Stability of Mac-on-Linux?

[Tommy Trussell]

On 10/8/06, Joshua Juran <jjuran at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 3 Oct 2006, at 13:30, Wolfgang Keller wrote:
> >> How stable is Mac-on-Linux in everyday use?
...
> I have a clamshell iBook dual-booting Debian and OS 9, with mol as
> well.  Broken builds don't affect me because I rely on the Debian
> packages.

I use a 1998 Wallstreet II (aka PDQ) and MOL has been very stable
overall. I'm currently using the standard Ubuntu Breezy packages with
the standard self-compiled modules. I'm contemplating upgrading to
Dapper soon.


> I haven't had a problem with general stability, though sometimes
> waking from sleep will hang the mol box.  Most of my issues with mol
> are related to configuration or device support, or with using Linux
> in general.
>
> Topping the list of mol-related items stopping me from using it full-
> time on that machine are
> (a) time zone / clock issues,
> (b) the need to manually configure audio on each boot of OS 9,
> (c) suboptimal mouse acceleration, and
> (d) incorrect function key mappings, although this is also an issue
> with Linux userspace generally.

(a) I haven't sene the time zone / clock issues in months... I can't
remember for certain what I did, but maybe all I did was turn on
Apple's automatic Date/Time settings. If I came up with some other
trick, I'll post it back here. I do remember ALWAYS having to reset
the timezone and clock for awhile.

(b) I have been lucky with the audio, I guess. Once I installed the
MOL-supplied extension, that has always worked fine.

(c) I've started running MOL in a (800x600) window rather than
full-screen, so the mouse acceleration issues AND

(d) keyboard function key issues are less noticeable in a window
rather than full screen.

> I'm a fairly experienced Mac developer with some skill at writing
> system patches, and I'd like to contribute to the preservation of
> traditional Mac OS.  My first priority here is making Mac OS 9
> (booted natively) deal with global time in the system clock.

Cool... !

How hard would it be to write a clipboard-sharing extension?
(Obviously fairly hard or we would have one already!)