[runejoha]

Hi,
With all the dissapointments with Tiger and the performance loss etc. I was wondering to ditch OS X and install Linux on my PB. I have talked to some other Linux geeks that are very pleased with Debian on the PB, or even Yellow dog or Gento. I know, I will miss some apps, but with Open office and all my development kits (I use Linux most of the time anyway) it should work, and Tiger proves that OS X is going the wrong direction, (Widges???)

What do you think, do you have any experience with Linux on PBs? I guess you get a performance gain which make the PB feel fast and not "in water".

Another option is to run OS X without Agua and run OS X with X11 and KDE, Gnome, etc. Anyone have tried this?

[piracy]

If you want Linux on your PowerBook, go for it. I'd say you're asking in the wrong forum.

With Mac OS X's massive growth, you're completely wrong about Tiger, of course. (And how do widgets "prove" OS X is going in the wrong direction? You don't have to use them. And if you say anything about security, you "prove" your own stupidity.)

Linux, for those who are inclined to deal with it, certainly has benefits. Mac OS X is a continuously evolving product. Every release is not perfect, and major releases present major challenges for an OS that is commercially supported by a major vendor. Linux has no such obligation (and it shows). However, Tiger is widely hailed by mainstream reviewers and critics as the best Mac OS X release yet, and the Apple's unit sales, revenues, and profits are the highest ever (even discounting all iPod and music business sales), so I'd say your analysis of Tiger is nothing but personal opinion, and an incorrect one at that. If you're the type of person who wants to use Linux as your primary OS, nothing is stopping you.

But - and yes, this feels a lot like being baited to respond to a troll - many people feel Tiger is much, much better than any previous release, and can overlook any temporary shortcomings they might personally encounter in their day-to-day use to see an all-around better product.

[Thinine]

Yes, what the hell are you talking about runejoha?

It's possible, but you won't have support for your wireless card.

[gururafiki]

Piracy said it perfectly. If you want info on Linux & Powerbooks, try searching Google. Most people here think Tiger is grrrrreat!

[CatOne]

I installed Yellow Dog on an iBook as a test. The damn display was shifted over like 50 pixels and wrapped around the right edge of the screen. How the hell can I trust the distro if it can't even get the video right?

The wonderful thing about Linux, too, is that it's not trivial to fix something like that. I tried Xconfigurator but it wouldn't work. I gave up and put Jaguar back -- that was a couple years back and no reason to try THAT again ;-)

[aristotles]

What problems did you have with Tiger? If you go with Linux, you can kiss wireless and sleep mode good bye as well as all of the software that comes with OS X.

Did you do a clean install of Tiger or was it an upgrade?

I performed a backup to an external drive and clean install. I have not had any major issues.

I also have been satisfied with the performance of Tiger overall. I had issues with the older version of the TVTracker widget but after that, it was smooth sailing on a "slow" 867Mhz pbook with 640MB ram.

How much ram do you have btw?

About widgets, they might not be for everyone but nobody is forcing you to use them.

[tgags]

My friend used Linux and he is always complaining about drivers this and drivers that. Let's face it, you are not going to get the main stream compatibilty (software and hardware) that the Mac offers. Pretty darn good for a Unix-based derrived system.


And about widgets....

In 1989, Guinness launched the Draught in a Can product in the UK (it's now available internationally). Up until this point, beer that came out of a can was unavoidably different (read: not as good) as the same brand of beer coming out of a tap in a pub. Since Guinness drinkers are among the most discerning and passionate about their brew in the world, but they can't always find an Irish pub close at hand, something had to be done. So Guinness's engineers invented a unique yet simple system to deliver that good fresh pub taste to your palate at home.
The revolutionary method of delivery of Draught-at-home is a deceptively plain looking plastic orb that has come to be called the Widget. It looks like this: (picture coming soon)
At the canning plant, each Widget is filled with nitrogen or a nitrogen/carbon dioxide mixture, the same gas that helps Guinness out of the tap at your neighborhood watering hole. The pressurized Widget, with two tiny pinholes, is sealed into the can with the stout, and when the can is opened, the pressure change forces the gas out, helping create a pint with a rich, creamy head, just like at the pub (as long as you pour it right)!

Cheers,
TG

[blackbird_1.0]

Originally Posted by Thinine

Yes, what the hell are you talking about runejoha?

It's possible, but you won't have support for your wireless card.

I know Yellow Dog Linux does support the original wireless Airport.

[yukon]

OS X is getting bigger, it even comes on a DVD now. It's also gaining in complexity, with things like dashboard, yes. But it's also gotten faster the last few revisions, and for systems with a minumum hardware requirement it's gotten faster (Quartz Extreme, 2D, etc). What you're finding is that your machine is slow. Not a problem, so is mine. For me, OS X is tolerable, and after a video upgrade the UI speed isn't bothering me anymore. I can last a lot longer on OS X without a CPU upgrade. If you want to go with Linux, I suggest my eventual plan, to go to Gentoo and compile everything with maximum crazy optimizations, and get the last bit of life out of the machine. Do test linux first though, there are bootable CDs (kubuntu, knoppix, etc), and you may find it difficult to move from OS X.

[m a d r a]

Originally Posted by tgags

And about widgets....

In 1989, Guinness launched the Draught in a Can product in the UK (it's now available internationally). Up until this point, beer that came out of a can was unavoidably different (read: not as good) as the same brand of beer coming out of a tap in a pub. Since Guinness drinkers are among the most discerning and passionate about their brew in the world, but they can't always find an Irish pub close at hand, something had to be done. So Guinness's engineers invented a unique yet simple system to deliver that good fresh pub taste to your palate at home.
The revolutionary method of delivery of Draught-at-home is a deceptively plain looking plastic orb that has come to be called the Widget. It looks like this: (picture coming soon)
At the canning plant, each Widget is filled with nitrogen or a nitrogen/carbon dioxide mixture, the same gas that helps Guinness out of the tap at your neighborhood watering hole. The pressurized Widget, with two tiny pinholes, is sealed into the can with the stout, and when the can is opened, the pressure change forces the gas out, helping create a pint with a rich, creamy head, just like at the pub (as long as you pour it right)!

Cheers,
TG

guinness draught in a can is feckin' awful. it tastes nothing like a proper pint of guinness! - and that's coming from a proper paddy!

[runejoha]

Originally Posted by piracy

If you want Linux on your PowerBook, go for it. I'd say you're asking in the wrong forum.

With Mac OS X's massive growth, you're completely wrong about Tiger, of course. (And how do widgets "prove" OS X is going in the wrong direction? You don't have to use them. And if you say anything about security, you "prove" your own stupidity.)

Linux, for those who are inclined to deal with it, certainly has benefits. Mac OS X is a continuously evolving product. Every release is not perfect, and major releases present major challenges for an OS that is commercially supported by a major vendor. Linux has no such obligation (and it shows). However, Tiger is widely hailed by mainstream reviewers and critics as the best Mac OS X release yet, and the Apple's unit sales, revenues, and profits are the highest ever (even discounting all iPod and music business sales), so I'd say your analysis of Tiger is nothing but personal opinion, and an incorrect one at that. If you're the type of person who wants to use Linux as your primary OS, nothing is stopping you.

But - and yes, this feels a lot like being baited to respond to a troll - many people feel Tiger is much, much better than any previous release, and can overlook any temporary shortcomings they might personally encounter in their day-to-day use to see an all-around better product.

First, this was not an attempt to troll the forum. OS X's formula for success is indeed the BSD and the open source community, where the security and stability comes from the latter and the good user interface comes from the former. Because of these reasons I believed that BSD/Linux/OS X where pretty close to eachother, and this question was not asked in the wrong forum.

I also learned by asking this question that Yellow Dog supports wireless cards, which is helpfull.

Maybe OS X Tiger is ment for end users that are less technical oriented, because their focus on widges are not very impressive. Neverthelss, the OS works pretty good for Unix work, even tough Linux is stikk a better tool for this kind of work. OS X Tiger aslo have some technical features which indeed are interesting, their microkernel, kernel lock and Access control Lists.

My motivtion for asking this question on this forum is because I suspected that some of you had some experience with Linux and PBs, and that this was not taken as an offence. I do mislike and like thing with all kinds of OSes, and for commercial usage I do repect OS X as the leader.

For instance, that Fink does not fully support Linux apps like Dia is very anoing for Linux geeks :-)

Anyway, are there anyone here that have experiences with removing Aqua and replace this with KDE? Or even better, running OS X trough Linux when neccessary?

[runejoha]

Originally Posted by yukon

OS X is getting bigger, it even comes on a DVD now. It's also gaining in complexity, with things like dashboard, yes. But it's also gotten faster the last few revisions, and for systems with a minumum hardware requirement it's gotten faster (Quartz Extreme, 2D, etc). What you're finding is that your machine is slow. Not a problem, so is mine. For me, OS X is tolerable, and after a video upgrade the UI speed isn't bothering me anymore. I can last a lot longer on OS X without a CPU upgrade. If you want to go with Linux, I suggest my eventual plan, to go to Gentoo and compile everything with maximum crazy optimizations, and get the last bit of life out of the machine. Do test linux first though, there are bootable CDs (kubuntu, knoppix, etc), and you may find it difficult to move from OS X.

I do have a one year old PB 15'' with 1 GB of ram. Nevertheless, the PB performs a lot better with Linux of what I heard from other geeks. I have past experiences with both Gento, Redhat and Debian on laptops, but I am unsure how good PBs are for the same setup. For instance, several apps are optimized for the x86 architecture, even tough they compile on PPCs.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by runejoha

OS X's formula for success is indeed the BSD and the open source community, where the security and stability comes from the latter and the good user interface comes from the former.

Huh? OS X's GUI has nothing to do with BSD.

Originally Posted by runejoha

Because of these reasons I believed that BSD/Linux/OS X where pretty close to eachother, and this question was not asked in the wrong forum.

They're not that close. OS X is fairly close to FreeBSD, which is not particularly close to Linux — although certainly closer than it is to, say, Windows). BSD is a flavor of Unix, and Linux is a Unix-like OS, but there are enough differences that they're hardly interchangeable.

Originally Posted by runejoha

Anyway, are there anyone here that have experiences with removing Aqua and replace this with KDE? Or even better, running OS X trough Linux when neccessary?

Switching out Aqua for KDE cannot be done. They are not equivalent or compatible. KDE is an X11 GUI, whereas Aqua is a component of the OS X window server. There are programs (such as MaconLinux) that will let you run OS X through Linux, though.

But again, your complaints are pretty goofy. You assume we all know what you're talking about when you say "the performance loss" in Tiger — we don't. Tiger is at least as speedy and much speedier for most of us than previous versions.

[runejoha]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Huh? OS X's GUI has nothing to do with BSD.


They're not that close. OS X is fairly close to FreeBSD, which is not particularly close to Linux — although certainly closer than it is to, say, Windows). BSD is a flavor of Unix, and Linux is a Unix-like OS, but there are enough differences that they're hardly interchangeable.


Switching out Aqua for KDE cannot be done. They are not equivalent or compatible. KDE is an X11 GUI, whereas Aqua is a component of the OS X window server. There are programs (such as MaconLinux) that will let you run OS X through Linux, though.

But again, your complaints are pretty goofy. You assume we all know what you're talking about when you say "the performance loss" in Tiger — we don't. Tiger is at least as speedy and much speedier for most of us than previous versions.

>>OS X's GUI has nothing to do with BSD.

I did not state that either. I wrote that the underlying architecture of OS X is based upon BSD.

>> OS X is fairly close to FreeBSD, which is not particularly close to Linux

Well, that depends heavily on what we focus on. BSD and Linux have some differences, but they are indeed similar in several ways. If we talk about applications, common graphical user interfaces etc. Most linux apps work perfectly on FreeBSD without any porting. I believe we need to specify what we mean about close or not close, but my point is that OS X is very influenced by the open source community, and that supporting BSD or Linux is a good ting to do in the Mac world.

>>BSD is a flavor of Unix

This is the same as claming that the basement of the empire state building is not important because it is not visible for turists. It is indeed very important for the structure.

>>Switching out Aqua for KDE cannot be done

This is strange. I have talked to people that claims that they have done this. Of course, you cannot execute programs that requires Aqua, but you can execute programs that use X11. My question was if anyone have experiences running GNOME or KDE on the Darwin Kernel.

>>There are programs (such as MaconLinux) that will let you run OS X through Linux, though.

... Which is another subject.

>>You assume we all know what you're talking about when you say "the performance loss" in Tiger

There are several people on this forum that claims that exposé and other features are running slower on OS X Tiger. From my point of view OS X is ineed a good OS, but it is pretty slow compare to Windows and Linux. More stable, secure and better user interface YES, but slower. From this point of view I asked if anyone had more experiences with Linux on PBs or Mac in general.

The technical point of view is not that imporant to discuss, I have been working enough with BSD, Linux and OS X enough to have a more or less ok overview. Nevertheless, some user experiences with PPC and Linux would have been beneficial.

BTW - What about Open BSD for PB??

[yukon]

I've found that new versions of OS X are faster for many things, but some things become slower, that RAM/swap usage has increased.....and before anyone says it, I _could_ spend 120$ (CAD) on a 512 of PC100, or I could buy 1gb of DDR400 for 115$, check the sig for my current RAM.

Theoretically you can switch out Aqua for KDE. What ChuckIt means (if I can say) is that you can't use OS X GUI programs without Aqua....you'd be running KDE on X11 on Darwin, which AFAIK is fine.

I figure I'd lose a lot of Apple optimizations if I went to Linux, but that OS X will leave me behind faster than I thought with x86 processors....so, I can wait until GCC has more Altivec-enhancing goodness, Linux has evolved more, and then I can compile with crazy optimizations and not be left behind in at least one system. MacOnLinux will help me move to linux, and maybe I could use something like qemu with WINE (if that ever works) to get things like mplayer binary codecs going.

[runejoha]

>>Switching out Aqua for KDE cannot be done.

Running KDE with Fink:
http://fink.sourceforge.net/news/kde.php

Running KDE portet to qt/Mac

http://kde.opendarwin.org/

It seems that most people are stuck with Aqua and are running KDE togheter with Aqua, not replacing Aqua, but still able to runn fullscreen KDE and switch with a hotkey.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by runejoha

>>OS X's GUI has nothing to do with BSD.

I did not state that either. I wrote that the underlying architecture of OS X is based upon BSD.

You wrote: "OS X's formula for success is indeed the BSD (the former) and the open source community (the latter), where the security and stability comes from the latter and the good user interface comes from the former."

BSD is not directly related to the user interface. That's what I was clarifying, because you seemed confused about it.

Originally Posted by runejoha

>>BSD is a flavor of Unix

This is the same as claming that the basement of the empire state building is not important because it is not visible for turists. It is indeed very important for the structure.

What are you talking about? I said that, while BSD is a flavor of Unix and Linux is meant to be like Unix, BSD and Linux very different underneath.

Originally Posted by runejoha

>>Switching out Aqua for KDE cannot be done

This is strange. I have talked to people that claims that they have done this. Of course, you cannot execute programs that requires Aqua, but you can execute programs that use X11. My question was if anyone have experiences running GNOME or KDE on the Darwin Kernel.

You can run X11 on Darwin (and in fact Tiger includes an X11 server), sure, but you can't "replace" Aqua any more than you can replace a Corvette with a yacht. X11 cannot run the same programs Aqua can. That sounded like what you were asking.

Originally Posted by runejoha

>>You assume we all know what you're talking about when you say "the performance loss" in Tiger

There are several people on this forum that claims that exposé and other features are running slower on OS X Tiger. From my point of view OS X is ineed a good OS, but it is pretty slow compare to Windows and Linux. More stable, secure and better user interface YES, but slower. From this point of view I asked if anyone had more experiences with Linux on PBs or Mac in general.

Yes, there are a few people say their systems are running slower. The rest of us are generally agreed that they are doing something wrong, because our systems are running a lot faster for the most part. The Expose slowdown and a couple of other graphical slowdowns are legitimate, but the problems have already been solved.

[- - e r i k - -]

No Exposé slowdown here with 10.4.2. Frankly, basing your opinion on Tiger performance based on hearsay on a support-forum (bound to attract complainers) is pretty inane. Tiger has a slight performance increase over Panther which had a slight performance increase over Jaguar. Having an increase in performance from update to update is almost unheard of in the OS-world! Sure, Tiger is not perfect, no OS is! But it sure beats the config-hell and inconsistensies of the Linux-world (which again sort of beats Windows own particular brand of computing hell).

[outsourced]

Expose slower? How can a feature that just re-positions windows be slower? That's not really any kind of performance benchmark is it? If Tiger caused my system to startup in 3 minutes instead of 30 seconds; or if Tiger made me wait while it slowly accessed a nested folder with 500 files, and then took 53 seconds to "paint" them all, then SURE this would suck. But I don't spend all day using Expose every second just like I don't pull down a menu and scroll my mouse pointer up and down just to see if Tiger can keep up.

For me, Tiger is faster than Panther. And I just performed an Upgrade Installation. I thought: WTF. I just backed up my system and upgraded. If it failed, I would have clean installed. But it didn't. Why did I just decide to Upgrade? Because I trust Apple's software. (Besides, I didn't want to spend a week reinstalling applications and such.)

[IamBob]

I guess you get a performance gain which make the PB feel fast and not "in water".

No need to guess, it goes both ways.

Maybe OS X Tiger is ment for end users that are less technical oriented, because their focus on widges are not very impressive

I couldn't find a use for Dashboard either so I removed it from my Dock. Surely someone with your technical prowess could manage that as well.

[Millennium]

If you're going to use a Linux distro on your PB, consider Ubuntu. I've been quite pleased with it thus far. It supported all of my hardware out of the box (save one minor tweak to get GL-accelerated X11 running), and I've found replacements for most of my software, though not all of it yet. Not that I've completely made the switch -though I plan to have done so by the time Apple has switched to Intel- but the first steps have been quite promising.

[runejoha]

Originally Posted by Chuckit

You wrote: "OS X's formula for success is indeed the BSD (the former) and the open source community (the latter), where the security and stability comes from the latter and the good user interface comes from the former."

BSD is not directly related to the user interface. That's what I was clarifying, because you seemed confused about it.


What are you talking about? I said that, while BSD is a flavor of Unix and Linux is meant to be like Unix, BSD and Linux very different underneath.


You can run X11 on Darwin (and in fact Tiger includes an X11 server), sure, but you can't "replace" Aqua any more than you can replace a Corvette with a yacht. X11 cannot run the same programs Aqua can. That sounded like what you were asking.


Yes, there are a few people say their systems are running slower. The rest of us are generally agreed that they are doing something wrong, because our systems are running a lot faster for the most part. The Expose slowdown and a couple of other graphical slowdowns are legitimate, but the problems have already been solved.

>>BSD is not directly related to the user interface. That's what I was clarifying, because you seemed confused about it.

The former was references to OS X, and I doubt that I seem confused about what BSD is or what it isn't :-)

>>X11 cannot run the same programs Aqua can. That sounded like what you were asking.

No, I was discussing whetever KDE could run on OS X.

[nonhuman]

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere where someone was able to get OS X to use X11 as the default for their account. I'll see if I can find the link. [Edit: Here's that link. Looks like it's not quite what I remembered, but it'll get you close to what you want.]

That said, I really find OS X to be significantly better than Linux. I like Linux a lot, and use it all the time. It was even my primary OS for a couple of months after college when I was back at my dad's house temporarily and didn't think it worth the trouble to unpack my G5. I can use Linux as competantly as I can use a Mac (I've been a sysadmin for both, and Windows as well), but even when I had Linux set up the way I wanted to use it it still didn't hold a candle to OS X. The user experience just isn't as nice (but at least it doesn't make me want to put my foot through the screen like Windows does), the applications aren't as clean or as well integrated, and the design philosophy just isn't. And don't get me started on compile time options...

Linux is a great OS, and it's perfect for someone who wants to save money and likes to tinker. But it's just not in the same class as the Mac OS.

[runejoha]

Originally Posted by Millennium

If you're going to use a Linux distro on your PB, consider Ubuntu. I've been quite pleased with it thus far. It supported all of my hardware out of the box (save one minor tweak to get GL-accelerated X11 running), and I've found replacements for most of my software, though not all of it yet. Not that I've completely made the switch -though I plan to have done so by the time Apple has switched to Intel- but the first steps have been quite promising.

Thank you!

[nonhuman]

Yeah, I'll second the recommendation for Ubuntu. I haven't actually tried it yet (I'm a Gentoo guy myself), but I've heard a lot of good things and keep meaning to pop it on my Thinkpad.

Let us know how it goes if you choose to install it.

[yukon]

*This Paragraph is Opinion with Attempted Justification*-Linux isn't as good as OS X, period. I can do this with a short equasion. OS X = UNIX + OSS + Mac Elegance + OS X Software + Virtual PC. But that doesn't mean that Linux isn't better in certain areas, areas that'll make me switch once the low parts get fixed (clip. board.). OS X is the best tool for my job, but in time it won't be on my G4, and the flexibility that OSS offers will be better for my G4.

I liked Ubuntu, it's pretty polished and well done. I don't much like the Debian way of doing things on my desktop, I want that new package and I want it now, using backports in ubuntu can outright break things in known ways. I haven't used ubuntu on the Mac though, and I haven't used it for long at all, I'm probably just biased towards Fedora. I've actually never tried Gentoo, I'm getting a copy for x86 to test on an old machine, the compiling stage will be hell but I'll get a speedup and maybe learn a bit more than LFS gave me ever so long ago.

Keep us updated Millenium. There isn't a Linux forum anymore, but this thread is fine. If you get around any problems (like that OpenGL thing) post the fixes if you can. I'm getting the feeling that the OS X life on PPC Macs is slowing down a little already.