[G4] A fond hello

[Eric Wood]

Hello Stuart and everyone,

One disappointment I had with the system was a lack of sound input - the
"digital audio" G4 has output only. I also happened to have an Ensoniq
PCI sound card available. Upon installing Linux, I found that, at least
with Fedora Core 6, the Mac sound was not fully supported. I tried the
PC soundcard, and it works beautifully. I do not know of a Mac OS X
driver for it, so that makes Linux ultimately useful if getting
sound-input, though of course there are other ways to achieve this. I'm
simply poor and like to work with what I have.

As far as I know, there are few or no working open source CD and DVD
burning applications for Mac OS X. Two that I like in Fedora are Brasero
and Gnome Baker.

Aside from these, I don't know of many particular apps that exist for
PPC Linux that are not available for Darwin and OS X. I do like the
included Add/Remove Programs function of Fedora Linux, however, as it
has a huge selection of free apps, and one can add more by adding
repositories, such as Livna RPM and freshrpms.net. The main difference
with those repos is they offer "non-free" items such as MPEG and MP3
codecs, and programs such as VLC (VideoLAN Client).

As for speed, I feel that Linux is a more efficient OS. I believe that
OS X, like Windows Vista (though to a lesser extent) tends to be
bloated. I didn't run the system with OS X very much, so a proper speed
comparison is difficult. I would need to install it again and purposely
compare tasks.

One app I enjoy using on Linux is AlephOne, a modern Marathon game
engine. http://source.bungie.org in case a link is needed. I've had to
compile it by hand, but the dependencies (such as SDL and LUA scripting)
are available through Add/Remove.

There are plenty of Linux disadvantages, of course. The only Mac games I
can run are what will run in Basilisk II, and getting that emulator
required the use of freshrpms.net. MoL (Mac-on-Linux) isn't included in
any Fedora repository, and I can't get the source from the web site to
compile. I'm not a programmer, and can't assess what's wrong with it.
Issues with the system being in constant development and with so many of
the applications in a like state means that using this system feels like
a big beta test that never ends. I can't subscribe to iTunes podcast
feeds. There's no flash in the web browsers, aside from "Gnash," which
attempts to fill those shoes. I find it slow and not very compatible.

So... If you use your G4 because it's a lot nicer than Windows, Mac OS
remains the best option. I use Linux on here, aside from the
aforementioned hardware issues, because I fancy myself a geek. I also
love the PowerPC - it remains a far superior architecture to Intel's,
even if Intel's making chips that outperform PPC. I feel that Macintosh
and IBM CPUs belong together - alternative choice!

End of rant.

Eric

On Fri, 2007-06-15 at 08:21 +0100, Stuart Franey wrote:
> Hi Eric, what version of Linux do you use and what software that you can't get on OS X? How does performance compare between the 2?
> 
> Stuart
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: g4-bounces at listserver.themacintoshguy.com on behalf of Eric Wood
> Sent: Fri 6/15/2007 8:15 AM
> To: g4 at listserver.themacintoshguy.com
> Subject: [G4] A fond hello
>  
> Eric here. I've just joined the list and want to say hello. I have a G4
> "digital audio" model with an OWC G4 1.6 GHz dual upgrade, a Radeon 9800
> card, 1.5 gigs of RAM and Fedora Linux 7. Oh, and a third-party keyboard
> that manages to be incompatible with this particular model's Open
> Firmware (can't hold "c" to boot a CD, so on).
> 
> In fact, if anyone has questions about using Linux on a G4, I may be
> able to provide information. I can say right off that with the upgrades,
> the system is a screamer. Oh, I upgraded to an LG branded LightScribe
> DVD burner drive and OS X was hanging up with it due to an
> incompatibility with Energy Saver. I had to disable drive sleep. Linux
> hasn't had that issue, however.
> 
> OK, that's all for now.
> 
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