[ale] My iBook

[Jim Popovitch]

Issues like this make me think there is a need for a polishing-fest or
a nextstep-fest.  Clearly there are a lot of people who are jaded with
just the everyday installed version of Linux.  I've never been to one of
the install-fests, i'd certainly participate in one of the
polishing-fests.  Any takers?  Is there a room somewhere?  Bueller? 

-Jim P.

On Tue, 2005-02-15 at 14:31 -0500, James Sumners wrote:
> 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.
>