[techtalk] swaping & upgrading

[Adriana Gonzalez]

> 3. Has anyone ever done linux of any kind on a mac?

I have LinuxPPC running on ma Mac G3 B&W.  I'm not an expert, but here are my
observations....

1.  The compiler is not as
optimizing as the comercial mac or the x86 GNU compiler.  However,  some
numerical apps like SETI, run faster than on MacOS.  (I never compared it
to x86).
2.  Before 3 weeks ago, windows managers were painfully slow, and then we
got the  card's 2-D  acceleration supported, and it was awesome.  It was fast

even in 32 bit color.  However, this server was a beta that expired this
Sunday.  We have a new beta, but it runs slow again.  This beta will also
last 3 weeks.
This is the XF86 port, there are other servers however.
I've run Linux on a Beige G3, and the graphics were OK there.
3.  TCP/IP implementation is much faster than on MacOS .
4.  Kernel development is not that fast as in x86.  For example, I still
can't print with my USB printer and it looks it'll take a while.  They say
the are trying to join the PPC kernel tree with the x86's, but to best of my
kwonledge that has not happened yet.
5.  You can't just wipe MacOS away; some of the critical hardware
initialization depends on MacOS starting before Linux.  This might change in
the future.  In fact, in theory you can start Linux from MacOS and MacOS
from Linux without rebooting .  I can do the former, but the
later always complains about not having enough memory to fork...
6.  Software that is distributed in binaries only is harder to find.
7.  The rest of it behaves like a normal linux installation.

>



--
   Adriana Gonzalez


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