Article:  |
Why Install Linux on Your Mac? | |
| Subject: | article does not answer the question | |
| Date: | 2004-12-01 14:26:22 | |
| From: | kwidholm | |
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the question the article asked was not "why run linux," but "why run linux on Mac hardware?" There is not a single statement in this article that would encourage users to run linux specifically on Mac hardware. If anything, the lack of ports and hardware support for Mac hardware vis a vis PC hardware would be a disincentive.
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Showing messages 1 through 7 of 7.
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article does not answer the question
2004-12-01 15:09:26 Giles Turnbull |
[Reply | View]
I'd echo nathanh's response. All the people I spoke to about it said that they simply preferred Apple hardware, and found it to be of better quality. I should have made that clearer in the article, though, so thanks for pointing it out.
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article does not answer the question
2004-12-01 14:48:16 nathanh [Reply | View]
<BLOCKQUOTE>
In short, this is an article about why you might want to run Linux, but it completely omits the question of why you'd want to run Linux on a Mac.
If I wanted to tweak Linux, I'd put it on a $200 PC laptop rather than my iBook.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
I can answer that. Apple hardware is awesome. It looks sexy. It's fully featured. It's a good price. I'm talking about the laptops, of course. PC laptops are ugly plasticky junk. Often with sticky out knobs and levers that snap off. Also the price was a pleasant surprise because I had expected the Apple hardware to cost more. But I compared Sony, Toshiba, IBM and Apple and Apple was significantly cheaper (~15%) for equivalent spec'ed hardware.
If I was to purchase a desktop I would buy an Apple again because my experience with LinuxPPC on this PowerBook has been so positive. The new G5 looks brilliant. I could happily stick that in my lounge without feeling that I had compromised the feng shui. I've yet to find a PC that didn't look like an ugly beige box, or a beige box with fins and flashing lights. Yuk!
Basically I'm willing to spend a little more for quality hardware. $200 PC? Why would I want to save a few $100s to get an inferior product? I would rather have the Apple hardware, thank you.
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article does not answer the question
2004-12-02 13:52:56 metaman [Reply | View]
I know people seem to like apple hardware better, for for the price of my PowerBook G4 (1.5 GHz) I have at work I could have got an x86 laptop with far better performance, and a builtin linux compatible wireless card.
I expected much better performance based on all the "PPC has more bang per gigahertz" hype, but the bogomips rating is less than 1/7 of my 2.66 GHz desktop (which you could get in a x86 laptop).
I run gentoo on my work machine, home machine and powerbook. It takes FOREVER to compile things like mozilla on the powerbook.
Also, xpdf isn't able to handle several of the documents I have to read and Adobe Acrobat isn't available for linux PPC.
Other corporate tools are equally problematic. MeetingMaker doesn't have a PPC linux client and Wine doesn't work on linux PPC so I cannot even run the windows version either.
I also don't see how the powerbook mousepad is easy to use with linux either. The single mouse button is just NOT easier to use in linux.
I love linux and its what I primarily use, but I would never buy non x86 HW again for a laptop if I was using it primarily for linux.
To each their own. -
article does not answer the question
2004-12-03 04:21:58 Maethor [Reply | View]
Other corporate tools are equally problematic. MeetingMaker doesn't have a PPC linux client and Wine doesn't work on linux PPC so I cannot even run the windows version either.
One of the reasons for the existence of QEMU (http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/) is to run x86 Linux and with Wine, Windows, applications on PPC (and various other processors).
