded" based on IQ scores.
There are more males than females who are CEO's. There are also males than females who are in Federal Prison. (Insert your own Enron joke here.)
There are more men at both ends of the spectrum, while there are more women are closer to the middle.
Many stores do have a policy not to sell 'M' rated games to those under 17. Many don't even carry 'AO' games.
However, as a friend of mine and former EB employee noted that most of the time when he told a kid that he couldn't sell the kid an 'M' rated game, the kid came right back with a parent who would buy the 'M' rated game for him.
What is sad is how all of us lose because PARENTS don't do their damn job.
It's not "Government" that is the problem. There are plenty of good Government supported educational institutions. If it were not for Government supported educational institutions (UC-Berkeley, UIUC, and many more) you would not be typing on Slashdot.
It's clueless politicians and lazy bureaucrats that are the problem.
You are a politician. Real reform will take 12 years to work through the educational system. A quick fix can be implemented in two or three years. Your term expires in four years. What do you do?
You are a bureaucrat. You have plenty of responsibility, but no real power. Your job is to not get fired and not get sued. Do you try to educate the children or do you try to keep the politicians and parents off your back?
The system may have problems, but that does not mean that public investment in education is a bad idea. We should not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
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Does beer pong count as a team building activity? Asking for a friend.
I had a similar problem. Resetting the PRAM fixed it.
The MacBook 7,1 WILL run High Sierra. This is probably your best bet.
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook/specs/macbook-core-2-duo-2.4-white-13-polycarbonate-unibody-mid-2010-specs.html
If you really want to run Linux, you've got enough power to run whatever you want. Kubuntu or KDE Neon would give you a nice balance of functionality and performance. I'm running Kubuntu on a MacBook 3,1 which has the garbage GMA x3100 video and it is running just fine.
The big issue with the MacBook 7,1 is trying to get the proprietary nvidia drivers to work with EFI boot. Otherwise, you are stuck with nouveau, and nouveau sucks.
I tried Mint KDE and saw no advantage over Kubuntu.
I have a P3 laptop that sees regular use around the house as a portable DVD player/video player.
IBM Thinkpad 600x It's a PIII-500, upgraded to 384MB RAM and a 40GB disk. I found the optional DVD drive online and bought one.
It is currently running Mythbuntu 8.04. I found an X.org configuration file on teh interwebz to get the accelerated driver for the Neomagic 256zx to work properly instead of having it using the crappy default SVGA driver. It decodes DVDs without any problems. I can also play most video files, although not the latest H.264 encoded ones.
I also have an old 802.11b wifi card in it so it can get to the wireless router for filesharing and updates.
My next project is to get NES, SNES, and Genesis emulators up and running.
No, it can't compete with any computer made this century, but it destroys any portable DVD player out there for a fraction of the price.
"I don't really feel like digging that far into the Windows API "
I like a good four letter Anglo-Saxon word as much as the next guy, but for me, Hungarian notation just crosses the line.
I hate to sound like a fanboy, but this is exactly why I own a Mac.
Seriously. Most of the problems I've run into with both Linux and Windows are device driver related. Windows gets a bad reputation because some obscure Taiwanese company makes a crappy driver. With Linux, I spend the better part of a weekend trying to figure out how to get the pre-alpha version of a reverse engineered driver for the component made by the obscure Taiwanese company working.
With a Mac, It. Just. Works. Apple provides the hardware, Apple provides the software, you call Apple when things go wrong. Apple even provides the Windows drivers for Boot Camp.
This is exactly why I own a Mac.
which means sex is better in a bedroom at night rather than on a desk in the office
That's one person's opinion.
How about a sane fiscal policy, for a change?
"Borrow and squander" doesn't do much for the value of the dollar, does it?
Be sure not to forget the cover sheet on your TPS Reports!
(They sent a memo, you know.)
Politicians have a poor grasp of technology because voters have a poor grasp of technology.
Even if voters did understand technology issues better, so few cast their vote on this issue that the politicians can pretty much do what they want to in this area.
The infamous "Senator from Disney", former Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-SC), is the classic case of this. Hollings shilling for the entertainment industry simply wasn't an issue the last time he was up for reelection. To few people cared for it to even come up.
Overdiagnosing and overprescribing.
How many kids are given Ritalin when sleep, diet and excercise would "fix" their "ADHD"?
(5% of US kids are on ADHD meds, as opposed to 0.3% of UK kids)
How many people are given Zocor/Crestor/Liptor instead of diet and excercise for high cholesterol?
How many people are given Prozac when they feel down?
I'm not even going to get into Viagra...
This is a large part about why we spend so much money and never get better.
DTC advertisement of prescription drugs should be banned!
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
For the industry many Slashdotters, including myself, work in, the situation has changed since the 1990's.
1990's - Indian programmers programmed for major US corporations in the US.
2000's - Indian programmers program for major US corporations in India.
The evolution of the internet made this possible and will also make this impossible to stop.
Not quite.
AMD first beat Intel in 1997 when the new AMD K6 beat the then top-of-the-line Pentium MMX.
Two months later, Intel took the crown back easily with the Pentium II. However, AMD had established itself as an alternative to Intel on the medium to low end. It is no coincidence that this when when PC prices started falling rapidly.
Programming in C is like programming in C++ with one hand tied behind your back.
Even if you never touch the OO side of C++ and stay procedural, it makes C considerably easier. Let's see...
Stronger typing
Better casting
new/delete over malloc/free (C's memory allocation is a PITA compared to C++)
Pass by reference
C++ standard template library
And that's just what I can think of.
Sure, you can shoot yourself in the foot in C++, but you can do that in any language, feral C included.
You do realize that laptops come with keyboard, mouse, and monitor ports, don't you?
There are more male than female Nobel Prize winners.
There are also more male than female Darwin Award winners.
There are more males than females who are considered "geniuses" based on IQ scores.
There are also more males than females who are considered "profoundly retarded" based on IQ scores.
There are more males than females who are CEO's.
There are also males than females who are in Federal Prison. (Insert your own Enron joke here.)
There are more men at both ends of the spectrum, while there are more women are closer to the middle.
Many stores do have a policy not to sell 'M' rated games to those under 17. Many don't even carry 'AO' games.
However, as a friend of mine and former EB employee noted that most of the time when he told a kid that he couldn't sell the kid an 'M' rated game, the kid came right back with a parent who would buy the 'M' rated game for him.
What is sad is how all of us lose because PARENTS don't do their damn job.
Our company uses Bloated Notes exclusively for our configuration management system, business administration, and administration.
Notes R5 client was tolerable, but awkward. Notes R6 has a better UI, but is written in Java. It's painful, even with 768MB of RAM.
It's not "Government" that is the problem. There are plenty of good Government supported educational institutions. If it were not for Government supported educational institutions (UC-Berkeley, UIUC, and many more) you would not be typing on Slashdot.
It's clueless politicians and lazy bureaucrats that are the problem.
You are a politician. Real reform will take 12 years to work through the educational system. A quick fix can be implemented in two or three years.
Your term expires in four years. What do you do?
You are a bureaucrat. You have plenty of responsibility, but no real power. Your job is to not get fired and not get sued.
Do you try to educate the children or do you try to keep the politicians and parents off your back?
The system may have problems, but that does not mean that public investment in education is a bad idea. We should not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Windows 98 is terrible. Windows 98 SE is much better.
Windows 95B is good, but very limited.
The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Have fun finding the bugs.
Average sick leave taken in 2004 at my office:
Laptop users (6) - 14.3 hours
Desktop users (w/CRT monitors) (16) - 71.6 hours.