[lug] Mac Hardware

[rm at fabula.de]

On Fri, Jul 26, 2002 at 09:04:40AM -0600, Peter Hutnick wrote:
> I'm looking for someone to discuss the ins and outs of running Linux on
> current PowerMac systems.
> 
> The main thing is I don't want to blow a bunch of cash on a PowerMac just
> to find out "oh, the video in X sucks"* or "Apple uses some freakish IDE
> system that only works at a snail's pace with the Linux driver." or
> something like that.
> 
> I'd also like to know the ins and outs of dual booting with MacOS X.

I finally overcame my natural lazzyness and installed Debian woody on
my PowerMac last week. I run it as a tripple boot box with MacOS 9, Mac OSX
and Linux, the later on a separate harddisk (currently trying to compile
my first PPC-kernel to get MacOnLinux working -- cool thing). I got the
thing more-or-less for free so i never really had to think about the 
pros and cons of running Linux on PPC (i do have a DEC Alpha as a toy ;-)
So far i'd say: really nice hardware (not as crappy as your average PC),
really nice video (iff you have the right graphic card -- mine is an
ATI rage 128P), i didn't come across software nit available for PPC so far.

BUT: for the same money you probably get some quite impressive Inteloids.
You have to throw away both mouse and keyboad (the s__ck! but that's 
plattformindependend -- same as with Java ;-).
The box is _awfully_ noisy! Are all these graphic artists deaf? 

Some pros: You can run Mac OS9 apps. from within Linux if you install
MacOnLinux. It's nice to be able to run FrameMaker and Quark without
having to switch away from your OS of choice. 
You can play with OS X: Apple has done a nice job of combining *nix and
Macintosh. I'm not talking about the Aqua interface -- it get's boring 
after a while (and i personally find it gets in may way more often than
i like). Also, the programming environment ( Cocoa with ProjectBuilder
and InterfaceBuilder is _quite_ impressive -- Gnome & KDE, have a look
at this. Looking at ObjectiveC's runtime environment one wounders what
M. d. Icasa finds so impressive about .NOT's component model and CLR).

Ups, way longer than it should be -- send me mail if you want further
exchange.

  Ralf 
 

> Pointers to more appropriate places to ask this stuff are welcome, but I
> mainly would like to find someone to talk this over with one on one.
> 
> -Peter
> 
> * I just found out that YDL doesn't support the GeForce 4 at all :-(
> 
> 
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