[Ti] Running Debian/PowerPC on a PowerBook (long)

[Chris Olson]

On Sep 1, 2005, at 7:08 PM, Mike Bigley wrote:
> Though I also suspect that those who REALLY believe that stuff  
> would be unsubscribing from this list and joining a Windows laptop  
> group to prepare for their switch.

I have no use for Windows because it doesn't run on PowerPC.  A  
PowerBook is a PowerBook, and they happen to run PowerPC linux just  
as well as they run Mac OS X.  I haven't used a linux desktop system  
since the KDE 2.x days, and quite a few changes have happened.

Under linux I find better driver support than I do under OS X for  
some devices like scanners and external USB drives.  And excellent  
support for software tools like OpenOffice, GIMP, Scribus (desktop  
publishing), non-linear video editing and moving making, and even  
video conferencing software that actually *works* with MS Netmeeting.

After loading my old PowerBook G4/400 with PowerPC Debian and  
installing all the software, I've found Digikam to be superior to  
iPhoto, I can handle Quicktime .mov format perfectly, as well as  
Windows Media and Real formats.  I have Kino for digital video/movie  
making as well as Cinelerra (which I had to compile from source code  
because there were no PowerPC binaries available).  Cinelerra is  
about on par with Final Cut Pro and the interface is very similar to  
FCP, however I have to learn to use it yet.  I can even play and edit  
mpeg-2 without needing to buy any plugin, if you can imagine that.   
AirPort wireless works perfectly.  I got Firefox for the web, and  
Ximian Evolution for email which gives me 100% compatibility with  
Microsoft Exchange.  I got my music collection into Rhythmbox, which  
is almost identical to iTunes as far as the interface and features,  
plays AAC/MPEG-4 audio just fine, and works perfectly with my iPod  
mini.  I got Rosegarden which was free and blows GarageBand right out  
of the water for performance.  Rosegarden actually works on a 400 Mhz  
machine without all the interface glitches I experience in GarageBand  
on my dual G4 PowerMac when playing several tracks at once.

I plug in my digital camera to a USB port and it "just works".  I  
plug my DV camera into the Firewire port and it "just works".  The  
computer sleeps when I close the lid, wakes when I open it, and the  
battery even lasts about 30 minutes longer than it did with OS X  
because the system UI takes less than half the cpu power to do simple  
things like move windows around on the screen.  Nor does Debian use a  
brain-dead virtual memory driver like OS X does, so the pages in/out  
of RAM to disk are considerably less under Debian which not only  
speeds things up, it's easier on the hard disk.

Setting it up and installing the software was trivial.  The only real  
problem I had was messing around with the X-server settings to get  
1152x768 resolution instead of 1024x768.  In the end I'm pleased with  
the performance.  Running KDE on my old G4/400 is considerably  
snappier and more responsive than my 1 GHz Ti running OS X.

At first it was an experiment.  So far I haven't spent one solitary  
dime on software and I find the quality to be every bit as good as  
anything you can buy for OS X.  The interface is decidedly more like  
Windows 2000, but is incredibly stable and fast - no more spinning  
beachballs and Windows networking/printing to shared printers is  
totally seamless.  I didn't have to install one printer or driver -  
all the shared printers on our Macs just showed up automatically in  
the CUPS/KDE print dialog and they all work perfectly.  Now I'm down  
to the point where I have to get two commercial apps (Mathematica and  
VariCAD) to make a complete switch.

The beauty of Debian is that it runs on everything from a Mac to high- 
end pSeries servers with full support for PowerPC embedded 405, 440,  
850, 860, 8500; the desktop families: 603, 604, 750 (G3), 74xx (G4),  
970 (G5); and the server families: POWER3, RS64, POWER4, and POWER5.   
Debian also runs on all x86 processors, 64-bit AMD, and 64-bit Intel  
Itanium2 (IA64), as well as Sun SPARC, MIPS (SGI), ARM, and several  
others.

A few months ago I tried to install PowerPC Debian in a dual G5/2.5  
and found poor support in Debian for the PowerMac's cooling system.   
Apple refuses to release the internal specifications for their  
hardware so it has to be reverse engineered.  Yellow Dog Linux was  
the first to get full support for the G5's cooling system, and that  
has now also migrated to Debian.  That'll be my next project.  If the  
G5 goes well my migration off OS X will begin on a more serious note.
--
Chris