Powerbook 12" running Debian Linux
- Thread starter Viro
- Start date
nixgeek
Mac of the SubGenius! :-)
fryke said:"Hopefully with Linux working on PPC Linux with his Mac machines" - Learn using the comma, nixgeek, the comma is your friend.
Sorry, I meant to say "Hopefully with LINUS working on PPC Linux with his Mac machines,.."
And I did use a comma after that, thankyouverymuch..
7h@nk 90d 1 d1dn'7 7yp3 17 llk3 7h15.
texanpenguin
Registered Penguin
The interesting thing is, Macs have an inordinately small number of components required to be supported in comparison to the x86 world, since Apple makes all the hardware (or compiles it, might be a better word).
A layman would have thought that device support in Linux PPC would have been far greater than its x86 cousin.
Software on the other hand.
A layman would have thought that device support in Linux PPC would have been far greater than its x86 cousin.
Software on the other hand
.
Viro
Registered
The problem is that drivers for todays devices aren't that simple anymore. Take the nVidia video cards for instance. There is no way on earth anyone will be able to reverse engineer it without the specifications. That's what's currently happening on Linux. On x86 nvidia releases some closed source drivers that aren't available on PPC. This means that people using PPC Linux are stuck using some generic 2D driver that doesn't have video acceleration. After using Quartz Extreme 2D, it's frankly quite difficult to go back to that .
The same situation exists with Airport Extreme. Broadcom has been dragging their feet in releasing specifications.
.The same situation exists with Airport Extreme. Broadcom has been dragging their feet in releasing specifications.
nixgeek
Mac of the SubGenius! :-)
Lycander said:
This is true... I haven't ever tried any of his kernels, just thee ones provided from Debian for my StarMax. I wonder if I would get better support for my hardware with one of his kernel compilations.
What differences would there be compared to the one Debian/ppc provides?
#1. There are more x86 linux coders than there are PPC coders, so it's a default by numbers.texanpenguin said:
#2. It's great that Apple mandates the hardware for each system. But whenever Apple releases new hardware that has big enough changes (chipsets and things you don't see/hear of everyday) it usually breaks capatibility with Linux kernels. I remeber when each time new PowerBooks came out, the kernel hackers had to go back to the drawing board and fix things like function keys, sleep, power management etc.
Oh, and now that the old 802.11b Airport is non-existent in new Macs, not even as an option, we have no wireless support in PPC/Linux. But I *think* I saw somewhere, someone got it to work. *shrugg*
It wasn't just the kernel, but various other utilities that made PPC/Linux more enjoyable for me on my iBook. I use Gentoo and I've always chose to go with a Benh kernel. For specific details, you'd have to see the respective websites. But all I've been hearing is people raving about the Benh kernels, especially notebook Mac users, that includes me.nixgeek said: