migrating to Mac vs Linux

[Boczkowski]

whilst you two are here

what's the crack with free word processing software for these here Macs?

 

[FridgeMagnet]

There's openoffice for Macs now. It's not that good tbh but it should improve, it's only recently they made a native mac client at all.

 

[stowpirate]

Bear in mind the G3, G4 and G5 processors were RISC chips and therefore did more work per 'MHz' than the equivalently clocked Pentium.


You should be fine with a G4 with its AltiVec accelerator for multimendia processes. A G3 might struggle with video/flash though.

EDIT: A quick google shows that even the G4 struggles with youtube, unless you've got a speedy one There must be some seriously sloppy code there!

I have a Pentium 3 900mhz laptop that has no problems with flash playback at normal webpage size but at full screen is very jerky. That is using Puppy Linux Seamonkey 2 with only 128mb ram.

 

[Jonti]

I dunno what you're doing wrong newbie but I use rdiff-backup regularly. I back up my home partition ("documents and data") accross the network to a second machine. It does the job just fine for me. Then again, I'd have no idea how to take a backup from an MS or MAC system!

I tried Ubuntu on my x31 over the weekend and it worked like a charm - except for the wifi

I had a look on the internet to see if there was something I could download that would 'just work' and every link included stuff about fiddling about with the command line interface, which looks like too much effort for me.

Lenovo's wireless package is great but sadly it doesn't work in Linux.

Well, it does work "in linux" -- the problem you bumped into is the limitations of the user interface of the distro you tried, that's all.

The good news is that Ubuntu's wireless networking interface is coming on in leaps and bounds right now. The bad news is that it's not completely there yet. The good news is that someone (like me!) can fix it for you. PM me if you'd like it sorted, OK

In fact, that's generally the good thing about linux in general, the fact that all problems can be sorted ('cos the system has no secrets from you, see?). One example ~ earlier this week, my aging main machine pretty much died, so all I did was take the hard drive out and put it in another box (bought cheaply without a harddisk, so no MS tax to pay).

When the new box booted up, I was up and running straightway. When I've transplanted a windows drive like that, it's never worked. With linux, that little trick has never failed.

 

[UnderOpenSky]

Flash is far more of a pig that most realise. Web browsing's speedy, fine and dandy until you hit a particularly flashtastic site.

I'm using an old laptop whilst my main machine is down, its fine for most stuff, but there is one site that uses lots of flash advertising and slows it to a crawl. Adblock FTW!

 

[tarannau]

Then again, I'd have no idea how to take a backup from an MS or MAC system!

On Mac OS 10.5 you simply plug in a hard disk and enable Time Machine. Handles it all for you automatically, giving you the ability to reverse to the state of the disk to a day/week/month ago and so on. Couldn't be simpler - natty user friendly interface too.

 

[editor]

surf th'web
write
email
blog a bit
use flickr
sync my Palm pda

no heavy gaming, music or image manipulation going on in my internet usage.

Maybe a cheap netbook would do the job?

 

[Jonti]

I'm using an old laptop whilst my main machine is down, its fine for most stuff, but there is one site that uses lots of flash advertising and slows it to a crawl. Adblock FTW!

Or, there's a trick that works on all machines, MAC, MS or Linux. Your system's "hosts file" can be used to block the advertising servers, no extra software required.

It's very easy to download and install an advert-blocking hosts file. You can use it to block *any* web address just by adding the appropriate info.

I hardly notice the adverts aren't there, and it certainly speeds up surfing!

 

[Jonti]

On Mac OS 10.5 you simply plug in a hard disk and enable Time Machine. Handles it all for you automatically, giving you the ability to reverse to the state of the disk to a day/week/month ago and so on. Couldn't be simpler - natty user friendly interface too.

What about some old tower I've picked up off the street? Could I use that as my backup server instead?

 

[Crispy]

What about some old tower I've picked up off the street? Could I use that as my backup server instead?

You could buy a HDD enclosure for a tenner and have a much more compact and energy efficient solution.

 

[Jonti]

An hour or so a week is not much -- and I think you may have discounted the energy used in the manufacture of the kit.

The way I see it, it's a bit like junking a secondhand car to buy a more fuel efficient model. It takes a v e r r r r y l o n g t i m e for that mooted efficiency to recoup the energy of the discarded item.

 

[tarannau]

mate, I use an 8 year old mac as a server. It's heat and energy efficient to the point of not needing a fan. Short of weaving it from non-Panda favoured bamboo, I don't see why you're trying to claim some kind of moral high ground here. I know you're a Linux evangelist, but it's not the only OS family that prospers on aged hardware.

 

[Crispy]

An hour or so a week is not much -- and I think you may have discounted the energy used in the manufacture of the kit.

The way I see it, it's a bit like junking a secondhand car to buy a more fuel efficient model. It takes a v e r r r r y l o n g t i m e for that mooted efficiency to recoup the energy of the discarded item.

Yeah, but it's far easier to stuff an old drive in an enclosure than fuck about with a tower box, get it on the network, set up your server software blah blah blah. Time Machine goes: Plug in hard drive. Would you like to use this drive for backups? Yes. Done.

 

[newbie]

I dunno what you're doing wrong newbie but I use rdiff-backup regularly.

Once again, and by chance, I find myself involved in a world of Ubuntu frustration just as I read a thread where someone evangelises that it 'just works'. And once again the frustrations are put down to user error. ah well

 

[miniGMgoit]

Aw come on Newbie
I had a week of headaches with Ubuntu as I figured it all out and now I couldn't be happier.
I only use the machine for web, downlaoding/uploading, encoding burning etc and I have noticed a marked improvment in my experience with it compared to XP that it was running before. I like it so much that I haven't switched on my Vista Machine since installing Ubuntu.
Hang in there

 

[stowpirate]

I don't know what all the fuss is about backup? It is as easy as drag and dropping the whole home directory onto another hard drive or partition. You don't need any specific software just the file manager and a mouse. I do not understand why people feel they need any specific software to do this task as simple copying files is the quickest option.

 

[tarannau]

It's not though is it? I've restored from full backups before, but cloning your disk every time's a lengthy pain in the arse. And many backup software solutions don't work as well as promised - better to have OS level support if poss.

It's far easier and more convenient to use a system that requires little or no user input and autosaves any new files. And considerably easier to 'wind back' time to recover one file or a specific document, not just from the one 'cloned' backup, but from any point in recent time.

What's not to like about that? It makes my old (cloning monthly and weekly updates) backups look painfully old hat

 

[Jonti]

I don't see why you're trying to claim some kind of moral high ground here. ..

You don't see it 'cos it ain't happening.

I made a joke about the throwaway culture, that's all. It's you that's gotten all huffy and on a high horse over things.

 

[Jonti]

I don't know what all the fuss is about backup? It is as easy as drag and dropping the whole home directory onto another hard drive or partition. You don't need any specific software just the file manager and a mouse. I do not understand why people feel they need any specific software to do this task as simple copying files is the quickest option.

Yes, this.

Guys, you is being gently mocked, innit!

 

[tarannau]

Should I give you the benefit of the doubt and suggest that you accidently slipped on the keyboard and typed that not-all moralising comparison about 'second hand cars' and 'energy efficiency' then?

Perhaps you and Stow can get together and tell Newbie how silly he is for getting a simple Linux backup procedure 'wrong' again. Or keep pretending that dragging and dropping the whole directory is the most efficient way of backing-up your pc.

 

[Jonti]

But that said, although just drag and drop is all most folks need (and note there's no need to overwrite *unchanged* files), a few folks might want more.

Like, for example, the ability to restore a version of a file from any given date in the past. Or the ability to back up over a network or even the internet to a remote location. And if you are backing up daily changes to a remote location over the internet, you may well want to send your data encrypted. And so on.

So specialist back-up software certainly is required for some purposes, even if most users need no more than a pen-drive and to remember to drag and drop their essential stuff to it from time to time.

 

[Jonti]

Tarannau, I guess you didn't notice that was in response to Crispy extolling the virtues of the energy efficiency of buying new kit rather than reusing old, but still servicable kit.

Fan bois in boring and lacking in humour shocker!

 

[tarannau]

Hold on. I think most here have been giving fairly impartial advice, with some honest appraisals of the potential flaws of getting a more aged machine.

You and your evangelist buddy however have had a little pop at Newbie for not getting something 'simple' to work, compounded that with a 'gentle' mocking for not dragging his whole directory as backup, then conceded that may not be the best way to do things after all.

Yeah thanks guys, you're winningly selling Linux to everyone with your sneering. Love the way you accuse others of being humourless too.

 

[Jonti]

Interesting narrative, that. Newbie regularly pops up sneering at linux and publicising his difficulties. He's the guy that doesn't want to be helped -- posting knocking copy is his thing.

Naturally, other people say "Well, it ain't like that really" -- and according to you, this is out-of-order?

 

[rhod]

Super Ubuntu! (Ubuntu on steroids) - works very nicely on my old Inspiron 6000. WiFi & media buttons all work fine, and has no problem detecting SDHC cards (unlike the Dell/XP driver)

 

[tarannau]

And he's a decent counterbalance to your 'it all just works optimism', one representative of other folks who struggle with aspects of Linux installs.

The case of backup is a telling example for me. Two folks suggest an excellent OS level backup solution on one platform and Stow wades in to tell them that you don't need that - copying the whole directory is the best way to go, even when it clearly isn't. You then jump in to suggest that you've been 'gently' mocking everyone and then concede that some backup solutions may actually be in order.

As I say, thanks for that.

 

[Jonti]

Newbie's true genius is in picking the wrong way to go about things.

Perhaps it's a cultural thing -- just as things are done differently in different countires, so one sets about doing things differently in different systems. Sometimes folks bring inappropriate mindsets to new platforms, they bring a headful of assumptions and preconceptions.

I've noticed people who've never had a PC before tend to take to Ubuntu very well. It is very clearly and logically laid out, and the security is very good. It's safe and easy to use.

But people with years of experience on another system may have a lot to unlearn. And some of those folks have a considerable investment in their old ways, and so are unwilling to unlearn

 

[Jonti]

The fact that linux runs on a wide range of hardware is a great advantage for most folks, I think. that kind of open competition keeps the price of hardware down, and makes re-use and redeployment of old kit easy. What can I do with a Mac G3, apart from put yellow dog linux on it? What can I do with a Win98 era laptop except put puppy linux or xubuntu on it? As far as I know, there's no other way to run modern code on those platforms.

But it works both ways. If you really want extreme stability you target your code at a particular hardware configuration. That's how Sun and IBM get their 99.999% uptime figures on their mainframe kit.

It's like, you can get linux to run on anything, but by the same token, it can give you grief on anything too. That's well overstating the case, mind. The hardware recognition of Ubuntu linux is very good these days. Test out your kit with a liveCD and if it all works OK, you're good to go with a full install.

 

[newbie]

Interesting narrative, that. Newbie regularly pops up sneering at linux and publicising his difficulties. He's the guy that doesn't want to be helped -- posting knocking copy is his thing.

Naturally, other people say "Well, it ain't like that really" -- and according to you, this is out-of-order?

regularly = twice.

thing is, as I've said before, if you and your brethren weren't so 101% starry eyed evangelist about it I wouldn't bother remarking on what is, after all is said and done, just another example of computer grief. Of course stuff goes wrong, of course some of it is unfamiliarity and incompetence.

But equally, some of the problems are down to poor design, over complexity or plain old bugs. To deny that is idle, but it's the constant repetition of that denial that prompted my posts.

Listening to the true believers it's incomprehensible that anybody uses anything but Linux, ever, for anything. Because they've put in the hours of study in to follow the developments, to understand the issues and the solutions, and in doing so they've reigned in their aspirations to what the open source community has made available.

Yet sfaiac there are three competing OS strands to play with, and they all have strengths and they all have weaknesses. In terms of backup, tarannau is right, Time Machine is streets ahead, but Acronis for the Windows world is pretty good too. Simply copying some data files is cheap, and open source, but not in the same league. If that's all File Backup Manager is actually doing then it's very poorly designed, bloated nonsense that shouldn't come top of the list of Ubuntu backup apps.

As for not wanting help, I don't think this is really the right forum and certainly not the right thread, for a detailed help-me question. If you think it is, I'll start another thread (not about backup, mind).

 

[Jonti]

I think you're hijacking the thread.

But why?