PowerBook and Yellow Dog Linux

[David George Hogg]

Well, thanks. I think I will probably go for a PB 3400, because I am
only looking for a in school hours machine, outside of that I have the
beautiful YDL 3 iBook, so the 3400 should do.
Thanks,
David.

-----Original Message-----
From: yellowdog-general-admin@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
[mailto:yellowdog-general-admin@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com] On Behalf
Of Tim Seufert
Sent: 28 December 2003 09:04
To: yellowdog-general@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
Subject: Re: PowerBook and Yellow Dog Linux

On Dec 27, 2003, at 9:45 PM, David George Hogg wrote:

> Oh and sorry for the grammar mistake - its 5 in the morning.

Don't worry about it.

I don't recommend buying a 5300 or 1400.  Neither of them is well 
supported by Linux.  You can get it working but it involves installing 
a special kernel for NuBus Macs.  Last I heard, even then you won't 
have support for essential things like PCMCIA.

Either of the first generation PCI PowerBooks (2400, 3400) is a decent 
minimum YDL machine.  The 2400 can be difficult to install on though, 
since it lacks a CD-ROM.  It's possible to install from an external 
SCSI CD-ROM, but not all SCSI CD-ROMs can be used to boot the 2400.

For best results, consider a Wall Street or later machine.  They're 
much faster due to the G3 CPU (especially if you make sure to get one 
of the models with L2 cache -- some early 233 MHz Wall Streets had no 
L2).  Also, they have much better memory expansion than earlier 
PowerBooks, and memory is cheaper and more available since they use 
SDRAM SODIMMs.  The 2400 only goes up to 80MB, or 112MB with special 
expensive modules.  That's a huge limitation.  3400 is a little better, 
but not much.  I can tell you that my 80MB 2400 runs out of gas running 
any kind of modern desktop environment -- they're just not designed to 
run on low memory computers.

Oh, and if you're planning on using the machine on battery power, be 
prepared to spend $100 - $200 on a working battery.  Batteries are 
almost always dead on used notebooks more than a year or two old.

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