Shall I switch to a Powerbook?

[l***@larwe.com]

Jan Ulrich Hasecke wrote:

Hi Jan,

I am beginning to think about some of the same questions, due to a
project I'm working on that requires me to use a Mac as a Linux box.
See http://www.larwe.com/technical/current.html for more details of
that, if you want. Anyway, some answers based on my limited

So my question is. Are there any issues I have to think of, when I
switch to a Powerbook? I never worked with an Apple. I know that MAC
OS X has a *nix-engine underneath and that there is Fink etc. I would

Current OS X is built on NetBSD, yes. When I last tested it, X
integration was very poor, and this is important to me. It was like
running XFree86 under Cygwin on Windows, only worse :( For this and
other reasons, I am not even considering an attempt at dual-boot - I am
erasing MacOS as soon as my Mac mini arrives, and installing Debian
only.

There are numerous quirky things you might have to think about when
installing; the state of PPC Linux is not as polished as the one-step
friendly graphical installers of x86 Linux and particularly so on
PowerBooks. Suggest you read carefully
http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/ and in particular look closely at
the notes specific to whatever model of PowerBook you intend to buy.

Is dual boot possible?

Yes; it's not difficult to set up. I don't think there are interactive
partition-resize tools provided though, so you have to reformat and
reinstall MacOS. This is not such a big deal.

How can I switch my data? (Text, OOo-files, images, flac-files)

Not sure what you're asking here. You can mount shared partitions on
the Linux side.

Does it make sense to use a PB in a Linux-network? Or is it a

tedious

workaround?

I'm considering the purchase of a PowerBook myself. I currently run a
2.somethingGHz Athlon XP-M laptop with FC3 (not dual-boot) as my
primary machine. I am strongly attracted by the lower heat, less fan
noise and - yes, I admit it - the damn cute form factor of the 12"
iBook.

I don't want to ask this in a apple-newsgroup, because I think they

do

not know much about Linux.

I think the question is at least worth crossposting to
comp.os.linux.powerpc, don't you think? :)

[Mike Murphree]

Post by l***@larwe.com
Hi Jan,
I am beginning to think about some of the same questions, due to a
project I'm working on that requires me to use a Mac as a Linux box.
See http://www.larwe.com/technical/current.html for more details of
that, if you want. Anyway, some answers based on my limited

So my question is. Are there any issues I have to think of, when I
switch to a Powerbook? I never worked with an Apple. I know that MAC
OS X has a *nix-engine underneath and that there is Fink etc. I would

Current OS X is built on NetBSD, yes. When I last tested it, X
integration was very poor, and this is important to me. It was like
running XFree86 under Cygwin on Windows, only worse :( For this and
other reasons, I am not even considering an attempt at dual-boot - I am
erasing MacOS as soon as my Mac mini arrives, and installing Debian
only.

It does not sound like you are speaking from recent experience. X
windows apps are nicely integrated with Aqua now. Also Mac OS X is
based on a Mach kernel and FreeBSD userland not NetBSD.

Post by l***@larwe.com
There are numerous quirky things you might have to think about when
installing; the state of PPC Linux is not as polished as the one-step
friendly graphical installers of x86 Linux and particularly so on
PowerBooks. Suggest you read carefully
http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/ and in particular look closely at
the notes specific to whatever model of PowerBook you intend to buy.

Depends on which distro you pick, Yellow Dog Linux installs just a
nicely as Redhat or any other x86 Linux distro. Debian is a pain (and
outdated) regardless of what architecture you install it on.

Post by l***@larwe.com
I'm considering the purchase of a PowerBook myself. I currently run a
2.somethingGHz Athlon XP-M laptop with FC3 (not dual-boot) as my
primary machine. I am strongly attracted by the lower heat, less fan
noise and - yes, I admit it - the damn cute form factor of the 12"
iBook.

I would investigate extensively to verify that your chosen distro
correctly supports power management on a laptop. You do not want to fry
an expensive machine.

Along these lines, Terra Soft Solutions (the Yellow Dog Linux people)
sell pre-configured machines for no more than you would pay Apple for
one and no I don't work for them. Their available hardware
configurations are here: http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/store/

Mike

[l***@larwe.com]

Hi Mike,

Post by Mike Murphree

Post by l***@larwe.com
Current OS X is built on NetBSD, yes. When I last tested it, X
integration was very poor, and this is important to me. It was like
running XFree86 under Cygwin on Windows, only worse :( For this and

It does not sound like you are speaking from recent experience. X

(rummaging through disks) I was using OS 10.2.6; how recent do I have
to get?

Post by Mike Murphree
windows apps are nicely integrated with Aqua now. Also Mac OS X is
based on a Mach kernel and FreeBSD userland not NetBSD.

Sorry, since I don't use *BSD I keep getting Net vs Free confused in my
head. I plead insanity, and if you knew what my work week has been like
so far you'd set me free :)

Post by Mike Murphree
Depends on which distro you pick, Yellow Dog Linux installs just a

I'll try it out then. I'm all in favor of simple and painless wherever
possible (especially since I don't want to waste any unnecessary time
on the installation part of this particular project; I want to get it
all over and done with quickly because it's kind of a side project that
I'm just doing to get the free Mac mini).

Post by Mike Murphree
Along these lines, Terra Soft Solutions (the Yellow Dog Linux people)
sell pre-configured machines for no more than you would pay Apple for

Apple gives a student discount, though. Terra Soft only gives an
educator discount.

[I R A Darth Aggie]

On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 17:58:32 -0600,

+ Debian is a pain (and outdated) regardless of what architecture you
+ install it on.

It is abundantly obvious that you've not used the Sarge release
candidate installer.

James

[Roger Leigh]

Post by Mike Murphree
Depends on which distro you pick, Yellow Dog Linux installs just a
nicely as Redhat or any other x86 Linux distro. Debian is a pain
(and outdated) regardless of what architecture you install it on.

I've just this week migrated from i386 to a Mac Mini. I installed
using the Sarge netinst CD image, and it installed very easily (my
first new Debian install in 6 years!).

It's certainly not a pain to install (though I did manually set up
LVM) and it's not outdated either.


Regards,
Roger

- --
Roger Leigh
Printing on GNU/Linux? http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/
Debian GNU/Linux http://www.debian.org/
GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848. Please sign and encrypt your mail.

[jim bob and joe bob]

Debian may be a pain to install on a mac but on my antiquated hardware
YDL had proven itself to be impossible to install while Debian is
possible and eventually yields a nice running system.
kk

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Post by Mike Murphree
Depends on which distro you pick, Yellow Dog Linux installs just a
nicely as Redhat or any other x86 Linux distro. Debian is a pain
(and outdated) regardless of what architecture you install it on.

I've just this week migrated from i386 to a Mac Mini. I installed
using the Sarge netinst CD image, and it installed very easily (my
first new Debian install in 6 years!).
It's certainly not a pain to install (though I did manually set up
LVM) and it's not outdated either.
Regards,
Roger
- --
Roger Leigh
Printing on GNU/Linux? http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/
Debian GNU/Linux http://www.debian.org/
GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848. Please sign and encrypt your mail.
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.8 <http://mailcrypt.sourceforge.net/>
iD8DBQFCQa+RVcFcaSW/uEgRArW5AKDPsLTzG2Gfj8XmyL9Qo64P5oYsBACfTgaX
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=rr9H
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[l***@larwe.com]

Post by jim bob and joe bob
Debian may be a pain to install on a mac but on my antiquated

hardware

Post by jim bob and joe bob
YDL had proven itself to be impossible to install while Debian is
possible and eventually yields a nice running system.

What was your hardware, exactly? I just installed YDL this morning on
an old Bondi iMac (G3 233MHz/160MB/2.5GB) and it was utterly smooth.

Debian works, of course, but I'm used to Fedora and so YDL is less of a
learning curve for me.

[jim bob and joe bob]

Post by Mike Murphree

Post by jim bob and joe bob
Debian may be a pain to install on a mac but on my antiquated

hardware

Post by jim bob and joe bob
YDL had proven itself to be impossible to install while Debian is
possible and eventually yields a nice running system.

What was your hardware, exactly? I just installed YDL this morning on
an old Bondi iMac (G3 233MHz/160MB/2.5GB) and it was utterly smooth.
Debian works, of course, but I'm used to Fedora and so YDL is less of a
learning curve for me.

I have a beige G3 (300mhz, 578mb) and a Umax c600 (200mhz, 64mb). I
have successfully installed Debian (woody) on both but fought x-windows
for months before getting it up and running and that only on the G3. YDL
3.0.1 would start the installer and at some point lose the keyboard map
and not allow any meaningful input after that. So far, Debian is all I
know of linux. I have Libranet on a x86 box but that is Debian also.
Now that installs easily. I did have to make a set of install floppies
but once booted into the installer it was a matter of letting it run for
an hour or so and answer the occasional prompt. It seems that the old
world macs are not really all that well supported but I seem to hear of
trouble with the colorful ones too. Glad you were able to get YDL to
run. There seems to be no accounting for what flavor will run on which
machine.
kk

[Georg Drees]

[...]

Post by l***@larwe.com

So my question is. Are there any issues I have to think of, when I
switch to a Powerbook?

You have to be careful about the hardware.
E.g. NVidia is not providing drivers/information for their
graphic cards on powerpc architecture. So you won't get
3D acceleration (yet?).
Also, the "Airport Extreme" aka WLAN uses a Broadcom (IIRC) chip
and the people at Broadcom give no specs (and rumor has it they
never will) so it's unusable under Linux.

Post by l***@larwe.com

I never worked with an Apple. I know that MAC
OS X has a *nix-engine underneath and that there is Fink etc. I would

Fink works just fine; though it naturally doesn't give you as huge a
list to choose packages from as i.e. Debian does.

I think, if you have learned to love your Linux installation for a
poke-around-and-type-away kind of working (and playing with the
system), it might be hard to adjust to and be eternally happy with OS
X's way of (mostly) click-what's-there-and-if-it-isn't-forget-it.
That's of course heavily biased by my personal experience, but so to
make you cautious on your preparations and make you think early about
"Plan B" ;-)

Post by l***@larwe.com
Current OS X is built on NetBSD, yes. When I last tested it, X
integration was very poor, and this is important to me.

I found X11 on OS X to be enough for my needs, as there exist OS X
ports for some major programs I use, i.e. OpenOffice.org(or try
NeoOfficeJ), Mozilla-Firefox, Psi (instant messaging), VLC (video),
Blender, and the rest like Gimp just works fine IMO.
You can use OroborOSX to even more integrate the X11 windows into the
OS X interface.

[...]

Post by l***@larwe.com

Is dual boot possible?

Yes; it's not difficult to set up. I don't think there are

interactive

Post by l***@larwe.com
partition-resize tools provided though, so you have to reformat and
reinstall MacOS. This is not such a big deal.

Be sure to read your distribution-of-choice's manual before
partitioning, as you might need to create an extra boot partition
somewhere at the beginning of the drive!

It seems that parted as of version 1.6.22 can resize hfs/hfs+.
See <***@posting.google.com>
Anyway it would certainly help to reformat the drive to your taste
before using OS X (and reinstalling it from the DVDs if you want to try
it ;-) because resizing always puts a (commonly tiny, but still
non-zero) danger to your data of beeing damaged.

Post by l***@larwe.com

How can I switch my data? (Text, OOo-files, images, flac-files)

Not sure what you're asking here. You can mount shared partitions on
the Linux side.

True; maybe you have to use hfsplus (deb-package), to not damage the
extra things hfs(+) adds to the files/folders that e.g. Finder under OS
X relies on, when moving things around.

There exists http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/ which let's you
access ext2 filesystems from OS X.

With my spring-2004 PB OS X (10.3.4) came (excerpt):
TextEdit which can handle txt,doc,rtf formats. for OOo you just install
OOo, for images there was GraphicsConverter bundled, but I prefer
TheGimp (via fink or 'ported'), for flac IIRC there exists a tool (if
not even a iTunes-plugin?)...

Try macupdate.com to search.

Post by l***@larwe.com

Does it make sense to use a PB in a Linux-network? Or is it a

tedious

workaround?

It works fine. Even includes CUPS.

[...]

Post by l***@larwe.com
I am strongly attracted by the lower heat,

Just be aware that some(?) PBs make use of the casing as a heat sink...

[...]

Post by l***@larwe.com
and - yes, I admit it - the damn cute form factor

indeed, cute they are :-D

HTH
tuXLifan