[ale] Mac w/ Linux

[Ben Phillips]

On Fri, 28 Jul 2000, Michael B Golden wrote:

> 1. X resolution:
>         I'm not sure that I'd want to try to explain editing the
> XF86Config file over the phone and I'm not sure what tools for
> configuration come with Mac distributions. Any ideas? Anybody know if
> they autodetect?

Tell them to play with ctrl-alt-(+ or -) and invoking X with 'startx -- -bpp
(whatever color depth)'.

Then, if you really want to be nice about it:  find out exactly what kind of
Mac it is, and (especially) exactly what kind of monitor they have on it.  
Look up the horizontal and vertical refresh rates for that monitor on the
web, then run 'xf86config' on your own linux box.  Set the default color
depth & resolution to whatever they said they liked.  Send them the file it
generates & tell them to drop it into place.

> 2. Networking:
>         They want to get it onto the network and on to the internet
> through the network. They tried to use the netconf program in the GNOME
> menu, but ran into a few problems. I fired up netconf over here and the
> way they described it makes it appear to be a different netconf. Some
> options were different, etc. For example, what is the gateway device? It
> asks for gateway address and device. We tried fooling around with that a 
> little and then trying to ping the router, but no luck. The network was
> unreachable. I'm not even sure if he has kernel support for the card or
> how to check. So, any suggestions? Remember that this is a Mac, not a PC.

'dmesg' & look for a mention of the network card being detected.  (These
guys are connecting an ethernet cable to this thing & not AppleTalk, right?)

JOOC, what distribution do they have?  It's odd that netconf would act
differently.  Also, are both of you looking at a text program, or a GUI?  
Because there might be one of each.

If I had to guess, I'd say that if they gave it the standard gateway IP
address under 'gateway address', then the 'gateway device' must be the
device name of the ethernet card (in case there's more than one interface).  
So you would say /dev/eth0.

> 3. Right-click
>         As the computer is a Macintosh, the mouse has only one button.
> How do we emulate a second button? A third?

That's...  a really good question.

I didn't have a lot of luck with Mklinux when I tried it.  I think if I had
an old mac I wanted to make use of, I'd be more inclined to make it a dumb
terminal (a la the 'Mac-Terminal' mini-FAQ).  If he's trying Linux for the
first time, I'd definitely recommend an i386 architecture for simplicity.  
But that's just me.



                      __   _                 "I hate to advocate drugs,
Ben Phillips         /  '_' )         ,,,     alcohol, violence or
pynk at post.com        |  | ()|||||||||[:::)    insanity, but they've
                     \__.-._)         '''     always worked for me."
		                                 -- Hunter S. Thompson
                                              

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