[ale] Mac switcher ... to Ubuntu

[Eric VanWieren]

I just want to put linux on my MacbookPro.

Being a long time sys admin and developer, I got used to running Linux as my
primary OS, and only having a windows machine to play games with. However,
when I started a new position at my company, I was told I could get a Dell
or a Mac. While I am not bashing dell here, I am not a fan of their laptops.


After having used one, and having friends with them, I just do not think
that Dell laptops are durable enough to survive everyday wear and tear. That
is if it does not just sit on your desk or bed at home. So I opted for a
MacbookPro. Overall I have been happy with the hardware, but the OS does
leave something to be desired. The biggest things that I miss from my linux
machine are:

--Being able to customize anything
--A good terminal program (terminal is blah, and iTerm still has its
shortcommings)
--Multiple desktops ( yeah, I know there are programs out there, but they
make the system go crazy)
--Proprietary closed source base
--Closing program windows, and then having to close the program
--lack of good irc client. (some out there... bleh)
--Having to run X on darwin to run apps like gimp.

I could go on, but what I am interested in is putting Linux straight onto my
mac that I have now. For all my searching, I have not read about any of the
pains that anyone has had to go through in order to put Ubuntu or Fedora on
a MacbookPro. Unfortunately, due to work, I cannot afford to be without my
laptop for 2 weeks while I try to work out all of the bugs of installing
linux on my mac.

Enough said.

Eric


On 7/28/06, Thomas Stromberg <lists at stromberg.org> wrote:
>
>
> On 28 jul 2006, at 07.22, Eric VanWieren wrote:
>
> > I guess the question to ask is did he put linux on his mac, or did
> > he buy a commodity machine.
>
> I bet he went x86, and if not, he will real soon due to lack of PPC
> application support.
>
> This and other articles really made me think pretty hard about moving
> back to a pure UNIX'y desktop again. When Mac OS X 10.0 came out, I
> bought a G4 and stopped running FreeBSD as a desktop at home. It was
> a great decision for a while, since I was doing so much operating
> systems tinkering at work, and didn't want to come home to it as
> well. Nowadays I'm just doing Python programming, and miss doing
> systems work.
>
> The tools on Linux are getting painless enough to use to make it
> worthwhile to shift back now as a desktop. Mac OS X only seems to be
> getting further from it's open-source roots as time goes on.  The
> problem for me with switching to Linux is that I have no  x86 machine
> capable of supporting two DVI monitors, as it's PCI only.  Running
> Linux on my G5 sounded like a good compromiseat first until I think
> about the binary-only applications I use that do are only available
> under Linux x86:
>
> * Bibble Pro (RAW Photo management)
> * Macromedia Flash Player
> * iTunes (through WINE / CrossOver)
> * Google Earth
>
> While I would miss Civilization IV, OmniGraffle, and support for my
> Eye-One Match (color calibrator), I think I could get over it. I
> suppose I'll wait a few months to see how Mac OS X 10.5 is shaping up
> and perhaps acquire an x86 Mac that I can dual-boot with. =]
>
> // Thomas Str?mberg
> // http://toadstool.se/
> // +1 678 773 9475
>
>
>
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