Panther vs Linux

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RonaldMacDonald

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I have been a Mac user for more than 10 years. I use Mac and window$ at the office. I spend 90% of my time on Mac (I find windows clumsy). I have not upgarded to Panther yet but saw it recently in a store. I liked the way you can have many windows open and then hit F9 to shrink everything in an instant. I always have tons of windows open on my desktop and find that feature attractive.

I am planning on buying a laptop for home was thinking of getting a PC and installing Mandrake Linux. But what is it like to work with many open windows on Linux? How is it organized? Unbiased opinions please!
 
Linux has this great feature which allows you to have multiple desktops under the same user. So, instead of Expose in the Mac OS, you have multiple desktops in Linux. You can name your desktops, and have plenty of them as well. You can have one be your Music, your Work, your Web Searching, and XYZ desktops, and they are really easy to scroll through all of them.
 
I had heard that you can have multiple desktops and that interest me. However, I wonder what it is like actually working with that. if I had things totally separate I think that would be a good thing. But I work with a whole lot of applications and windows open at the same time. For example, if I am building a website, I might be working with Photoshop, Illustrator, and text editor, etc. at the same time. If these were on different desktops, I think it would be difficult to work with. Unless the desktop itself would scroll down.

BTW, I don't suppose you can run Mandrake on a Mac, can you?
 
There was a PPC version of Mandrake as of the last time I checked.

Working with the multiple destops has been great for me. You can configure them in several ways. One way is to set it so your mouse changes the desktops for you as you pass from one to the other, or you can use the key combinations. Very quick, very easy, very smart.

However, I love OSX much better, it is easier to use and has more consistency. Try Gimp with Linux. You'll wonder why you paid so much for PhotoShop.
 
diablojota,

To run Linux on Mac do you have to reboot? I assume you can have both OS on the same machine???

So which is easier to work with, Panther or 4 linux destops?
 
RonaldMacDonald said:
To run Linux on Mac do you have to reboot? I assume you can have both OS on the same machine???

So which is easier to work with, Panther or 4 linux destops?
Click to expand...

Okay, you can have both OS's on your Mac (on seperate partitions of course):). Don't ask me how to install them together, I usually only install it on my Wintel PCs.

As for which is easier to work with, that is difficult to answer. I like the way the 4 - however many desktops you want works with Linux. However, I have used this far longer than I have used the Mac OS X Expose. So I am quite comfortable with the Linux method. However, Expose has its merits and is quite simple when you are coming from a Windows or older Mac OS. I would assume that Expose would be easier for you then, since you are used to working on only a single desktop.
 
It looks good. I will have to give it a try when I have time.
Hey RonaldMacDonald, you can get the best of both worlds in one.
 
You can have a dual-boot setup with a Power Mac. NewWorld Power Macs (iMacs, B&W G3s, and up) use OpenFirmware. These Macs can use yaboot as the bootloader, allowing you to boot into Linux without having to load the Mac OS first. You could also make a NewWorld Power Mac a Linux only machine. However, older Power Macs up to the Beige G3 are considered OldWorld since they still use a hardware ROM and must have the Mac OS loaded (even if just partially) before you can load Linux. This is done through Boot-X which downs the Mac OS and boots it into Linux.

As for the different workspaces, they are pretty helpful. I separate my browsers and other applications depending on my work under different workspaces. Expose is Apple
s answer to something like this which I think is wonderful, and I know it will be implemented on KDE and Gnome soon (it's actually available for Gnome as a separate compilation, but I haven't tried it yet).

As for distributions, I prefer Yellow Dog Linux, but there is a version of Mandrake Linux for PPC. I don't normally recommend it since they tend to treat it a the ugly sister. :p You might want to also give Gentoo or Debian for PowerPC a try also. But for an easy, RedHat-like Linux distro, Yellow Dog is where it's at.

As for running both at the same time, it is possible, but you would have to run an emulator to run the other operating system. For example, you could have Mac OS X installed and then use Virtual PC or something similar to run an x86 Linux distribution. You could also just install Linux (if your Mac is NewWorld-based) and run Mac-on-Linux which allows you to install run Mac OS 9/X, a-la Virtual PC. The latter is a good option only if you're machine runs sluggishly under OS X, but you still need to have some ability to run Mac apps. I wouldn't do that with a new G4 or G5.
 
I would feel safer buying a new ibook and using it for both Linux and Panther than limiting myself to one or the other. Could be I will only end up using one or the other. So should I partition the ibook from the start? How much for Mac and how much for Linux, 50%? Is Yellow Dog something that runs off the Mac, like in emulation?

Has anyone on this board installed Mandrake 9.1 for PPC? How do you like it? Can you tell me how I can get the instructions for installing it?
 
Yellow Dog, and all of the other versions afaik do not run in emulation on the mac. It's the real deal.

Incidentally, I installed linux a few years ago on my g4, and was unhappy with it because it just wasn't as clean and simple as the mac. Unless I run into something that requires it, I'll stick with apple. (plus windows at school)
 
Personally, I find Linux to be great... IF I want to setup a server for any number of reasons. On a portable, however, I prefer to run OS X, and have never booted into my Linux partition except on install. Just stick with one. Mac OS X gives you everything you will need for day to day things. You can also install many Linux based products with X11. View your options. Mac OS X is much more simple and smarter in the layout than Linux. I run Linux on my servers, but when I want to do some real work, I reach for my OS X boxes.
 
Thanks to all for the comments. I have a feeling I might bury myself by trying to go both Mandrake and Panther. After looking on Linux forums where people have used it on Mac, many were not happy. Perhaps I would be better off looking at X11 as well as new ways to organize the desktop. After I upgrade to Panther, I will look at Desktop Manager.
 
Don't go Mandrake. They haven't updated it in a while, and I'm not sure what their plans are for the PPC version of Mandrake Linux. Stick either with Yellow Dog, Gentoo or Debian. These are very solid distros, and I'm currently using Yellow Dog.

I have a 60 GB hard disk, and I've partitioned it so that OS X has 40 GB and Linux has 20 GB. For my Linux installation, I've got 128 MB for /boot, 1GB for swap, and the 4 GB for /home, and the rest for /
 
Is there a way to get a look at what these distros will look like on a Mac without actually installing them? Is there a CD you can boot from on a Mac in a similar way as a PC will boot from Knoppix?
 
It'll look the same as on the PC :)

But if you mean as a kind of 'test-drive', I think theres a Mac version of Knoppix. Don't remember the URL though.
 
I think he is referring to a 'live' cd for PPC machines. I don't know if Mandrake has it.
Yellow Dog might.
If SUSE has it, I would recommend that one. I prefer SUSE over many of the other Distros for general use.
 
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