Linux user's thoughts on OS X/iBook
Yeechang Lee
my youngest brother choose to buy a new iBook G4 800MHz 12" as he is
applying to law school. My background: 100% Linux user at home for
eight years this month. Numerous years' experience with PCs of all
types, plus lots of Mac experience back in the System 7.5.x days in a
part-time job all through college. His background: Typical MS
Word-and-Web-browser-on-PC stuff, though he did have an account on my
Linux box for the usual word processor-and-browser uses during high
school.
I would never, ever have advised him to buy a Mac before OS X. My
experience from working for my college's IT group was that Apples'
hardware is always nice (and expensive), but that Mac OS 7.5.x was
just as unreliable as Windows 95/98, and with the latter users had a
(slightly) better shot at killing an errant application without
destabilizing the entire system. Obviously, OS X's Unix heritage
completely changes the equation here, and in fact I've been
semi-seriously eyeing a Powerbook 12" or 15" myself, probably to run
Gentoo Linux and Mac-On-Linux for OS X apps.
My brother needed a relatively inexpensive, rugged machine; he did not
need a 1400x1200 widescreen screen (not that such things are available
on Macs) or a DVD burner. An iBook G4 12" fit the bill nicely; he got
a $100 discount as a student at the campus bookstore.
POSITIVES:
* Well designed hardware. Nice screen. Over three hours of battery
life while using 802.11g is still impressive.
* AirPort extreme card was easy to install (except snapping back that
darn metal wire bracket); it's nice not having to deal with an
external stub or antenna.
* Command line! Not that he cared, but *I* certainly relished having a
real bash shell, seeing postfix listed under top, and running emacs
21 and OpenSSH.
* Nice DVD player software.
* He wanted to set up an unprivileged account for his roommates, and
was impressed by how simple it was to create one with a simple
Finder and a fixed list of permitted applications.
* Unexpected bonus: Although it should've been obvious in retrospect,
neither he (an iPod owner) nor I thought of iTunes as an
advantage. He's been happily ripping CDs and adding tunes to iTunes'
library.
NEGATIVES:
* Speakers are pretty tinny, as we discovered while watching DVDs;
admittedly we didn't buy the machine for its sound, but there are
other laptops with better sound out there.
* Show stopper: After three days the system started behaving
peculiarly, with each of the following occurring randomly:
Applications crashing randomly, the black warning box advising
Restart popping up, and logins going straight to a black full screen
Darwin console. Hardware Test revealed error messages from both the
built-in and stock expansion 128MB DIMMs. I advised him to take it
to the campus bookstore's repair shop, which is Apple authorized;
hopefully he can get it back soon. (I gave my brother some
perspective: Over the past 20 years, *every single one* of my
computers (Commodore VIC-20 and C64, Tandy 1000 SL, a 386SX clone, a
Micron Pentium 133 MHz, and my own Pogo Linux Athlon 1400MHz),
except one, has suffered serious faults that has disabled the
machine for extended periods of time. So the iBook is following in a
grand tradition of sorts.)
--
Read my Deep Thoughts @ <URL:http://www.ylee.org/blog/> PERTH ----> *
01:15:02 up 12 days, 1:37, 21 users, load average: 8.18, 5.46, 4.02
195 processes: 188 sleeping, 6 running, 1 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 37.3% user 7.8% system 54.7% nice 0.0% iowait 0.0% idle
--==DJE==--
Yeechang Lee wrote:
> Over the Christmas holidays, while visiting family, I recently helped
> my youngest brother choose to buy a new iBook G4 800MHz 12" as he is
> applying to law school. My background: 100% Linux user at home for
> eight years this month. Numerous years' experience with PCs of all
> types, plus lots of Mac experience back in the System 7.5.x days in a
{ Deleted for brevity }
> destabilizing the entire system. Obviously, OS X's Unix heritage
> completely changes the equation here, and in fact I've been
> semi-seriously eyeing a Powerbook 12" or 15" myself, probably to run
> Gentoo Linux and Mac-On-Linux for OS X apps.
{ SNIP }
> NEGATIVES:
> * Speakers are pretty tinny, as we discovered while watching DVDs;
> admittedly we didn't buy the machine for its sound, but there are
> other laptops with better sound out there.
Bah - It's a laptop. Hook up some real speakers for watching movies at
home.
> * Show stopper: After three days the system started behaving
> peculiarly, with each of the following occurring randomly:
> Applications crashing randomly, the black warning box advising
> Restart popping up, and logins going straight to a black full screen
> Darwin console. Hardware Test revealed error messages from both the
> built-in and stock expansion 128MB DIMMs. I advised him to take it
> to the campus bookstore's repair shop, which is Apple authorized;
> hopefully he can get it back soon. (I gave my brother some
> perspective: Over the past 20 years, *every single one* of my
> computers (Commodore VIC-20 and C64, Tandy 1000 SL, a 386SX clone, a
> Micron Pentium 133 MHz, and my own Pogo Linux Athlon 1400MHz),
> except one, has suffered serious faults that has disabled the
> machine for extended periods of time. So the iBook is following in a
> grand tradition of sorts.)
Definately sounds like flakey RAM. I haven't really had too much
trouble with RAM except for the last 6 months or so. I have noticed
that the quality has gone down a bit.
I too am a Linux (ab)User. I have been messing with Linux since the
days of Slackware in 1994/95. I have tried all the distros on my PCs
and other platforms (Alpha, HP), and have been getting paid to deploy
core banking software in a linux environment for over 8 years now.
Anyways, I have ran Yellowdog Linux, MKLinux and Gentoo on all my PPC
systems. I eventually gravitate back to my OS X 10.3. Why? Linux
doesn't have all the available applications that X does. Plus I can
compile and use basic Linux applications in my OS X. I have Slackware
installed on several PCs here at home, but since upgrading to the latest
OS X, I haven't touched linux in some time. I copied all my shell
scripts and utils over and re-compiled. Pretty slick. I can kill the
GUI in Panther with one command and just get the login now. If I ever
get the urge to mess with Linux again, I will simply turn on my other
PCs or ssh into them from my Mac.
I am a OS X convert now. Having retired my Athlon 2600 system to file
storage. Heck, I just bought my G4/933 to edit family videos from my DV
camera. Since OS X (Panther) came out I can't put it down! It just
works (tm). :)
Now if I just had a deceint Unreal Tournament game.... And not a kludge
for my Mac! :)
Just my .02
-DjE