Re: [PLUG] Laptop Recommendations

["William H. Magill" <magill@mcgillsociety.org>]

On Monday, February 3, 2003, at 11:16  AM, W. Chris Shank wrote:
> Here's a question for the iBook users: are you using Linux on the 
> iBook or
> still using OS X?
>
> I recently purchased an iBook and have been really enjoying it. I
> installed Linux but find that I'm able to do just about everything I 
> need
> to from OS X - although there some annoyances I have with OS X
> particularly the window manager. Since I have Linux servers in my 
> network
> that I can use remotely , i haven't really needed to boot to linux. I
> haven't yet put the iBook to the mobile test - seeing how useful OS X 
> is
> when I'm going from location to location - but so far I don't see 
> anything
> that would give me cause for concern.

Even on my original tangerine iBook, OS X is fine. A little slow since 
it's only 266mhz, but it does have 98 meg memory -- which makes a BIG 
difference.

As a longtime Unix user, I find OS X to be much less of a hassle than 
Linux. I never came to worship RPMs so the idea that I have to 
configure/make/install doesn't bother me.

There might be some random apps written for Linux only that won't 
compile under Darwin, but I haven't found any that I want to run. As 
for X11, I've used Tennon's since they first ported it. Apple has now 
provided it directly, so you have at least 3 different versions of X11 
(Tennon - Xtools; White Pine's eXodus; Apple's Xfree86), all three are 
well integrated with the OSX GUI. X11 is X11... I discovered that I 
stopped using the X11 window manager almost without realizing it... 
mainly because nobody supported the decent X11 window managers (twm or 
Motif ) any more, and I could do all I wanted with the OS X interface.

The only "down side" is that OS X does use NetInfo. But then Linux uses 
YP. Both are evil in my opinion. The latest release 10.2.3 DOES 
interrogate flat files for info without "a lot" of hoop jumping.

As for startup games -- I don't like the way BSD does it, so the fact 
that Darwin does it the BSD way, is "different" from the SystemV "way." 
But when you support more than one box, you learn to live with the 
different approaches; they all work and they all do the same thing... 
if you can't deal with it, well then, you can't, that's your problem, 
not the problem of any of the OS involved. In today's terminology, it's 
called "diversity."

The only downside I know of is with the old TIbooks -- they have their 
antenna's in the wrong place. I get about twice the signal strength 
with my iBook when sitting next to a TIbook. But that is fixed in the 
new powerbooks and they support bluetooth and WiFi (11g)on the same 
box, out of the box.
You can't beat the 4+ hour battery life and the fact that you actually 
can sit 1gig on your lap!

If you don't mind being branded a follower; just wait 3-6 months and 
then Dell first and then HP will have x86 laptops that look just like 
the new powerbooks.

Personally, I'm a Mach/OSF Unix person, so I prefer Darwin/OS X to 
Linux anyway... but that's a whole other story.

T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
# Beige G3 - Rev A motherboard - 768 Meg
# Flat-panel iMac (2.1) 800MHz - Super Drive - 768 Meg
# PWS433a [Alpha 21164 Rev 7.2 (EV56)- 64 Meg]- Tru64 5.1a
magill@mcgillsociety.org
magill@acm.org
magill@mac.com

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