On Mon, 2003-03-31 at 08:39, Sjoerd Hiemstra wrote:
Hi,
I'm looking for a new computer to replace my P166, and I've been wondering for some time if buying a Mac, and run SuSE for PPC on it, would be a good idea. As far as I understand, Apple has its own flavor of Linux, named Darwin, on top of which OSX runs. Yes I recall their infamous ad 'Send other Unices to /dev/null', once mentioned in this list - I also saw it in the British Linux Magazine lately - thrashing their roots, not being very grateful to the ones they took it from, it seems. AFAICT, Apple was never very good at marketing, and this was another bad move.
Apple is a strange beast, some there are pro Linux/Open Source, others I am not sure about. If you compare Safari, there new browser with iTunes the difference is great with regards to the Open Source community. iTunes still does not play Ogg Vorbis, other than from a third party plugin.
Anyway, I wonder if it would make sense to install SuSE on it, since Darwin is already there? But could KDE, Gnome or some WM be installed on that? A number of big applications, such as StarOffice or WordPerfect, seem to require the i386 architecture. Does this mean that they could not be run on Linux for PPC? I heard rumours that the only available office application for the Mac is MS Office??? And Internet Exploder is their default browser???
You can get Open Office running, but it looks out of place on a Mac. You can also get AppleWorks...Apple have released there own version of X11, indeed with this its easier to get Gimp and Open office running.
Yes I could have asked this on the SuSE-PPC list, but these questions are probably extremely basic for them, and more interesting for this list I guess, where there might be people considering purchasing a Mac.
Should ask there to :). Remember, the PPC version is way behind the x86 version. Lastly, Darwin != Linux, I find SuSE better than MacOS X and I am not saying that with no experience as I use it 5 days a week 9 hours a day, but again with any OS your mileage may vary :). Perhaps if you can play with a demo machine for awhile I would recommend that. Ovwerall, if I had a choice between MacOS X and Windows I would choose Mac :).
Greets, S.H.
--
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