Stability of Mac-on-Linux?

[Joshua Juran]

On Oct 10, 2006, at 4:40 AM, Tommy Trussell wrote:

> 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?
> ...
>> 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.

For the time being I've moved to London[1], so the GMT delta is now  
zero and I no longer have the native-boot version of the problem.  I  
suspect that I won't have a problem under mol either[2], though I  
haven't tried yet.

[1] Much in the manner of Steve Martin going to the Bahamas.
[2] Unless you consider having to convert global time to local in  
your head a problem.

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

I have to go the the Sound control panel and choose MOL audio, and  
then cause some sound to play.  Until then, the system is so  
unresponsive as to be unusable.  Maybe it only happens after  
switching back from natively boot OS 9, which would make sense.   
Should be easily correctable with a simple INIT.

> (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.

In other words, you're running it through X11, which may mask or  
otherwise avoid keymapping issues.  As I said, this is a Linux-on-Mac- 
hardware issue, rather than a mol problem, and I suspect it's a  
matter of patching the right config file.

>> 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... !

So far my plan is:
(a) Zero out the GMT delta.  Otherwise, files get wrong timestamps.
(b) Make the 'real' delta available for patches to use.
(c) Patch date-formatting routines to adjust for local time.
(d) Prevent users from breaking anything with the Date & Time control  
panel.

Step A is trivial.  Step B requires some means for Mac OS code and  
mol to communicate.  For step C I'm still hunting for the right hook  
off which to hang a patch.  I have the same problem with the control  
panel, so step D may involve hijacking its user interface instead of  
low-level time routines.

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

I suspect it would be easy enough for a number of Mac developers who  
have no interest in doing it -- so maybe not as hard as you think.

The first question is data transport:  How do we get data in and out  
of the box?  I think the simplest appraoch here is to make it a  
network application.  Define a protocol, run a TCP daemon on the Mac,  
connect to it from Linux.  Patch clipboard routines to use the daemon  
for storage.

Another question is which content types to support -- just text, or  
images too?

Josh