[clue-tech] Linux on an iMac: Worth it?

[Nate Duehr]

Timothy Klein wrote:
> So I just bought an iMac G5 17" flat-panel/computer.  I have been 
> learning the ins and outs of OS X.  I like it, more or less (although 
> the hype overdoes it).

It's BSD with a pretty desktop.  ;-)  The user apps (iTunes, iMovie, 
iPhoto) are also rediculously easy to use if you have the hardware for 
the latter two.

> I'm curious if anyone has a compelling reason to use Linux on such 
> hardware?  I have a fast LAN connection to my Linux machine, with 
> terminal and X application access on the Mac.  I have a Unix-based OS 
> that can run a lot of the free software I like on Linux, should I 
> choose.  I won't be ditching OS X, as I want the support for my iPod, 
> Photoshop, ColorSync, etc...  But how hard is a dual-boot set up?  It's 
> a 64-bit machine, which I have wanted for my Linux machine for awhile...

I've put Linux on iMac machines, and generally when I got done I went... 
"Hmm, yep.  That's Linux."  Nothing exciting or earth-shattering there. 
  Especially since you have a full shell and can install tools like Fink 
on OSX to get almost all software that's packaged for Debian.

Once it's installed...

fink-get install <blah> -- and you're done.  ;-)

> I am curious, does anybody use Linux rather than Mac OS X on Apple 
> hardware?  Are there any Knoppix-like live CDs for the Mac?

Hmm, never looked for one.

> (PS -> After living with just Linux for years now, the font display on 
> the Mac surprised me.  For all the griping about the horror of Linux 
> fonts, the freetype rendering is actually noticeably superior, compared 
> to whatever Apple uses.  And it is not a hardware issue:  X applications 
> that display on my Mac, but are KDE apps running on my Linux box, look 
> better on the same monitor, than the native Mac apps.  I guess all that 
> work on fonts paid off.)

I never bother to do any "work" on my fonts on Linux, and considering 
that OSX is now a few years old, it used to look better than the Linux 
machines... but not much.

The Apple laptops don't keep up on a price/performance ratio, but 
they're nice solid machines that tend to last a while and you rarely 
have odd-ball hardware issues with them.  The G5's are speedy, but I 
would like to think a 64-bit Opteron home-built might be a bit cheaper 
with similar performance.

Being able to run a "real" copy of MS Word or Excel and do Unix stuff 
used to be a big draw to the Mac for me for work stuff, but it's getting 
so easy to do that with Wine and/or VMWare (and at similar pricing 
too... Office for OSX is $$$$$!)... or even just using OpenOffice, that 
it's not a big deal anymore.

If you do load Linux and set up all the partitions and stuff... check 
out MOL (MacOnLinux)... You can fire up OSX inside your Linux session, 
albeit slowly.  I never got it working WAY back in the day, but I have 
seen some folks that find that one a net parlor trick.  ;-)

One other feature that works pretty darn well is iChat's video and audio 
stuff.  I click on my friend from Albany, NY's username and we just chat 
via audio... no messin' around with settings, etc.  It just seems to 
always work.

If you share the box with someone else, Expose' (fast user switching) 
seems to work real well too.

And power management... for all the work on Linux on ACPI and other 
"not-so-standard" standards, Apple machines just go to sleep when you 
close them and come back up and restart all the necessary "stuff" 
properly when you open them.  That's nice for road-warriors... no 
screwing around for days getting the laptop not to be a giant power-hog, 
like on most hardware on Linux that I've used so far.

In general, I kinda look at my wife's iBook and the iMacs as "this level 
of usability is what the Linux desktops should be shooting for".  The 
things just work, and rarely screw up.

The only problem I've run into ever was a font corruption problem on the 
old Graphite iMac, which didn't render it unusable, but made some menus 
look very wrong.  Unfortunately not even die-hard mac fans have been 
able to point out where that problem is, and I'm just living with it, as 
I don't feel like reloading that machine right now.

Nate