Santa Rosa-based MacBook

[danieldk]

I have a Santa Rosa chipset-based MacBook. I'll try to describe my experiences in more detail later. What works:

- The Intel chipset, including the GPU.
- The Marvell NIC (with the sky2 module).
- Reading fan speeds/temperatures with the 'applesmc' module.
- Brightness keys, etc. (through pommed).
- The Broadcom wireless chip (through ndiswrapper).

This HOWTO describes a lot of set up details:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBook_Santa_Rosa

Although, I'll run Debian on it in the future. Currently, Debian doesn't work really well yet (e.g. restarting X gives a blank screen). Hibernation works with Ubuntu. Suspend works, but gives some screen artifacts that stay around. Battery time is a lot worse than under OS X (just above three hours vs about six hours). This may partly be caused by using ndiswrapper for the wireless chipset.

[fos]

Sounds impressive, particularly the 6 hour battery life.

What are your impressions of OS X?
Compare and contrast OS X with Linux...

(I sound like a teacher) :)

Thank you,
fos

[danieldk]

I won't be subtle about this: IMO OS X sucks. It does not have a decent package manager. Instead, software is usually distributed as disk images from which a folder is copied to the Application directory (of course, usually with their own set of libraries that are not shared). I have tried some of the 3rd party ports systems for OS X, but all of them had different shortcomings. X11 applications are slow compared to Linux (e.g. rotation in Inkscape gave a lot of flickering), and often don't fit in with the rest of the GUI. Additionally, you pay all the way for most Carbon (their native UI API) applications, from a decent firewall for desktops to non-OO.org office suites.

My Mini runs plain Debian now, and my MacBook will run Debian as well, when the hardware is better supported. (For the time being I run Debian in a VM.) Maybe the hardware is well-supported with Sid, so I have to try that as well.

[fos]

Apple has always produced the coolest hardware. It is a shame that they hold it so close to the vest. Thanks for the review, whenever I can get one of the new generation, I'll convert it to Linux just as I do with the wind boxes.

fos

[jml]

Its all a matter of perspective and personal experience. Before I moved to Linux, the only OS I could compare OX 9 and X to was Windows. By that yardstick, Apple's offering was head and shoulders above Windows. I ran my first Mac Laptop, (a second generation iBook, the white one) for five years and had it freeze on me only twice! Windows did that in one day.

But compared to Debian stable, I have to say that OS X does not hold up as well. Even one of my official updates froze my computer.

While the way OS X utilizes libraries is a bit redundant, from the user's point of view it has one advantage. To delete an application all you have to do is drag the application folder to the trash. No registry problems ala Windows XP, no library incompatibility with various apps. I still prefer Debian, but my mac laptop has been a pretty reliable piece of hardware.

Joe

[danieldk]

Indeed, I bought one because of the hardware. It was a good bang for the buck, and you can replace the hard disk (IIRC) and memory without voiding warranty. Besides that, the dealer is a 20 minutes walk away, so if I ever have a hardware problem I can return it there to get it fixed.

The primary downsides I have found are the Broadcom wireless NIC, which currently requires ndiswrapper plus a Windows driver, and the iSight camera, which should work on the latest kernels, but requires additional firmware.