Mclaptop non-usage

[vakkotaur]

When I was getting ready for Midwest FurFest one of the things I did was get out the Apple laptop and run the updates, or at least the ones that worked. The one that never really worked once again failed repeatedly. While doing this I realized it had been a long time since I had had the laptop out. I think the last time I had was for RCFM. I hadn't even powered it up at home just to snag a couple files I'd saved while browsing during the RCFM trip. That was odd. Why hadn't I even done that?

I realized it was not just a matter of putting things off, but that I really do not like that laptop or at least the limitations it imposes on me. The old Compaq Armada is older, bigger, clunkier, has less CPU, but I can make it truly mine. I can set it to do things my way. I can make it conform to me. I do not have to conform to it. If the wireless card for the Compaq could do WPA I'd still be using it. Yet I can use Jay's Mclaptop on trips, or another Mac on some visits and it doesn't bug me all that much. Huh? Oh yeah, those are not my machines and I'm only using them for a short time. I know that the stuff I don't care for is temporary. I can put up with a bit that is temporary, even if it is painfully unsightly. But putting up with the stupid eyesore limitations all the time? No. That drives me nuts. So I minimize my exposure to an artificially limited user interface design. I think that also affects other perceptions of the machine. The Compaq is certainly slower, but the Mclaptop feels slow to me. It's like it's too busy being "kewl" to be properly snappy and useful.

I asked Jay if it was possible to get a good dark-background color scheme on the iPhone. He said it was.. but only for the main or first screen. Bleah. A few days ago I saw a commercial (only saw, I mute commercials with much relief if not glee) for a gadget that was presented much like the iPhone, but it had dark backgrounds and light text in the menus. Had Apple finally allowed real choice? No, it was a Blackberry. Fortunately I have no need or even craving for a so-called smart phone. I hope that by the time I do or that I get stuck with one that the Android based things are well established. I expect those would allow me to set things the way I want them.

I still need to fire up that Mclaptop and get a few files off of it. But you know? It can still wait.

Comments

[sideband.livejournal.com]

You have options.

Install NetBSD or Linux on the Apple laptop... Force it to conform to the way you want it to work, and be done with it.

I suggest the NetBSD for ruggedness/flexibility. If you want to do Linux, I suggest the new KUbuntu. Things seem to Just Work there... once you get all the stuff installed to do the things you want to do.

Oh, and that old compaq armada... KUbuntu would work nicely on that, too, and allow WPA on the wifi card in software.

YMMV

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Since it is not truly my machine (it's Jay's) and I/we have not swapped hard drives, installing my own OS isn't really an option. Also, this is not an intel laptop so options are more limited. Yes, I know NetBSD would run on about anything with enough bits.

Unfortunately that's not the case for two reasons. One is that the Cisco Aironet 350 card does not do WPA, or at least it only had WPA capable drivers for Windows (bleah) and those don't even work with the usual Linux work-arounds. The other is that it seems almost all non-Slackware derived Linux distributions seem not to want to run or install on that machine. I would love to run PCLinuxOS (I use that on my desktop. It does what for me what *buntu only claims to do) or a stripped down version thereof on that laptop, but have had no luck getting such a thing to run.

[sideband.livejournal.com]

The WPA compatibility can be emulated in software... If I can do it on an old 802.11b card, that Aironet card should work, too.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Then either things have changed since I last I checked or I managed to miss a pretty big thing. Both are possible.

Jay has now told me I can go ahead and install something other than OS X on the Mclaptop, but being a PPC machine that limits things a bit. My choices seem to be:

CentOS/Fedora/RedHat/Yellow Dog - Maybe. I have used Fedora.

Debian, Finnix - No. The GNU/ prefix silliness is annoying and I find other Debianism also annoy me. (There's more than one reason I steer clear of *buntu as much as possible)

FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD - No, at least I don't think I'm ready to deal with any of them.

CRUX - Unsure. It sounds like it's trying to reinvent Slackware.

Gentoo - Maybe. Linux with BSD-ish ports might be a Good Thing now that not everything under the sun needs to be compiled.

GeeXboX - Seems too specialized. I'm looking to make a laptop useful, not build a digital home theater.

openSUSE - Maybe. I'm not at all familiar with SUSE.

PLD Linux - Unsure what to make of it.
Source Mage - No. GNU/ prefix silliness again.

Slackintosh - Maybe. Being Slackware derived I expect it'd be lean and snappy, but lacking in proper package management.

ROCK Linux, T2 SDE - Not likely. Distribution build kits so I'd be concerned about spending too much time building things up.

Vine Linux - No. No need for Japanese language.

I think the only one with a LiveCD (or LiveDVD) for a test drive is GeeXboX which doesn't do me much if any good. Yes, others have LiveVersions but only for x86. It couldn't be simple. If there was a PCLinuxOS that ran on PPC the decision would be trivial.

Now I get to choose: Redhat-ish, Slack-ish, or some sort of kit?

And then it'd be either be KDE 3.5 (if the hardware is up to it) or XFCE or maybe something even lighter. KDE 4 and GNOME are of no interest.

[sideband.livejournal.com]

http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=133 <-- Apple PPC on Ubuntu. Of course, they've officially discontinued PPC support.

http://www.netbsd.org/ports/macppc/ <-- Would be my choice.. A little setup involved, but once it's set up, it'll be rock solid...

XFCE is sexy... I've used it. KDE4 is also quite sexy... Personal choice, I guess...

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I don't care for Debian and its derivatives, so *buntu is out. I'm not sure I'm up to NetBSD.

I've used XFCE and it's light for what all it does, but is a Desktop Environment and so is of course more heavy than a mere Window Manager, such as the nicely light icewm. I like or at least am familiar with KDE 3.5. From what I've seen around, while KDE 4 might finally be out of unannounced alpha, it's taken on the bad GNOME-ish habit of deciding it knows better than the user what should happen. That's exactly the nonsense I'm trying to get away from.

[sideband.livejournal.com]

NetBSD also has a Live!CD... though I'm not sure whether MacPPC is implemented on it...

[yakko.livejournal.com]

Things that burn me up about MacOS X:

- Time Machine: Sometimes backups "fail" with no details at all. You must trudge through the syslog to find out if the failure is worth looking into.
- Color scheme: I have the same problem with lack of choice as you do.
- Performance: Don't let MacOS X hit the swap file. You'll get beachballs galore if you do. Sometimes, it can't be avoided. And I have 2GB RAM!
- X11: had to fix it when upgrading to Leopard, then another update gave me keymap issues. I sometimes have to run xmodmap manually to get my keyboard to work properly.

Everything else seems to be fine.

At least when I eventually retire MacOS X from this laptop, it will take pretty much any Linux I care to use, without jumping through hoops.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

It's not just the color scheme, though that is certainly a big one. It's also the "if you close the last tab, we're taking the graphics away" thing that bugs me. I close that last tab just to get to nice blank starting point, not to bail out. Oh and the close mark that doesn't close the program, just the graphic part. To really close you HAVE to wade through the top-bar menu.

The laptop is an 867 MHz G4 PPC (As opposed to the 266 MHz Pentium II Compaq Armada). Given that CPU, any recommendations for distributions? That is, would it be reasonably snappy with Fedora/CentOS/Yellow Dog or should I look more at Slackintosh or Gentoo or such? I do expect that I'll have to deal with KDE for a while even if I find it sluggish, and then go to somethinge else if I can or feel a need to.

[yakko.livejournal.com]

Oh and the close mark that doesn't close the program, just the graphic part. To really close you HAVE to wade through the top-bar menu.

Oh yes. Another annoyance of mine. Everywhere else, if you close the last window, the program quits. Except here. Annoying!

any recommendations for distributions?

It's safe to assume you've got a decent amount of RAM (i.e., at least 1GB), so any distribution that reasonably supports the PPC architecture and the hardware for the laptop should work without issue. Given that you don't like Ubuntu, I'd suggest gentoo and XFCE as the desktop environment. When I was running a desktop on my PPC Mac mini (under xubuntu), XFCE made all the difference between a snappy system and a sluggish one. (and that machine has 1.42GHz G4 with 1GB RAM.)

[jmaynard.livejournal.com]

640 MB RAM, the most that that machine can hold.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Hrm. 867 MHz and 640 MB. I think that means I probably shouldn't consider the RedHat or Debian based items at all and that KDE is best avoided.

That pretty much leaves: *bsd, Slackintosh, and Gentoo, at least for major-ish distributions and this doesn't seem like the place to be fiddling with any minor ones.

Slack would be the most familiar to me, but Gentoo might be a bit lighter still and still have some Linux familiarity.

Once again I have three choices in regards to a laptop, and none of them look truly ideal to me. Guess I should start seeing what it takes to crank up Gentoo.