[CS-FSLUG] More Testing Linux on Mac: Debian

[Ed Hurst]

There were enough glitches on the SUSE for PPC installation I went  
exploring for something else. In my research, I joined the YDL forums, and  
even wrote to their mailing list. I was surpised to discover the majority  
of them are using PS3s, some oddball RISC systems, and precious few  
late-model PPC Macs. Almost nobody had significant experience with Macs in  
general, as all of those were pretty much noobies to Linux.

Having had a hassle with Ubuntu, and seeing the complaints other had about  
it (two eMacs of older vintage and several iMacs), I looked at Fedora and  
then Debian. From what I could discern, vanilla Debian was actually rather  
good about responding to comments from the field and incorporating the  
information.

Comparison: SUSE's YaST could not in any wise handle the partitioning. It  
had to be done manually with pdisk. In particular, YaST could not create  
the proper bootstrap partition for yaboot and the OpenFirmware "BIOS" on  
Macs. With pdisk, I inadvertantly managed to create some free space and  
could not remove it or merge it once it was made. Debian's text installer  
cleaned it all up automatically. I ended up opting for a complete  
retooling of the partitions, but Debian did it without any input from me  
except to say "okay."

The applications are, of course, somewhat older in Etch. But they work far  
more consistently among those I've tested. My only complaint was I  
downloaded and burned an ISO for the KDE installer, and somehow ended up  
with a netinstall and GNOME. I'm not complaining, but it was unexpected.  
It's not perfect, but it works a lot better, so far. I would note Debian's  
xorg configuration was far closer to the reality of my hardware than  
SUSE's. I'm guessing it recognized the hardware signature better. The  
result showed specific configuration details hammered out by others posted  
 from trials in the past year.

A particular bone of contention with SUSE was SaX insisting on removing my  
improvements if I ran it for any reason whatsoever. There were serious  
quirks with keyboard recognition and assigning of keys, as noted by  
previous posts asking for help. I ran into even more trouble later. Most  
disheartening was the inability to burn any ISO without errors, regardless  
of speed and other settings, using K3B. I'm guessing the driver for the  
Sony CRX315E isn't up to par for some reason.

For now, I'm going to say this is a keeper.

-- 
Ed Hurst
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