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Re: Debian + The new PowerBook G4



On Tuesday 27 July 2004 19.30, Matthew T. Atkinson wrote:

[thinking about buying the 17" thingy, so I googled around a bit. I 
don't hace PPC experience myself, though, so everything below is 
guesswork and hearsay]

> * Does anyone know of any production issues this time around (as
> there were in the past, I hear)?  I've had a google but not found
> much. Having said that I wouldn't really know where to look as I
> never had a Mac before :-).

Apparently the severe problems with the display was fixed a while ago 
(according to some posting on a mailinglist, sorry, didn't keep the 
URL)

The display cable is a problem, though: it goes through one of the 
hinges and apparently rubs through quite fast in some cases.

> * What bits of the hardware does Debian _not_ support (e.g. ACPI,
> Wireless, Bluetooth, DVD-R, 3D graphics, sound)?

Suspend to disk works, but suspend to RAM does not, so you'll have long 
wakeups (this is because that ATI graphics chip is not handled 
properly).

Graphics: IIRC, current unstable (or experimental?) X packages should 
work, external monitor, too.

Input devices: I found <http://blog.drinsama.de/erich/2004/07/27> 
(bottom) quite interesting, as I'll certainly be using an external 
trackball with more than one button. Anybody can comment on it, 
specific to the Powerbook?

Bluetooth and DVD should Just Work(tm).

Wireless: Seems that this is pretty much hopeless.

Sound, internal Modem: if it's the same as in th 12", it should work 
(<http://www.mathematik.uni-marburg.de/~schmidtm/apple/powerbook.en.php>)

Firewire: same page, some issues, basic things seem to work. (But the 
15/17" may have a different Firewire controller - 12" is FW 600, 15/17 
is FW 800 IIRC.)

greetings
-- vbi

-- 
Could this mail be a fake? (Answer: No! - http://fortytwo.ch/gpg/intro)

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