My personal experience is that it has helped my workstation's interactive performance noticeably for big ass c++ compiles and periods of lots of disk activity (big apt-get dist-upgrades). Thankfully, I'm no longer doing the big ass c++ compiles, so it's not as big of an issue as it used to be:)
If you're running Debian, you can post to the debian-powerpc mailing list and people will try to help you out. I don't know about the support for other distros, but I've found debian-powerpc to be more than adequate (especially considering the kernel hacker types also subscribe).
I said for certain operations because Linux doesn't outright spank OS X for all things, but overall it does kick Darwin's ass (read the benchmarks tough guy).
I bought my powerbook because it's a damn sexy laptop and it runs Linux. The performance benefits of Linux over OS X are just a nice bonus.
Yah, mine has an airport card in it and I have no problems. Apparently some tibook owners use pcmcia cards because they get better range than with the builtin card.
I also didn't mention that the current state of affairs is that there is a guy who wrote a driver for OS X for the pcmcia cards, but it's not supported by Apple and was alpha code last I checked it out.
Aside from all of the other reasons, OS X is a dog in comparison with Linux.
The lmbench numbers show that linux is significantly faster for certain operations.
I have a copy of the results that I pointed to in an old post over here. Linux spanks OS X. It's a reason.
Other reasons include access to all of the source of your OS and better support for certain things (pcmcia 802.11b card support? Better filesystems. More software already working).
I personally run Debian on my laptop 99% of the time because my environment is the same everywhere, and apt-get kicks ass (fink on OS X is cool, but there isn't as much stuff available).
You may want to check out PfaEdit which is in active development.
Also along the font lines, there's also the Free Font Foundation which has some links to other font editors. Though it says that PfaEdit is "our only hope" so there's probably not anything else all that great to check out;)
Check out scyld.com for their beowulf distribution. It does exactly what you need (though there is a need for a dedicated head node system). You can run all of the slave nodes entirely diskless, and control booting into the beowulf stuff via a floppy, cdrom, or the hard disk.
You can pick up the CDs at cheapbytes (I think), so it's only a few $$$ for a basic install. Support or buying the professional edition will cost you bigger $$$.
The advantage of this is that all of your files and state and management is all done on the head node. The slave nodes boot up and pick up their configurations from the head node and go. Scyld beowulf is also significantly easier to install/maintain than rolling your own.
You could pretty easily do this with mutt and the compressed folders patch.
It allows you to specify a regex for a folder, and then operations for opening and closing. It wouldn't be that much different than using bzip2 or gzip on a folder.
The concept of the article seems like a weird way of solving the problem to me.
I have a big family (I'm 1 of 8 kids), and we do a gift exchange thing every xmas. We ran into troubles with duplicate gifts being given and slightly wrong gifts ("I wanted a small red one but you bought a big blue one instead").
So last year I hacked together some php to maintain online wishlists for everybody. Each person gets an account and maintains their own wishlist. Other people can check off items from their list to mark them as being purchased (eliminates the dupe gift problem). You can't see what's checked off on your own list, but everyone else can.
It worked out well last year, I hacked it a little more this year, and have plans for a better wishlist system next year (generic event wishlists plus some other nice frills).
(There's also giftweb at sourceforge which I originally looked at (and sent a patch), but later scrapped it as I was too far along on my own hackish solution.)
See this mailbox and search for "LMbench/results" (they apparently didn't archive back that far in their web archiving thing, so you have to checkout the mbox).
It will give you lmbench numbers for the same 400MHz Powerbook G4 running Linux, NetBSD, and OS X (2 diff versions). Granted, lmbench numbers probably only impact practicality and useability...
The summary: Linux out performs the others on the same hardware.
~% apt-cache show ash
Package: ash
Priority: optional
Section: shells
Installed-Size: 180
Maintainer: Herbert Xu <herbert@debian.org>
Architecture: i386
Version: 0.3.8-29
Pre-Depends: libc6 (>= 2.2.4-2)
Filename: pool/main/a/ash/ash_0.3.8-29_i386.deb
Size: 70564
MD5sum: a9ec33985be6e3a4c350ef19d377c43a
Description: NetBSD/bin/sh
"ash" is a POSIX compliant shell that is much smaller than "bash".
We take advantage of that by making it the shell on the installation
root floppy, where space is at a premium.
.
It can be usefully installed as/bin/sh (because it executes scripts
somewhat faster than "bash"), or as the default shell either of root
or of a second user with a userid of 0 (because it depends on fewer
libraries, and is therefore less likely to be affected by an upgrade
problem or a disk failure). It is also useful for checking that a
script uses only POSIX syntax.
.
"bash" is a better shell for most users, since it has some nice
features absent from "ash", and is a required part of the system.
When most of the developers were moved off of the project the only real code that was in a state that it was done was nullfs. The design of the rest of things had been done, and John Hartman had a rapid prototype of the token system done in tcl, but very little other coding was accomplished.
I don't think that the code that exists is interesting enough (or substantial enough) for a hobbyist to pick it up and run with it.
I'm not sure if Progeny will release the design docs...
Though I may have a negative outlook on things... I ended up being reassigned to doing Web Monkey stuff instead of working on NOW (which was the whole reason why I left my prior job and went to work at Progeny).
No, it does not support install to a reiserfs drive. You can, however, install the optional 2.4.2 kernel image and the reiserfs tools and make your reiser stuff afterwards. This is mostly because the boot floppies use a pretty stock 2.2.18 kernel.
Originally the plan was for it all to be on one CD. Eventually the CD sizes fluctuated up above 1 CD's worth, and the extras (second) CD had to be put together.
You do not need the second CD to install Progeny Debian. It's just extra stuff like kde etc that didn't quite fit on the first CD.
As it is now, I don't believe it will all fit on one CD. If it turns out to be close, I guess we'll try to tune it to fit on that one CD, but that remains to be seen.
Don't listen to the guy who says it's non-free stuff or whatever... that's made up from what I can tell. It's made up of stuff that are in the "extra" package sets, which is not based on free or non-free (I believe netscape is the only non-free software shipping, though I cannot speak authoritatively on the subject).
Building Linux Clusters by David HM Spector published by O'Reilly, (hmmm site seems to be down, come back later, or check Google cached version)
That book is not very good. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone building a Beowulf Cluster. The examples are broken and there is a LOT of errata (a whole new ch2 from what I've heard?).
Go get the Scyld Beowulf2 Beta... really, it's the way HPLC (High Performance Linux Clusters) are going... it's easy to admin, easy to setup, easy to understand. It's a big step in useability for Linux clusters.
.laz
oh, and how much will you pay for/. ID 87;) --
My car is orange, my sig is not.
That was me (ex-pres of the aforementioned Lehigh LUG, well, FOG) who dropped the ball... gah, I even remember it now.
I got too busy with graduating and it seemed to have fallen into the bit bucket... I'm sure they'd be interested in hearing you speak. I'm going to bounce your email addie on to Scott.
Actually, the code that's out there for download isn't the code that's running the site. The downloadable code is generations behind, thus it would probably be hard to find the bug. See for yourself at here.
I'd probably be persuaded to get rid of mine for a price (or in trade for a nice light up Debian mug)... maybe I'll post it on ebay and see how much I can get for it
Netscape for win32 has a full screen mode IIRC. It's called super kiosk mode (we used it for some library computers that were basically web browsing terminals). You have to start netscape with an argument of -sk I think, but I could be wrong... there's docs about this kind of stuff on the developer portion of netscape's massive web page.
... I can tell that Bethlehem, PA isn't on the list... hell, I can only get one way cable modem (which is lame) because we're "too far from a fiber"...
just venting some frustration with my current location:)
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe try out the preemptible kernel patch?
My personal experience is that it has helped my workstation's interactive performance noticeably for big ass c++ compiles and periods of lots of disk activity (big apt-get dist-upgrades). Thankfully, I'm no longer doing the big ass c++ compiles, so it's not as big of an issue as it used to be :)
If you're running Debian, you can post to the debian-powerpc mailing list and people will try to help you out. I don't know about the support for other distros, but I've found debian-powerpc to be more than adequate (especially considering the kernel hacker types also subscribe).
I said for certain operations because Linux doesn't outright spank OS X for all things, but overall it does kick Darwin's ass (read the benchmarks tough guy).
I bought my powerbook because it's a damn sexy laptop and it runs Linux. The performance benefits of Linux over OS X are just a nice bonus.
I also didn't mention that the current state of affairs is that there is a guy who wrote a driver for OS X for the pcmcia cards, but it's not supported by Apple and was alpha code last I checked it out.
The lmbench numbers show that linux is significantly faster for certain operations. I have a copy of the results that I pointed to in an old post over here. Linux spanks OS X. It's a reason.
Other reasons include access to all of the source of your OS and better support for certain things (pcmcia 802.11b card support? Better filesystems. More software already working).
I personally run Debian on my laptop 99% of the time because my environment is the same everywhere, and apt-get kicks ass (fink on OS X is cool, but there isn't as much stuff available).
Also along the font lines, there's also the Free Font Foundation which has some links to other font editors. Though it says that PfaEdit is "our only hope" so there's probably not anything else all that great to check out ;)
Check out scyld.com for their beowulf distribution. It does exactly what you need (though there is a need for a dedicated head node system). You can run all of the slave nodes entirely diskless, and control booting into the beowulf stuff via a floppy, cdrom, or the hard disk.
You can pick up the CDs at cheapbytes (I think), so it's only a few $$$ for a basic install. Support or buying the professional edition will cost you bigger $$$.
The advantage of this is that all of your files and state and management is all done on the head node. The slave nodes boot up and pick up their configurations from the head node and go. Scyld beowulf is also significantly easier to install/maintain than rolling your own.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ibook.html
You could pretty easily do this with mutt and the compressed folders patch.
It allows you to specify a regex for a folder, and then operations for opening and closing. It wouldn't be that much different than using bzip2 or gzip on a folder.
So, what's the url, dude? Don't just dangle the carrot ;).
Doh, good call.
It's password protected, so you can't browse around (I used http basic auth... I know, it sucks, but it's easy ;). I dumped some screenshots here
.
The concept of the article seems like a weird way of solving the problem to me.
I have a big family (I'm 1 of 8 kids), and we do a gift exchange thing every xmas. We ran into troubles with duplicate gifts being given and slightly wrong gifts ("I wanted a small red one but you bought a big blue one instead").
So last year I hacked together some php to maintain online wishlists for everybody. Each person gets an account and maintains their own wishlist. Other people can check off items from their list to mark them as being purchased (eliminates the dupe gift problem). You can't see what's checked off on your own list, but everyone else can.
It worked out well last year, I hacked it a little more this year, and have plans for a better wishlist system next year (generic event wishlists plus some other nice frills).
(There's also giftweb at sourceforge which I originally looked at (and sent a patch), but later scrapped it as I was too far along on my own hackish solution.)
See this mailbox and search for "LMbench/results" (they apparently didn't archive back that far in their web archiving thing, so you have to checkout the mbox).
It will give you lmbench numbers for the same 400MHz Powerbook G4 running Linux, NetBSD, and OS X (2 diff versions). Granted, lmbench numbers probably only impact practicality and useability...
The summary: Linux out performs the others on the same hardware.
~% apt-cache show ash /bin/sh
/bin/sh (because it executes scripts
Package: ash
Priority: optional
Section: shells
Installed-Size: 180
Maintainer: Herbert Xu <herbert@debian.org>
Architecture: i386
Version: 0.3.8-29
Pre-Depends: libc6 (>= 2.2.4-2)
Filename: pool/main/a/ash/ash_0.3.8-29_i386.deb
Size: 70564
MD5sum: a9ec33985be6e3a4c350ef19d377c43a
Description: NetBSD
"ash" is a POSIX compliant shell that is much smaller than "bash".
We take advantage of that by making it the shell on the installation
root floppy, where space is at a premium.
.
It can be usefully installed as
somewhat faster than "bash"), or as the default shell either of root
or of a second user with a userid of 0 (because it depends on fewer
libraries, and is therefore less likely to be affected by an upgrade
problem or a disk failure). It is also useful for checking that a
script uses only POSIX syntax.
.
"bash" is a better shell for most users, since it has some nice
features absent from "ash", and is a required part of the system.
When most of the developers were moved off of the project the only real code that was in a state that it was done was nullfs. The design of the rest of things had been done, and John Hartman had a rapid prototype of the token system done in tcl, but very little other coding was accomplished.
I don't think that the code that exists is interesting enough (or substantial enough) for a hobbyist to pick it up and run with it.
I'm not sure if Progeny will release the design docs...
Though I may have a negative outlook on things... I ended up being reassigned to doing Web Monkey stuff instead of working on NOW (which was the whole reason why I left my prior job and went to work at Progeny).
They are the same, just a filename extension difference
You burn the .raw images just like you would burn a normal .iso image.
.laz
--
My car is orange, my sig is not.
No, it does not support install to a reiserfs drive. You can, however, install the optional 2.4.2 kernel image and the reiserfs tools and make your reiser stuff afterwards. This is mostly because the boot floppies use a pretty stock 2.2.18 kernel.
.laz
--
My car is orange, my sig is not.
Originally the plan was for it all to be on one CD. Eventually the CD sizes fluctuated up above 1 CD's worth, and the extras (second) CD had to be put together.
You do not need the second CD to install Progeny Debian. It's just extra stuff like kde etc that didn't quite fit on the first CD.
As it is now, I don't believe it will all fit on one CD. If it turns out to be close, I guess we'll try to tune it to fit on that one CD, but that remains to be seen.
Don't listen to the guy who says it's non-free stuff or whatever... that's made up from what I can tell. It's made up of stuff that are in the "extra" package sets, which is not based on free or non-free (I believe netscape is the only non-free software shipping, though I cannot speak authoritatively on the subject).
laz
--
My car is orange, my sig is not.
KDE is included with Prodney Debian. It is on the 2nd CD.
.laz
--
My car is orange, my sig is not.
For you I would like to recommend some reading:
Building Linux Clusters by David HM Spector published by O'Reilly, (hmmm site seems to be down, come back later, or check Google cached version)
That book is not very good. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone building a Beowulf Cluster. The examples are broken and there is a LOT of errata (a whole new ch2 from what I've heard?).
Go get the Scyld Beowulf2 Beta... really, it's the way HPLC (High Performance Linux Clusters) are going... it's easy to admin, easy to setup, easy to understand. It's a big step in useability for Linux clusters.
.laz
oh, and how much will you pay for /. ID 87 ;)
--
My car is orange, my sig is not.
That was me (ex-pres of the aforementioned Lehigh LUG, well, FOG) who dropped the ball... gah, I even remember it now.
I got too busy with graduating and it seemed to have fallen into the bit bucket... I'm sure they'd be interested in hearing you speak. I'm going to bounce your email addie on to Scott.
.adam
--
My car is orange, my sig is not.
Actually, the code that's out there for download isn't the code that's running the site. The downloadable code is generations behind, thus it would probably be hard to find the bug. See for yourself at here.
.Laz
--
My car is orange, my sig is not.
I'd probably be persuaded to get rid of mine for a price (or in trade for a nice light up Debian mug)... maybe I'll post it on ebay and see how much I can get for it
.Laz
--
My car is orange, my sig is not.
Netscape for win32 has a full screen mode IIRC. It's called super kiosk mode (we used it for some library computers that were basically web browsing terminals). You have to start netscape with an argument of -sk I think, but I could be wrong... there's docs about this kind of stuff on the developer portion of netscape's massive web page.
.Laz
--
My car is orange, my sig is not.
... I can tell that Bethlehem, PA isn't on the list... hell, I can only get one way cable modem (which is lame) because we're "too far from a fiber"...
:)
just venting some frustration with my current location
> If you look at NT5, Microsoft is doing daily builds, and with every build, new things break and new things are fixed.
Eh, that's just a matter of their software development model, not the actual complexity of the OS.
I had to point that out as I'm applying some knowledge from my Software Engineering class to real life (posting on Slashdot woo!)...
.Laz