Re: Powerbook G4 17"
Hi Thomas,
I have a Powerbook G4 (867 MHz/15")
I'm actually a i386 user as you are, and I was forced to learn Linux
newly on a powerpc environment. I had to learn because some months ago
I bought a Powerbook (867 MHz/ 15"). I admit I bought it because this
machine is looking better than all the others I know .... :)
Short version:
I'm glad I installed Debian on this machine. If I had to make the
decision again I'd definitely do this install again ...
So I have now successfully running Debian Linux and Mac OS X (10.2.8,
IIRC) on this machine (more on the caveats later)
Detailed version:
After getting the machine I was playing for 3 or 4 months with Mac OS
X (10.2.*) only and in the end was a bit fed up by various issues on
that OS: IIRC I never got the XFree virtual desktop working on it (I
think it was because fink had problems downloading the XFree stuff; or
I made a mistake when trying that: Not being sure on that ...);
I had problems getting bash working as smoothly as I wanted it: at
this time tcsh was the default shell on OS X, which I neither wanted,
nor did I like it at all. But IIRC Panther has bash now as the default
shell ...
I *never* found out the keys on OS X to scroll down to the end of a
page in bash with one single key stroke: I had to do this
consecutively, page after page; which can be quite frustrating if one
does that in 'man bash' for example ... :)
Mac OS X Unix seems to be organized in 2 ways: via netinfo and the
(more or less) default Unix routine as I knew it from Linux. Which, as
it seems to me, made it difficult for me to set up sendmail. In the
end I got sendmail working, but only occasional with errors.
<http://www.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/darwin/src/modules/sendmail/>
My feel was Apple doesn't know what they want: Do they want a Unix
system (which OS X actually is), or something else.
After about 3 or 4 months I was simply fed up with all the problems
this system made from time to time, and I installed Linux, which
so far probably was my best decision ever regarding the Titanium:
I had to learn newly the installation routines on Debian (apt-get,
etc.), which are different from the rpm routines I knew from RedHat
Linux: In the beginning the Debian way was a bit hard: it has several
tools for package management, whereas RedHat has simply one, namely
RPM. So new on Debian, I didn't even know which were the tools for
package management. As I said: I had to learn again, which took me
quite some time. But in the end it was (and still is) worth the extra
time. When I had problems, or didn't understand, I came here to the
list and, most of the time, got help. Which was very important for me.
I'll stop it here, as I could go on for pages .... :) Just this: If
you install OS X together with Linux on a Powerbook it'd probably a
good idea to reckon with problems after OS X upgrades: there were
numerous cases on this list over the last weeks where dual boot
machines (Debian/OS X) didn't boot to Linux again after an OS X
upgrade. You might want to read the archives on it:
<http://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2003/debian-powerpc-200310/threads.html>
Pages to help installing and configuring Debian on Powerbooks, some of
them might be outdated, some of them not necessarily for Powerbooks.
I wouldn't follow everything I find on them:
For example you probably still find pages saying that Powerbooks have
no power management to put the machine into sleep mode; which is not
true any more, at least not for the machine I have (running with a
2.4.22-ben2 kernel). This page helped me on that:
http://spacepants.org/hw/tibook/
Other pages:
<http://linux-on-laptops.com/apple.html>
<http://cattlegrid.net/~christophe/titanium/>
<http://users.linpro.no/janl/tibook.html>
<http://www.mathematik.uni-marburg.de/~schmidtm/apple/powerbook.en.php>
<http://www.themoes.org/linux/ydl/>
<http://homepage.mac.com/pauljlucas/personal/powerbook/>
<http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/>
<http://www.hispalinux.es/~data/ibook/>
<http://www.intevation.de/~bernhard/ppc/titanium_installation/base_system.html>
<http://www.thecodefactory.org/neillm/debianppc.php3>
<http://www.morlug.org/radeon>
<http://www.rietman.biz/~wijnand/linux/mac/index.html?main>
<http://www.staikos.net/~staikos/tibook/>
<http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/support/solutions/ydl_general/pmud.shtml>
<http://www.flamingspork.com/linux/ibook/>
<http://www.geocities.com/haihui_huang/iBook/iBook2-600-install.html>
In German:
<http://www.pl-berichte.de/t_system/ibook-debian/part1.html>
The following one was *very* important for me to get the partioning
for the hard disk done:
<http://people.debian.org/~branden/ibook/>
And I took the lazy install road to Debian: I simply burned myself the
first 2 Powerpc Debian Install CD'S (actually one probably only needs
the first one on a machine with Internet access) and held down the c
key when booting the powerbook with the Debian install CD. :)
But I don't know whether this still works for your machine.
Hint: If you want a 2.4 kernel for the install: If I recall correctly
the necessary option to choose for this is:
install24
Hoping it helps.
Best Regards,
Wolfgang
>
> Thomas Nyman wrote:
>
> > Hi
> >
> > [ ... ]
> >
> > I am basically an i386 guy however recently I have become very
> > interested in Apples Powerbook G4 17" (1,33 GHz PowerPC G4)
> > model nr M9110*/A.
> >
> > It looks very nice and seems to have some neat capabilities such as
> > the backlit keyboard and dvd-burning capabilities.
> >
> > Anyway, I was wondering if you could give some feedback on the
> > machine, speed , battery-life and just general comments on how it
> > works and what you think of OS-X ( i would be getting Panther). But
> > even more interesting is find out how your attempts at installing
> > debian have progressed. Have you been able to get debian working as a
> > dual-boot on the machine? Are there some things that do not work in
> > debian? I seem to have read that the airport extreme wlan card might
> > not work in debian..have You been able to get it to work?
> >
> > Once again, this is a shot in the dark, and if You dont have the time
> > or the inclination then just disregard this email. I am however very
> > interested in all information on how well the 17" works with debian etc.
> >
> > Best regards
> > Thomas Nyman
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
--
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