About a year ago I wrote to a LinuxPPC list, expressing much of the same
frustration Paul has described. I had installed LinuxPPC on a second hard
drive on my Mac, and I had so much difficulty with it that I eventually just
gave up. At the time, the LinuxPPC people still hadn't come up with a
smooth, easy way to switch between Mac OS and Linux. Documentation was
seriously lacking, and I could never ask a question and get an answer that I
could understand.
I finally figured out the reason for this: LinuxPPC Release 4 was the first
version of LinuxPPC that booted directly into a GUI by default. After
successfully getting the boot process going, I would find myself looking at
KDE. At the same time, the "answer people" on the mail list had all been
using some form of *nix for years and were accustomed to the CLI. So when I
had questions, I'd get answers that all started with "in the console, type
[series of cryptic commands]". Well, since I (like other first-time users)
was booting directly into KDE, I _had NO IDEA what the 'console' was!_ I
found myself hunting through the KDE menus trying to find something labeled
"Console". Fortunately, once I explained this to the list, a few people were
kind enough to tell me how to access the console and I was able to fix some
of the problems I had. (Specifically, in KDE I had inadvertently changed a
mouse setting from 'right-handed' to 'left-handed. With my 1-button Mac
mouse, this effectively left me right-clicking on everything, which didn't
work at all!)
The other big problem I had was I could not get Linux to recognize my Mac's
built-in ethernet card, so I couldn't access the Web from Linux. So every
time I had trouble I would have to shutdown Linux and go through a rather
complex process to boot back into Mac OS. Then when (if) I found the answer
to my problem, I had to go through another complex process to get back into
Linux and hope the answer I found would actually work.
In the end, I never did manage to get LinuxPPC R4 to work properly.
Hopefully the latest release will be a different story (my CD should be here
soon.) In the meantime, on the recommendation of a friend who also uses both
Mac OS and Linux, I'm fooling with RedHat 5.2 on an AMD K6 200MHz processor,
and having much better luck :)
Johann Kwiatkowski wrote:
> there are bound to be difficulties going from one to the other anyway.
*heh* Imagine trying to go straight from a Mac to Linux...
>> Any OS where you have to know the scan rate of your monitor...
Interestingly enough, this doesn't seem to be an issue with LinuxPPC
> I could on about what I dislike about Bill Gates, but to me he only had vision
> for taking what apple did and making it cheaper for people to get to. I was
> using a gui on a 128K mac long before windows came along, and it was easy to
> install, it just wasn't cheap.
[cheer] Although the only thing Billy Boy did to make it cheaper was to make
it run on less-expensive hardware. His bloatware is just as expensive as
Apple's.
>> There is just nothing else that comes
>> anywhere near windows for making it possible for an
>> idiot^H^H^H^H^Hnon-computer person to run a computer.
>
> again I disagree, again I think of macs, which I will always recommend macs to
> people who aren't remotely interested in knowing how a computer works (ease of
> use among other things is why I think macs are very popular with people like
> graphics artists).
<macadvocacy> Actually, the mainstream graphics apps like Photoshop simply
work better under Mac OS than Windoze. I had Win98 loaded on my PC for a few
months, and ran the same version of Photoshop that I had on my Mac. On both
platforms the Photoshop features were identical. Yet it seemed that Windoze
itself was always in my way, slowing me down, where on the Mac the OS seems
almost invisible. Also, drag & drop, something graphic artists really like,
is more comprehensive on the Mac. And of course the Mac has always had
superior color-management. But I digress... ;-) </macadvocacy>
>> Sure the underlying OS is great, the kernel
>> is hot, but people don't run OSes. They run apps.
Bingo!
>> Can I say something to the developers out there? RPM your packages. Really.
>> If it is not RPMmed, I'm not interested in even trying to install it.
I'll add my voice to this plea! I'm not a programmer, I have no interest in
becoming one. I want to install a complete software package in as few steps
as possible, not assemble a pile of parts. In this vein, I'd also like to be
able to configure an app entirely within that app - without having to dig
out a config file.
--
Rik Osborne
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/phase42/
"When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion
that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract
positive thinking." --Albert Einstein
