[nmglug] Caveats to using a 12" Powerbook as a GNU/Linux laptop?

[Gary Sandine]

On Thu, 2004-04-29 at 11:15, Sam Noble wrote:
> So after Mondays 'episode'
> http://sam.noble.home.comcast.net/nohood.JPG
> http://sam.noble.home.comcast.net/notrunk.JPG

Holy cows.  I hope everyone is OK....

> I have some latitude in what I replace it with. But after being in
> Baillio's the other day I'm tempted by the uber-cute 12" Powerbook.
> I think I can finagle the price difference out of either the insurance
> co. or my management. But I've never had a mac, or a tiny laptop before.
> And I wanted to hear you folks input on whether it's a stupid idea or
> not. 
> 
> So all observations are welcome, concerns that come to mind for me are:
> 1.viability of MacOS as secondary OS in comparison to XP here in an all
> Windows + anything I'm using environment.

Cool.

You will probably like it much better than XP assuming you can do in OS
X whatever you need XP for.

> 2.Usability of super-tiny 12" form-factor

The keyboards seem to be fairly standard sized for laptops.  The only
serious limitation, I think, is 1024x768 resolution, which I put up with
because I like my iBook so much.

> 3.Cost-prohibitiveness of accessories (mini-dvi to VGA adaptor comes to
> mind)

Mine came with one of these.  The only other Mac-specific accessory I
can think of is an internal wireless card.  Last I know the g cards did
not work due to having a secret Broadcom chip.  The b cards work great
and can be had for $40 - $50 on eBay.

> 4. Scariness of non-x86 platform

I suggest to try to find out what video chip is in the iBook you want,
and check for related threads in the debian-powerpc mailing list.  I
used to subscribe to this but don't anymore, so I don't know what the
current state of things is.  It seems that it takes 2-3 months, roughly,
when iBook specs change before X (and sleep due to a new video chip)
works well.

I really like mine.  Did I say that already? :)

-- 
Gary Sandine <gars at laclinux.com>