Newbie questions ... (yikes! :)

[Thierry de Coulon]

On Wednesday, 9 March 2005 14.06, Bruce Smith wrote:
> I'm the guy who was asking about the broken trackpads on powerbooks.
> I ordered a new 1.5GHz/15" powerbook yesterday, so I'll see for myself! 
> :-)
>
> Let me say that I'm a LONG time Linux user, but I'm completely new to
> PPC hardware, Mac OSX, and Linux on anything except x86.
>
> I downloaded PPC ISO's for YDL 4.0, Mandrake 10.1 and Ubuntu to try
> when my new powerbook arrives.  I want to dual boot OSX & Linux.
> Is the best plan to immediately reinstall OSX, leaving free HDD space
> for Linux?  Or is it possible to shrink the preinstalled OSX partition?

I would go for the first way. It's sure to work. Resizing hfs has given mixed 
results for me so far - usually ending in reinstalling anyway, with or 
without loosing files.

> I'm aware that the airport extreme card is not supported, so what are
> my other options to get wireless working?  Are any USB wireless NIC's
> supported (which ones?).  

I've got a netgear MA111 to work both on a PowerBook (OS X) and a Thinkpad 
(Linux). It should be possible on a PPC with Linux, but ynot out of the box. 
You'll probably have to compile some stuff and a new kernel.

> What about PCMCIA wireless NIC's?  I have 
> an old Orinoco silver which worked fine under x86 Linux, any chance it'll
> work under PPC Linux?

Might - but there is no pcmcia on modern Apples

> Modems, same question.  USB?  PCMCIA?
>
> Any other hardware problems I might run into?  I can live without sleep
> mode, and I can live without sound if I have to.
>
> FWIW, the reason I'm buying a new PPC laptop instead of an x86 is
> because I figured I'm going to dual boot whatever laptop I buy with Linux,
> and what I've heard about OSX sounds much better than what I know
> about XP....  (and I never use XP on my current x86 laptop)
>
> Thanks!!!   Bruce.

If only Apple would not use touchpads, or at least touchpads with TWO buttons. 
This one drives me mad: they have an OS that NEEDS two buttons but they don't 
want to admit it :(

Thierry

-- 
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not
sure about the former" - Albert Einstein