[NBLUG/talk] Concerning Linux compatibility with the new MacBook Pro

Lincoln Peters sampln at sbcglobal.net
Mon Jan 16 14:13:50 PST 2006


On Monday 16 January 2006 13:59, Troy Arnold wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 16, 2006 at 01:36:59PM -0800, Lincoln Peters wrote:
> > As long as you're planning to only run Linux and open-source applications
> > on it, and there are working LInux drivers for the iMac G5, this would be
> > a good time to get one.  However, if you're planning to run OSX, it's
> > probably not a good idea.
>
> No it's not a good idea.  I don't understand why anyone would buy Apple
> hardware, except perhaps their notebooks.  They treat their own loyal
> customers like crap 

Well, it's not like there aren't lots of other tech companies that treat their 
customers even worse...

> and do a piss-poor job of supporting older hardware on 
> newer OS releases.  "Older" can in some cases mean <2 years.  A company I
> work for was unable to upgrade to 10.2 because Apple decided not to
> write a video driver for an imac less than 2 years old.  Good luck running
> 10.5 on PowerPC.

I have never purchased a desktop Apple computer when it was new.  I like their 
laptops because they're so much more durable than most other laptops, and the 
software that comes with them is surprisingly good for being proprietary 
(still can't find anything comparable to iPhoto on ANY operating system).

I might have run Linux on my iBook G3 when it became impossible to run 
anything else on it, but the hardware didn't last long enough.  And 
considering the conditions under which I used that iBook G3, I'm sure that a 
lesser laptop *cough* Dell *cough* wouldn't have survived longer than a few 
months.

>
> Another company had 7 out of 7 g5 desktops fail with power supply or logic
> board failures.  The 7th failed in a spectacular poof of smelly smoke while
> I was on site.  All of these machines were on UPS's, BTW.

I have to admit, that's the worst horror story I've heard about Apple hardware 
in a long time.

>
> Form over function?  Not for me, thanks.

Fair enough.


-- 
Lincoln Peters
<sampln at sbcglobal.net>

The first rule of all intelligent tinkering is to keep all the parts.
		-- Aldo Leopold, quoted in Donald Wurster's "Nature's Economy"

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