Newbie questions ... (yikes! :)

[Daniel Gimpelevich]

On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 09:06:11 -0500, 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!  :-)

I predict that you saved yourself a lot of headaches by not ordering the
17" model. Good luck getting x.org to work on that one!

> 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.

You've made a wise hardware choice. Laptop quality is usually
questionable, and getting a PowerBook or iBook is the surest way to avoid
problems in that area, even considering the problem models (Lombard, iBook
G3, etc.). You say that you're a long-time x86 Linux user, but you don't
say whether it's always been the same x86 hardware or you've had to deal
with the crapola that different laptop manufacturers tend to put people
who try to install Linux through. PowerBooks are not completely immune to
this, but the pitfalls and workarounds are well-known. You won't find a
Linux community dedicated to any specific line of x86 laptops to be as
large as the PPC Linux community.

> 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?

You have almost answered your own question. Almost, because you left out
the Gentoo LiveCD, which is the one thing you can download that lets you
shrink the preinstalled OSX partition. Sure, you can reinstall OSX, but
you've never had to deal with that before, so stick with what's familiar.
When you boot the current Gentoo LiveCD (by holding the C key), use parted
from the command line (not qtparted, or anything else), and give the
"resize" command to shrink your OSX partition (probably /dev/hda2). When
you're done, reboot and hold down Cmd-S. That will boot OSX into
single-user mode. At the command line there, type "/sbin/fsck -y" with no
other arguments, and let it do its thing (you understand all this,
right?). Ctrl-D to log out of single-user mode, then boot the YDL
installer.

> 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?).  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?

Every chance. Any hardware natively supported by x86 Linux works about the
same under PPC Linux with very rare exceptions. I say "natively supported"
because there is plenty of x86 hardware that only works with proprietary
drivers (think nVidia graphics cards). If you already have an Orinoco
silver that you're not using, it's the perfect solution, unless you want
802.11g.

> Modems, same question.  USB?  PCMCIA?

Unless Apple has changed things in recent models, the built-in modem is a
Conexant USB HCF-type controllerless software modem. Getting that to work
under Linux is pretty much the same as getting similar hardware to work on
x86 Linux. Buying an external USB modem for PPC Linux is the same as
buying one for x86 Linux, which in turn is no different from buying a PCI
internal modem for x86 Linux. Since you're experienced with x86 Linux,
I'll assume you understand the implications of all of the above.

> 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)

All dual-boot computers have an OS that's practically never used. It only
remains to be seen which one that will be.

> Thanks!!!   Bruce.
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