[TriLUG] Bought my first Laptop--a new Apple Powerbook with OSX--With Linux software in mind I have three questions:

[Robby Dermody]

----- Original Message -----
From: "al johson" <alfjon at mindspring.com>
To: <trilug at trilug.org>
Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2002 3:02 PM
Subject: Re: [TriLUG] Bought my first Laptop--a new Apple Powerbook with
OSX--With Linux software in mind I have three questions:


> Re: Windows programs--I probably should have said that the few Windoze
> programs I can't do without (e.g. Usenet programs) will probably work on
the
> Macs, if I can't find an OSX substitute for them.

If it's a usenet newsreader, linux has an absolutely stunning GTK app called
"pan".
It blows away anything else I've used (Agent for windows being one). For
OSX,
I have no idea...it might compile. :)

> I'm in no means in love
> with Macs, as I'm using a no-name Win98 PC right now, but since I was
going
> to have to spend a bunch anyway, I thought I'd get something that might
last
> some time, and I definitely didn't want to get a MS-DOS machine because I
> absolutely hate every OS Microsoft has made since Win98.

I can mostly agree with you there. However, I'm using XP right now and I can
honestly say this is the first Windows that I enjoy using. 2000 was almost
there,
but it still smelled too much like that _horrid_ NT 4.0. The Win9x series is
just
shared-memory hell. From a users-perspective, XP with about half of that new
fruity
XP interface crap turned off has a very nice interface which doesn't get in
my way,
and the theming support is decent now (with the appropiate hacks). I run
Linux
under VMWare and after some tweaking with replcing the default X video
driver,
my stability for both linux within XP and XP itself has been great. Finally,
a
Microsoft OS that doesn't constantly crash (provided you are running quality
hardware, that's one of the big secrets).

> And since I've
> noticed there were problems installing Linux on a few MSDOS laptops, I
> thought it might be best to get a laptop which already had a BSD OS!! That
> was just my reasoning. I'm not a Mac-evangelist or anything. The
evangelism
> I leave to my best friend, Jim. ---73, Alf.
> ================================================

The Apple laptops definitely look cool, and I used OS X a very small amount,
but the fact that you could get to the underlying BSD subsystem means it
will
keep you busy and learning for awhile. Linux support on laptops is so quirky
because it's still a very proprietary platform, and the fact that running
down
equipment cost is a big objective, so you will see a move to move dedicated
hardware functionality to software (winmodems, other winDSP applications).
I have a IBM Thinkpad A21P and besides the modem (a winmodem),
support for it is excellent under Linux.

Enjoy your laptop!

Robby