OS X content and your ideas
by
zen
I have been very heavy on the Linux content the last while. For those that prefer OS X related content, I just want to say that I am working on a couple things which will be posted in the next couple days. I still love X very much, and use it about 60-70% of the time I compute these days with the rest divided between OpenBSD and Lubuntu.
My intention is to give equal coverage to both OS, but the last couple weeks I have been concentrating on the Linux to help the early adopters.
If anyone has any ideas about content they would like to see me write about, please leave a comment about what it is and why you feel it's important to cover.
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Something about PPC gaming would be great. What games play well. What games are available. Benchmarks.
ReplyDeleteThat is my vote. Great blog!
Great idea!
DeleteI am not a huge gamer but I do play a few on occasion. The ones I have installed on my 1.8 GHz running Leopard:
Command and Conquer Generals & Zero Hour
Halo
Quake 3
Oni
Ghost Recon
Battlefield 1942
Call of Duty
Spider-Man 2
Have but not installed:
Quake 4
Lord of the Rings
Civilization 3
Shogo
Quake 1 and 2
Sims 2
Myth 2
Tony Hawk 2
Stubbs the Zombie
Star Wars: Jedi Academy
Sim City 4
Do you play any of those? Most PowerPC gamers have many of those.
It would be great to know what games people most want to read about.
Reviewing and demonstrating the various ways on OS X (Tiger and Leopard) to defeat the evil that is Flash would be very helpful for those who might not know how accomplish that.
ReplyDeleteAlso, a complete OS X PPC browser knockdown would be enlightening.
This is a very good idea. I deal with flash in the 'Leopard security in 2012' but only to say how bad it is rather than provide solutions. Aside from recommending MacTubes in a couple posts I have not really provided flash alternatives.
DeleteI thought about a browser article a while ago but it never got written somehow. I would like to write one that breaks them up into Mozilla, Webkit and other options because many are very specific in what core tech they want doing their browsing.
Thanks for the ideas, Dave.
It's a pity so many sites use it. My little brother and younger cousins like to play online flash games together and sometimes they use my iMac G4(great design!!!) last revision 17''.
DeleteAs I said before to you,
ReplyDeleteA video playback on OSX vs LInux would be very interesting.
Coreplayer vs VLC vs MPlayer
About quake 3, you can have openarena for free, it is a clone.
I agree with dr.dave, ways to deal with flash.
There are flashbokers but and when you need flash?"my" workaround when I am on my Powermac G4 is searching for the mobile site of the flash site I would like to visit..
For example for facebook:
m.facebook.com
And that is compatible with OSX and Linux :P
Zen by the way, I won the Powerbook G4!
Great news about the PowerBook! Thats great. The one good thing that has come from MMC.
DeleteI will happily provide flash alternatives. I will never actually advise using flash itself. Same with Facebook. Both are things that I cannot support because I think both are bad for people.
As I have said in the past.. anyone who attempts tech writing needs to look out for the technical well being of the reader. Advising ways to use things I morally cannot support would not be doing that. I should write about why exactly both are evil and why I don't support them.
Writing about CorePlayer would be rather useless at this point since no one that doesn't already have it on OS X can buy it.
In terms of Linux vs. OS X comparison I already have that as a segment of the coming Part 4 for the 'Video on PowerPC" segment.
VLC 2.03 on Lubuntu outperforms VLC 0.9.10 on Tiger by about 30-40% on my Stormtrooper with the same videos.
I play Sims and Simcity. I also have Civ. 3 but I haven't installed it.
ReplyDeleteQoute: "VLC 2.03 on Lubuntu outperforms VLC 0.9.10 on Tiger by about 30-40% on my Stormtrooper with the same videos."
ReplyDeleteShocking. VLC 2.Anything on Leopard on a 1.07 ghz ibook is so bad I don't even bother.
I also don't completely understand the difference between the CoreAVC for Totem and Mplayer on Linux and Coreplayer on Mac OS X. I thought they used the same underlying codecs. See this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32o6xmWco6I
I have Coreplayer,don't use it often but am rather miffed I can't install it on any other machine, ever. It is so intensely frustrating that the now defunct developer can lock it up in a box and that's that. Maybe someone will purchase their intellectual property and re offer it..I gather there is no way to fool the installer or change the serial number on a mac, eh?
edit: Apologies for the "eh" it was not intended as an anti Canadian slur.
The difference is that the Mac version is locked down like a bank. AFAIK all the versions on every OS are all based on the same codecs.
DeleteVLC 2.x on Mac OS is reliant on more visuals along with the GUI bloat that comes with X. Lubuntu vs. even Tiger is much less beefy in every single way so apps are free to run with it because they are not hindered by OS overhead.
I don't take 'eh' drops as derogatory because most Canadians never say that. People listen to how the white trash Canadians talk and think that represents the nation. Most of us speak proper english.
It seems irrelevant compared to the other content on this blog, but I would very much like to see webcam recommendations that work well on slower G4s and Macs with USB 1.1, other than the iSight.
ReplyDeleteI started using computers a good 10 years before the net went public and I have yet to ever own a webcam. It's not anything I would ever want to own either.
DeleteSorry but I don't write about things I don't have experience with because I could very well misguide you.
This is something a few well worded google searches could really help you with. Newegg is loaded with reviews so find cams there and filter for mac people.
Thanks... I never could find a reliable guide on the InterNet for WebCams. Almost all webcams that I can find at all on the internet required somewhere around 700 MHz or higher and a good graphics card, yet I've seen some webcams give decent performance on a 68030.
DeleteI noticed that OpenBSD 5.2 just came out. Is it a real alternative to Mac OS X or Linux on PowerPC machines? Are there dual-boot options for it like there are for Linux?
ReplyDeleteBSD is not user friendly in any way. In no way is it built to be usable by the average user. Many of the people here have had issues just installing and using Lubuntu which is an ant hill of a climb compared to the BSD Everest.
DeleteIt's a heavy lifting, stable and very unwelcoming OS for those that don't already know what they are doing. Try to picture OS X as just text to start and having to configure everything yourself.
The only user friendly BSD is 'PC-BSD' which installs with a GUI but it's not pure BSD and is x86 only.
BSD is for people who already know the Unix command line well and want to achieve things that GUI's won't let them.
In terms of dual boot... the ability for this is not in the OS but rather in the hardware. You could boot 30 different OS from any computer architecture they're written for. If you have enough drive/partitions you could boot every single OS written for PowerPC.
I figured as much. The last time I used OpenBSD was in the early noughties when I succeeded in getting it running on an old PowerBook. You are absolutely right in saying that in order for any OS to be a viable alternative to Mac OS X it must be user friendly and not have a steep learning curve to use. Thanks for your work with Lubuntu. I have installed MintPPC on my Quicksilver. The bug in the installer that led to Yaboot not being able to recognize the OS X partition has been fixed. Either of those Linux distros are viable alternatives to Mac OS X.
DeleteSince Apple has abandoned this architecture, I think it's important for users to be able to compile software on their own. For a beginner the learning process can be a bit steep. In my experience you can often find interesting open source software that would work on PowerPc but that is only compiled for Intel macs. Having a well thought-out basic introduction to MacPorts, Fink and maybe XCode could be extremely beneficial (the articles I've seen online can sometimes be a bit confusing for a beginner). It is a very broad subject, though. It would probably require a series of articles.
ReplyDeletePS: Does posting a comment require to accept third part cookies? I've been trying to post for several times without success.
I know Ports well from the BSD world but have very little experience with it on Mac OS. It's not that I wasn't interested but it needs to wait for when I have more spare time than usual. Darwin is far from a true BSD so there will and have been several differences is the two processes. One is heavily engineered and the other is patch work.
DeleteAFAIK only the anon comment option is totally cookie free. This is blogger after all and Google love cookies.
I agree that giving PowerPC users the ability to scratch their own itch by compiling applications from source is very important for the longevity of the PowerPC architecture itself. There are plenty of applications on Sourceforge that have versions for Intel Macs. In many cases, I think it would be possible with minimal effort to have the applications operating on PowerPC Macs. Once the applications are compiled, they could be sent to the developers of the project and posted online, and it would be another reason to stay on PowerPC.
Delete