tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11141553.post7833953279278238785..comments2008-03-29T23:47:42.109-04:00CaptSlaqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765756604461479531noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11141553.post-81394598108926368882008-03-29T23:47:00.000-04:002008-03-29T23:47:00.000-04:00It looks like this guy: http://coldfrontramblings.blogspot.com/2008/03/update-in-imac-linux.html<BR/>is doing something similar to what you're trying.kozmcraehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03477116396443886503noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11141553.post-47574684490565743992008-03-23T13:50:00.000-04:002008-03-23T13:50:00.000-04:00It wasn't really frustration, more just learning the lay of the land, so to speak. <BR/><BR/>I dual boot my work laptop with Xubuntu/Windows so I am familiar with the XFCE environment. I like it fairly well, actually. I use it to troubleshoot layer 2/3 problems on customers networks, and Windows to troubleshoot share/printer problems. This set up works well for me, but even it has some driver support issues with the video. <BR/><BR/>When I initially installed Linux on the machine, it wasn't going to be a desktop. It was replacing a laptop (also running Linux) with a blown LCD that was doing some file serving and hosting a webserver and shell access. When I got it home, I found a nice place for it to live that would allow me to use it as a desktop along side my gaming rig, so I went with a desktop distro of Ubuntu. If I wasn't using it as a server (leaving it on 24/7), I think that, performance aside (which probably would have been tolerable if all the services were disabled), it would have been a great desktop machine. <BR/><BR/>Thing is (as I described in the post) that the video drivers for the PPC Mac hardware still need some work, and I'm not the one who has the knowledge to reverse engineer them. I truly believe that just that one point alone would help the performance of the Xserver immensely. <BR/><BR/>Linux is touted as being "small hardware" friendly. I've seen it, and on x86, it's completely true. My first Linux box was a Pentium 266 with 64MB RAM. It didn't run a desktop, but it served up PERL driven CGI pages all day. Worked great, and never broke a sweat unless I was compiling something, which since I was running Slackware at the time, I did it a lot. <BR/><BR/>For the Mac PPC hardware I have to hedge a bit, and I feel that I can point with some certainty at the driver support. I'm not meaning this to disparage the work that's already been done, far from it. Apple/NVidia/ATI aren't letting the community have enough specs to write good drivers for the hardware yet. I don't know that this will ever happen, short of a miracle or someone up high stepping out and saying "We're doing this for the community". I'd like to think that Apple would do this for their old hardware, particularly since they aren't supporting PPC with the next generation of OSX. The reality is that it probably won't happen while Jobs is at the wheel.CaptSlaqhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09765756604461479531noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11141553.post-64749031668217214022008-03-22T10:30:00.000-04:002008-03-22T10:30:00.000-04:00When you're ready to try Linux on the iMac, do some Googling around to match a distribution to the hardware. I understand the iMac is woefully under powered. If that's the case you're better off with a distribution that uses XFce as the desktop. Five minutes on Google can save five hours of frustration. Good luck.kozmcraehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03477116396443886503noreply@blogger.com