Best Distro for a Mac...

[designbydave]

i have installed ubuntu on an old crappy clamshell ibook and it ran pretty good. detected the airport card and everything. ubuntu seems to be a kinda lightweitht disto too so it should have no problems on your g4 ibook. give ubuntu a shot, they will even send you cds for free if you dont want to download

[genesus]

Which distros run best on Macs? Specifically an iBook 14" g4 w/512MB and an 80GB hd, sadly it's got an ati card in it, but I digress...

OS X. No really, I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but I think by far the best OS you can run on Apple hardware is Apple's OS X.

You would think that, but after ghosting and testing about 250 g5s with tiger...X is the most bloated os that I've ever encountered...if you really strip it down it might be usefull...If you want a linux check out gentoo for ppc for a challenge...if you want something easier with all the software already there ubuntu for ppc is good, the discs are free to order and you can test it out first, ubuntu ppc is the only ppc livecd that I've ever encountered...

[techieMoe]

You would think that, but after ghosting and testing about 250 g5s with tiger...

You're not the target audience for OS X. For *desktop* use, it's great IMO.

[chopin1810]

Good point made by Moe. Mac's audience is the same audience as Windows' audience. If you go to Apple's web site, all of their "stories" are of people who aren't too edjamakated about computers, but just want theirs "to work" (in fact, that's apple's tag line:"it just works."). The Windows audience doesn't even know that Internet Exploiter is not the internet. My mom asks me "how do I turn on the internet?". So how is that audience going to deal with all the funky messages they are going to get with Linux?

[genesus]

You would think that, but after ghosting and testing about 250 g5s with tiger...

You're not the target audience for OS X. For *desktop* use, it's great IMO.

Maybe the easiest but by god its the slowest, plus with each new improvement it just gets slower and slower...

[chopin1810]

I have no idea. I've never used a Mac. I have no interest to use a Mac. But once the entire Windoze system becomes totally corrupt (I hate you Dell) then I'm switching.

[onlinebacon]

I like Mac OSX, I just dont like the fact you have to pay for software . I loooove linux and bsd.

[pavlo_7]

Hello everyone!

I agree with techieMoe:

OS X. No really, I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but
I think by far the best OS you can run on Apple
hardware is Apple's OS X.

But what if someone does not want to buy PC to try
Linux? That's the case with friend of mine. He wants to have
both OS X and Linux on his NewWorld iMac, CPU: PowerPC 750 (33.11) 500MHz, RAM: 256 MB, Video: ATI Rage 128 Pro.
So I tried to install these: Debian Sarge and Etch testing, Fedora 4, Yellow Dog, Ubuntu, and SUSE 10 RC.

- Yellow dog failed to start installer.
- Fedora installed but takes 10 min to boot and
freezes after that.
- Ubuntu is like Fedora. Cannot really use it on this
machine.
- Debian Sarge installed but did not boot.
- Debian Etch: once i got everything working
perfectly, but then GUI failed to start after reboot.
It was network install, and when I tried to reinstall
later (several times), GUI did not start at all.
- SUSE 10 RC is the only one that installed without
problems and reboots so far.
However, there are several issues with SUSE:
1) When starting KDE, you get error that powersave
deamon is not running.
2) Boot loader cannot be installed during normal
installation, so for now I boot it from
installation CD1 (choose boot installed system).
3) The biggest problem is that desktop screen is
shifted to the left (about 3 cm), so some of the icons
are not visible, although accessible. Changing
resolution does not help.

Overall, SUSE on this iMac is the best. It's fast, looks professional, and is easy
to use for someone who wants to learn Linux. I am actually posting this message from it.

Does anyone know how to fix this desktop problem?

Thanks !

[chopin1810]

Usually there are a few buttons on your monitor. Try fiddling with those. There should be an option for something like ""horizontal position".

[pavlo_7]

Usually there are a few buttons on your monitor. Try fiddling with those. There should be an option for something like ""horizontal position".

It's iMac. There is only one "power" button on it. I know I could do it on PC monitor, but it's not possible with this machine.
Is there any other way to do it?