[ale] My iBook

[James Sumners]

Well, yes, distributions like those that you mentioned are going to
work "decently" but not well. I am talking about having the peace of
mind that if I had to take my laptop in to a major meeting, not that I
have anything more major than class going on right now, that the
laptop would do what I need it to without me having to figure out how
to get my laptop to interface with their equipment because I am
running a niche OS (on the desktop it most certainly is niche). While
it could be argued that Mac OS is a niche OS it is more of a publicly
accepted OS for a user machine than Linux is. Just the facts. And I
promise, getting the ATi card in this laptop to output to an external
television or something that is NOT VGA is a real pain in the ass and
the device has to be plugged in _before_ the laptop is turned on.

The wireless card in this machine is of the Orinoco/Hermes II variety.
It is quite possibly one of the best, non-Prism II (as in
prism54.org), supported cards in Linux available. The support
absolutely sucks. I am not saying it is any fault of the people
developing the drivers -- they are doing the best that they can with
the information that they have. All I am saying is that I have to do a
lot of low level stuff [driver code editing] to get certain things to
work that should "just work".

And yes, I have used wine and crossover. Aside from the fact that
Mathcad (http://www.mathsoft.com/), the only application I use Windows
for for class, will not work with either because it requires .NET,
which won't work with either, I don't like wine nor crossover as a
solution. Truly, they are a poor solution to a legitimate problem.
Higher level applications, such as Maple which I will be using toward
the end of my degree, support Linux but a majority of the "typical"
software does not. I don't like giving companies an excuse to not
provide native applications by using API interpreters like wine and
crossover. True, Mathcad does not support OS X but I am willing to bet
that the company would support OS X before they will even consider
supporting Linux. (I really don't like Mathcad any way and prefer to
use my TI-89 unless there is something that is easier to do with
Mathcad -- which is not much).

Certainly I will post my findings. It will be a while before I can do
so though. I won't be buying an Apple machine until Tiger comes out
and I want to be able to buy it outright so I will have to save some
money first.


On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 13:38:28 -0500, Geoffrey <esoteric at 3times25.net> wrote:
> I guess that depends on your definition of decently.  I've had very good
> luck with various laptops. (Dell, Toshiba, hp in the past, Sony, hp of
> late)  Maybe it was just that, good luck.  Currently I've got RH
> workstation 3/SuSE 9.2 on a Sony Vaio.  Everything works, except the
> s-video out.  I've got Suse 9.2 and MDK 10.1 on an hp laptop I picked up
> a few months ago.  All works well on that box as well.  The external vga
> can be setup as a dual head, although I've not tried it.
> 
> I think that's because folks working on wireless are primarily focused
> on getting the drivers to work.  The proprietary issues around g cards
> are pretty substantial.  I feel your pain though.
> 
> Have you tried wine or crossover?
> 
> > I just want a system that doesn't suck like Windows and lets me work
> > as efficiently as I like to work. Mac looks to be that system and I
> > will find out shortly I suppose :)
> 
> Do post your findings.

-- 
James Sumners
http://james.roomfullofmirrors.com/

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts
pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it
is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become
drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."

Missionaria Protectiva, Text QIV (decto)
CH:D 59