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Any reason for linux?
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psychofreak said:
The point of Linux is a free operating system that is open to everyone to use and - if they have the know-how - improve.
If you don't need to use Linux and don't see a need to delve into it then there's probably no point for you to dual-boot it. If you want to get into it, Ubuntu seems highly recommended.
Unless you're really skilled with computers, linux is going to be a headache. Distros like SUSE may look user friendly but they are buggy and will make you pull your hair out trying to get it to work right. Also everyone says linux is very stable but in fact it is only stable on very powerful hardware. And lastly intel macs can only theoretically dual boot into linux, as of right now there is no way of doing so. The only way to run linux on a mac is parallels.
i have been using SUSE 10 for two month before i switched to Mac, (windows, of course before all of these), I think SUSE is really pretty easy already, but yeah, it crashed several times, and most linux disto does not include commercial stuff in original packages, so upon the finish of installation, u will not be able to play mp3, xvid, DVD etc. but hey, you know the good stuff is not far, mplayer, xine, vlc, they are all available on linux, and easy to install through YaST2.
Ubuntu is very good for x86 and simmilar systems but has been seriously having some issues on newer PPC Apples.
For PPC systems, you should probably look at SuSE (casual) or Gentoo (some effort required, but works very well once set up)
I have a Powerbook G7 17" (HR) 5,9 - 1.67GHz w/ 2GB DDR2-533 and have been through the ringer with Ubuntu. Right off the bat, I was using BCM43XX (the open source airport driver) at which point it worked flawlessly in Ubuntu, however when I rebooted into OS X, I could no longer see that an airport card existed. To resolve that, I needed to CMD-OPT-P-R and then boot into OS X. Then, it worked just fine, but when I rebooted into Ubuntu, my Airport disapeared from OSX on me again.
Then, there was an issue with pbbuttonsd, which prevented me from being able to eject a disk from my superdrive, or change my volume at all. For volume, if I tried to change through the menubar in Gnome, it would change for a fraction of a second and then go back because PBBUTTONSD would keep resetting it to what it wanted.
With Gentoo (it took quite a bit of research though), I got everything working flawlessly. The initial problem is that Gentoo is a build-it-yourself linux. That being the case, I needed to track down that snd-aoa was the kernel module needed to work with the "Toonie" soundcard used in my Powerbook, that bcm43xx only works reliably if you have a special kernel option chosen in the Drivers section (one that Ubuntu 6.06 PPC had opposite at the initial release).
Hopefully Ubuntu has fixed those issues by now, but atleast on PPC, it has not faired well for me and I am not that interested in going out of my way to give it another chance any time soon.
BTW: 24 Hours until WWDC!
For PPC systems, you should probably look at SuSE (casual) or Gentoo (some effort required, but works very well once set up)
I have a Powerbook G7 17" (HR) 5,9 - 1.67GHz w/ 2GB DDR2-533 and have been through the ringer with Ubuntu. Right off the bat, I was using BCM43XX (the open source airport driver) at which point it worked flawlessly in Ubuntu, however when I rebooted into OS X, I could no longer see that an airport card existed. To resolve that, I needed to CMD-OPT-P-R and then boot into OS X. Then, it worked just fine, but when I rebooted into Ubuntu, my Airport disapeared from OSX on me again.
Then, there was an issue with pbbuttonsd, which prevented me from being able to eject a disk from my superdrive, or change my volume at all. For volume, if I tried to change through the menubar in Gnome, it would change for a fraction of a second and then go back because PBBUTTONSD would keep resetting it to what it wanted.
With Gentoo (it took quite a bit of research though), I got everything working flawlessly. The initial problem is that Gentoo is a build-it-yourself linux. That being the case, I needed to track down that snd-aoa was the kernel module needed to work with the "Toonie" soundcard used in my Powerbook, that bcm43xx only works reliably if you have a special kernel option chosen in the Drivers section (one that Ubuntu 6.06 PPC had opposite at the initial release).
Hopefully Ubuntu has fixed those issues by now, but atleast on PPC, it has not faired well for me and I am not that interested in going out of my way to give it another chance any time soon.
BTW: 24 Hours until WWDC!
Getting back on topic, SuSE had a couple issues at first where I needed to edit my /etc/X11/xorg.conf to tell it to use the "ati" driver, that my resolution was "1680x1050", with a default color depth of 24-bit.
After that, 10.1 worked perfectly, including Wireless networking, bluetooth w/ bluetooth apple mouse (not BTMM as that did not exist yet).
After that, 10.1 worked perfectly, including Wireless networking, bluetooth w/ bluetooth apple mouse (not BTMM as that did not exist yet).
psychofreak said:
The main appeal I see is that it's completely free. If you like to tinker with code and compile your own kernels then that's a great reason to choose Linux.
It's also great performance-wise, if you don't install X11. But most people don't like computers with no GUI.
