Re: Curious about PPC
On Mon, May 20, 2002 at 07:54:05AM +0000, debianppc@mailcan.com wrote:
>
> I'm interested in a Titanium Powerbook, but I also may purchase a new
> iMac. How well does Debian run on these? What differences will I
> notice from the x86 version that I'm familiar with? Will I miss
> anything or just be blown away?
Personally, I love it. And since almost no proprietary software is
available for Linux on PPC (Opera is the only one that springs to
mind), it's a good chance to work on a really "clean" system. I run
vrms. :-)
One thing that's really excellent compared to x86, OS-wise, is power
management. Going to sleep or waking up is a matter of seconds. And
not a lot of those, either. Plus, you're not encumbered with outdated
ports like parallel or RS232 that take up space without being very
useful. USB works, FireWire works (I've got an external hard disk for
backups, for instance), and that's the most important thing. If you
ask me, Apple is currently the only one doing interesting PC hardware.
Newer PowerBooks may not have quite the hardware support under Debian
that I have, though. It's got the Mac equivalent of a winmodem, but
it's also got some extra goodies like the builtin DVD-CDRW drive and
the gigabit ethernet that I don't have--and so can't tell you about.
My own main gripe at the moment is that I don' tknow how to set up
printing with my Epson Stylus C40UX. But I don't think that would have
been any better on x86. Plus, I haven't figured out how to play DVDs,
although apparently some have. For me it's just not that urgent.
> Forgive me for asking this on this list, but what about Yellow Dog
> Linux? They have ported apt, but I don't really like rpms and Red Hat,
> which YDL is based on. Still, their distro looks impressive.
In my experience setting up Debian was a royal pain, but it paid off
handsomely. It really wows people when I bring it to the office. ;)
Jeroen
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