Home » forums » Hacking » Unix and Mac OS X

linux for mac

Submitted by Smiththers on August 19, 2006 - 11:04pm. Unix and Mac OS X

i was wondering if there were a version of lunux where i could just double click installers instead of having to type a million things before i could actually get anything installed? so far i like the way linux looks and seems speedy on my lombard and i guess there is some device wrapper for my wlan card but i cant make heads of tails of how to make it all work! is there some kind of "linux for dummies" manual out there? ive got ubuntu right now, maybe is there a better one out there? i would really like to learn more but wow this is very confusing for me.

» login or register to post comments | previous forum topic | next forum topic

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
Smiththers's picture

oops,i posted in the wrong ar

Submitted by Smiththers on August 19, 2006 - 11:06pm.

oops,i posted in the wrong area....

» -Justin
EVGA 680i, E6850@ 3.4ghz, 2gb G-Skill, 8800gtx, OCZ 700w PS. 250gb + 500gb Seagate Sata, ASUS Sata DVDR.

login or register to post comments
Jon's picture

Ubuntu is probably the most p

Submitted by Jon on August 19, 2006 - 11:12pm.

Ubuntu is probably the most point-n-click distro for PPC out there. I haven't messed with non-standard WLAn drivers, as my Lucent WiFi card worked out of the box on my P2 laptop. I also run Ubuntu on my B&W and it installed and runs pretty well. I also installed the previous release on my iBook (5.10 Breezy Badger) and IIRC it found the AirPort card just fine. I know they were working on AP Extreme support for 6.06, but I have yet to try the LiveCD on my mini. Fromw hat I've seen of 6.06 on the B&W and my P2 laptop, many things were made more user friendly. Are you using the latest release? There are too many nice changes from 5.10, and a whole bunch more from 5.04 that I can't see using either anymore. Smiling

» I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine. - Fritz Perls

login or register to post comments
Smiththers's picture

i wanna say its 5.04 but i co

Submitted by Smiththers on August 20, 2006 - 12:12am.

i wanna say its 5.04 but i could be wrong. what i mean though are there any double-click installers? i cant even seem to update firefox or anything.

» -Justin
EVGA 680i, E6850@ 3.4ghz, 2gb G-Skill, 8800gtx, OCZ 700w PS. 250gb + 500gb Seagate Sata, ASUS Sata DVDR.

login or register to post comments
Ex-parrot's picture

Re: i wanna say its 5.04 but i co

Submitted by Ex-parrot on August 20, 2006 - 9:16pm.
Smiththers wrote:
i wanna say its 5.04 but i could be wrong. what i mean though are there any double-click installers? i cant even seem to update firefox or anything.

If Ubuntu does indeed run on the Lombard (I don't know anything about the specific architecture of that machine) then the latest release Dapper Drake 6.06 contains a very nice "point and click" GUI installer that may get you running without much fuss.

If the Lombard is "old world" though you may be SOL for a nice simple solution as all Oldworlds Macs iirc require jumping through some fairly uncomplicated hoops (booting Mac OS first, for example) to run Linux.

» - Michael "trouble at the mill" Fincham
2 stories posted
login or register to post comments
Jon's picture

The Lombard should be the fir

Submitted by Jon on August 21, 2006 - 12:37am.

The Lombard should be the first New World PowerBook. New World machines are all the ones with factory native USB. The only problem with the 6.06 GUI installer is RAM. Unless you have over 128MB, say 256MB, it will run fairly slowly. My B&W is only 400MHz, but it has 512MB RAM, and the installer and the final OS run really well. I just need a better video card. I'm using the old 8MB optional card from a Beige tower, and it's noticeable. Accelerated video makes a big difference in Ubuntu, just like OS X.

The problem with 5.04 is that the repos are going to go off line before too long. The older Warty 4.10 repos have already been taken offline, in general. 6.06 is a much better design anyway, and it's got 3 years of support. It's worth the download, as so much more stuff works with out the command line tweaks that you don't want.

As for installers, use Synaptic. It's a GUI front-end for apt, and it's the "official" upgrade/installer tool for Ubuntu. You can point-n-click to install all sorts of stuff. Firefox should already be installed though. There is also the nice auto-update notifier in the newer releases, and I'm not sure if 5.04 has it or not.

» I am not in this world to live up to other people's expectations, nor do I feel that the world must live up to mine. - Fritz Perls

login or register to post comments
Ex-parrot's picture

Re: The Lombard should be the fir

Submitted by Ex-parrot on September 5, 2006 - 11:35am.
Jon wrote:
The only problem with the 6.06 GUI installer is RAM. Unless you have over 128MB, say 256MB, it will run fairly slowly.

A little known fact is that if you have less than 192mb the GUI installer doesn't actually work at all. It just locks up in an endless cycle of swapping...

» - Michael "trouble at the mill" Fincham
2 stories posted
login or register to post comments