VDQ : hosing OSX

[Beartooth]

On Sun, 05 Dec 2004 18:39:23 -0500, Jurvis LaSalle wrote:

> You've thoroughly piqued my curiousity.  You appear to be vehemently
> anti-MS and anti-Apple, yet have next to zero knowledge of Linux or even
> how a computer fundamentally works.

It must seem like that, to a real technoid. There's a word for the likes
of me, though: user.

The difference is that I have friends who've put me onto sources like this
list, and I'm too old to be afraid of showing how little I know, despite
my years of trying. I've been running linux since RH 7.2, and MS-free
since the autumn of '02. With a lot of help from the Net, I get by -- well
enough for the copious uses I do make of my computers.

> What planet do you come from?

BA in pure math, with honors, 1961. Changed fields: MA & PhD in Germanic
Languages & Literatures, 1962 & 1970. Taught GL&L for twenty years in the
universities of the Middle West. Gave that up, alas!, out of misplaced
loyalty, and cataloged foreign materials (mostly Finnish & Estonian;
Germanic and other Indo-European languages, of which I read twenty or
thirty, had gotten too easy) into the Library of Congress for fifteen:
maybe half on a dumb terminal, and the other on a 486 running OS/2. So I
expect any decent computer not to crash every whipstitch, and detest ones
that do. Apples at least don't. But I was well over forty before I ever
laid hands on a real computer -- and then got told only how to do what I
was paid for. The rest is self-taught, and like any such, very
unsystematic.

>   How did you get an Apple computer?  If you bought it, why would you
> pay the Apple tax when you dislike them so intensely?

On the advice of an Apple-fancying Alpha Plus Technoid friend (husband of
former student), not expecting a reaction opposite the one I had had when
the same friend introduced me to the Net. (I had not heard, for instance,
that MS had invested in Apple, and imagined I'd be getting an MS-free
machine from the get-go. Imagine my disgust at booting OSX and finding IE.
Or at taking six months and dumb luck to find out how to become root.)

But I keep the iBook because I'm assured by friends who speak hardware
that Apple's is better across the board than most. In fact, isn't there a
tale that Terrasoft and YDL were created when KaiS and another guy decided
there ought to be a distro of a good OS for the good hardware?

> Are you actually just some strangely disguised troll?

No. Google me if you doubt it. Several regulars here and at Terrasoft can
also vouch for me. I do try to suggest my bona fides by using VDQ and
various apologies. I'm not trying to anger any of you, but to get across
what sort of explanations I need; the usual ones lose me.

Also, believe it or not, I found my input sought for by Alpha Plus
Technoids at LC (and have since online), because I could articulate user
difficulties so basic that they could no longer imagine them. So I make a
practice of doing so in technoid fora -- and even get thanked for it from
time to time.

> 	Now for my thoughts on the situation in which you find yourself.  Your
> hardware is sufficiently old enough to be well supported by Linux (note
> that I don't personally own your exact hardware).  Provided you don't
> *need* any apps that are only available to OS X on ppc, you should be
> able to blow away Mac OS X with little consequence...  Good luck!

Thank you. I know only too well I'll need it. And I'm getting by without
those apps, if only because I've never found them.

One more thought: many people find the Apple interface intuitive; it may
be so to those who've grown up with it, say in the Apples For Students
program -- but that's *second* nature. I'm not the only one, coming to it
from OS/2 and linux, who finds the opposite; but our existence always
surprises the Faithful. So I figure you'ns might oughtta know there are
such people out here.

-- 
Beartooth Autodidact, curmudgeonly codger learning linux
Remember I know precious little of what I'm talking about!