I am in the market for a new notebook. I am seriously considering a mac. I have used Linux and windows for a number of years and would definately install yellow dog or some other ppc flavor of linux on the powerbook.

My questions is should I get a mac or a ibm/pc compatible notebook?

Just would like to know the advantages and disadvantages

Thanks

Macs use bsd based UNIX. Not really that far off from linux. However, the choice woiuld come down to what are you using the notebook for? Work with a lot of graphics? Well, hands down go with the mac. Crunching numbers? Go with the PC.

Just be advised.... You have far more choices with the PC than the mac. There are over a hundred distros of Linux, but only a handfull will run on that MAC. It was meant to run OSX (bsd UNIX based)

Personally, I would just buy whichever I could get cheaper, especially if I wasn't planning on keeping the preinstalled OS.

LOL, then a Mac would be out of the question huh?

I used MACS back with their orig OS, not much with OSX. I would not buy the cheapest, but would be more into checking the hardware compatibility lists. A cheap PC that needs a separate PCMCIA NIC $$ a separate modem $$ A separate wifi card $$, lousy graphic card, low ram.. Is it really worth it buying cheap now and spending more later?

No, of course I meant I would get whichever was cheaper with the specs I need.

I've installed Linux on a couple of laptops so far with varying amounts of success. It works on all of them, but things like power management and wireless is always an issue.

I've also had an opportunity to spend time with OS X on both a Powerbook and a G5. OS X is now my desktop OS of choice. Pretty much anything I used to do in Linux is available on the Mac, and if I want something that's not I can ssh into one of my Linux boxes and export a window. But the kicker for me is being able to really work with Word and Excel documents (as required by my company) without any fear of corruption either on my end or my boss' end (it's happened with OO).

With IBM now getting out of the desktop/laptop business, the iBooks and Powerbooks are the only laptops I'd consider if spending my own money.

Try it as stock - you just may like it.

Buy an iBook: Keep OSX (=BSD) and have fun with the very good GUI.

Why ?
-It work's (No WiFi troubles, sync with most Bluetooth-Mobiles, much lesser Problems)
-longer Batterylife (up to 4 h)
-small, lightweight and tough
-very silent (you nearly can't hear it, even in a silent room! I could sleep on it)
-more and more Linux+UNIX Software run on OSX or can be converted.

Why not:
-Many good Games will be also on Mac, but it's not really a game machine.
-Windows programms are not runnig (there are emulators), but you can do nearly everything with a Mac too (if not better). Check if you need a "very special" program.

BTW: There are people who take this question on religious level. Just listen on logical arguments ;-)

get mac, it´s great. if you need oss, install fink or gentoo for os x.
http://fink.sourceforge.net/
http://www.metadistribution.org/macos/

get a PowerMac if you have the money.

If you can't afford it, iBook is cool.. if you still can't afford that.. go for IBM ThinkPad.

PowerMac...

and if you are in my monetary situation, you can always settle for an etch-a-sketch and a mild hallucinageon.

let's not forget to consider drug costs over time

redjokerx > let's not forget to consider drug costs over time

LOL ~ totally true :-D


On the Linux question, I've installed ydl 4.0 and debian(several times each...) on my G3 900 32VRAM 640RAM 14" iBook (September 2003). I will say that everything works wonderfully on ydl 4.0... except sound. I mean, once you reconfigure to an LCD screen driver(oddly enough, it autodetects the mobile graphics card right, yet doesn't logically conclude an lcd, instead of a crt), the XGA works great, and wireless works well too(sound hardware check works fine once you raise pcm on kmix, but no sound in any application). On Debian, the sound seems to work now and then... however, the XGA doesn't work. However, these are both with .iso's with the 2.6.8 kernel. The 2.6.9 kernel for ppc is out, but I haven't seen it in an .iso yet... though, it will probably be in one this month...(i hope.). For those who successfully upgraded to the 2.6.9 kernel in ydl 4.0, they said the sound issue was fixed, but another unrelated issue came up. Which isn't really unexpected, i'd think. On ydl... there is no problems with the CD opening from the GUI interface. (there is no external cd button on macs) On debian, there was problems off and on with opening the CD from the GUI interface. Debian defaults to gnome, and ydl defaults to kde. Debian has tons more applications and the awesome aptitude, but with only 800x600 on my iBook LCD presently, graphic work in Debian is pointless, presently. With ydl, most of your applications are easy enough to find, though you might have to look at the rpms of ydl 3.0 to find some applications. If you want the latest of linux applications, you'll have to compile the source for ppc.(aka... if you want the recent Gimp 2.21, instead of Gimp 2.0 which comes with ydl, you'd have to compile the source.) Presently, ydl 4.0 does NOT include blender or wings3d... so you'd have to compile the source for blender to get, say, blender 2.36.

On OSX, when you go through install, you select the options button, and select the full bsd base and all the languages, you'd want... at least english, japanese, and spanish, i'd guess. So when you get OSX, you can zero the hard drive with the OSX install disks(yes, unlike micropuff, apples come with the ORIGINAL *FULL* install disks.). How do you zero the drive? .... well... this is an all important trick, because it allows dual booting partitions, or tri, or whatever, as you don't want to do for first drive partitions with linux. You insert the OSX Disk 1, and Restart at the Apple menu, then press and hold C key when the screen goes black, until the computer boots off the Install CD. Then, you go to the upper menu, and there is an option called 'Disk Utility'. You select that, and wala, you're in partition haven. When you quit 'Disk Utility', you are automatically taken to Installation. So you format the partition for OSX as HFS+, and linux partitions as HFS. When you install a linux, you just pick a partition, and partition in the partition, lol.

OSX when fully installed is pretty powerful. A fine system, no doubt. There's even Wine being ported over as 'darwine', and a linux/kde being ported over as running in OSX as a native environment. Both of the these are in pre-alpha versions, but they are a might interesting. Terminal is what you use as your shell, and it is just as permission happy as linux is. sudo instead of su is used to do certain commands, although if you know the trick, you can permanently activate superuser so you can log in through su -l . Gimp, Blender, and Wings3d are all actively worked on for OSX, and new versions of Gimp are the only ones that are a little slower getting to other platforms outside of Linux x86. Much of the Adobe and Macromedia software runs native on OSX as well. And the built in firewall hiding in the sharing menu of preferences is all you need to keep OSX secure, it seems. So, it is a far far far cry from windows. A lot more like linux, exept that a lot of necessary commercial apps run natively on OSX. It is simply the most successful merge of security and compatibility to date. However, if you are able to sustain yourself on open source only, then you might prefer going to Linux via ydl, or similar.

I have an iBook with Airport... but I don't think Airport Extreme is supported by Linux right now. So, wireless might be out, on a new mac laptop, if you don't dual boot. Truthfully though, it is just an internal PCMCIA slot, so if you look around boards, you'll find someone that took their powerbook and successfully used a different wireless card in the PCMCIA slot. In fact, one or two people maybe have gotten their airport extreme to work... albeit with some work.

Hope that helps. Oh, VPC7 is the main commercial Windows emulator for OSX.... it's pretty much just like running windows, security problems, bloated, slow.... yep... it's windows alright.

Also, remember that Apple updates laptops around May and around November... so you might want to wait if you can for the hardware updates.

southpaw

i agree with flip-top. i pretty much rock linux on all my desktops, but use a powerbook stock with 10.3. it plays nicely with my desktops, and i run all the same good old cross platform apps (firefox, vlc, etc.). and of course, you run fink to install unix apps debian style.

Plus, just to keep things interesting, I'm running OSX 10.3.7 on my iBook G4 and if I want, with the help of Fink and X11, can switch over to KDE, Gnome, ICEwm, WindowsMaker, Enlightenment. It's pretty fun and nice to use KDE et. al. apps on the iBook.

Also, I can X11/ssh forward to my Linux desktop and open any program on the Linux box on my iBook as if it were running directly on my iBook.

If you're like me and money is tight, the iBook is a good deal over the Powerbook. Although Apple makes great hardware for all the various machines they produce, I've read over and over again that the iBook is a much sturdier machine than the Powerbook, physically speaking.

Regarding battery power: someone said 4 hours. I've had my iBook for over a year now and if I'm not running cpu intensive apps and if I dim the brightness of the screen down, I'm still getting 5 plus hours on the battery. It was closer to 6 when I first bought it.

no offense but i have to disagree with that statement myself. i am an apple technician and a once ibook (g3 700MHz) owner. i personally had to replace the logic board 3 times on my own unit and finally got apple to replace the unit and got a powerbook (g4 1GHz) out of it! anyhow besides the 12" powerbook (warping issues due to heat) i would say if you can afford one it would be better investment that an ibook. good luck!