We're still alive!
It has been over two weeks since our last post, and I wanted to mention what has been going on.
Dr. Dave hurt his back a couple weeks ago, so that has put him out of commission for the time being. Please join me in wishing him well and hopes for a quick recovery. I am sure he will be feeling better soon enough.
I myself have been more busy than normal with the OpenBSD project in it's last phase of development. The last phase (for me at least) is dealing with every bug so this has left my life with zero free time. In the next week to 10 days I will be 100% done the project and I already have a couple things in mind to write about.
OS X: Disable your v-sync
This post falls under the heading of "maybe not the single greatest idea in the world, but perhaps not the worst either." As we all know, Apple, in its infinite wisdom put some (ok, lots of) extra eye candy into OS X when it leaped from 10.4 to 10.5, and as a result you and all your loved ones took a graphics hit moving from Tiger to Leopard. Many argue the hit is minimal, and Leopard has so much more software and hardware compatibility that is more than worth it, a sentiment to which I firmly adhere. I do miss Classic, but otherwise Leopard...rocks. On x86 Linux I got used to doing all kinds of tweaks to get better video performance out of older machines, and one of the main ways was to set the v-sync to blank. Usually this was achieved by clicking a box deep within the bowels of compiz or editing a metacity preference file in nano. I'm no expert, but on LCD monitors I've read the benefits afforded by v-sync are pretty much a non issue. Lets face it, not many people are sitting in front of CRT's in 2013. If I've just deeply insulted Al in Syracuse, who is still in love with his 21inch ViewSonic purchased for $1500 (no, for real) from MacMall back in 1997, I apologize.
Honestly I never knew this tweak was possible in OS X. I thought Apple just locked all of that graphics stuff down tight to keep it away from those pesky end users. Then I stumbled upon a youtube video from a fellow PowerPC enthusiast, which sadly now seems to have been taken down or I'd post a link to it for reference. He had a bunch of good tips for improving graphics performance, most of which are well known, like using a 2-D instead of a 3-D dock, etc, etc. I was just about to stop watching when he showed viewers how to disable v-sync, and that caught my attention.
In order to perform this maneuver safely you'll need to have Xcode installed. If you don't have it its a free download from Apple, you will have to register as a developer and then sign over your first born child for ritual sacrifice, but once that's done its just a 300 MB download. You'll need an older version of Xcode, 3.3.1, as the newer ones are naturally Intel only. It is possible to do this in Text Edit, but personally I lack the intestinal fortitude to do so, see..I once hosed a Panther install fiddling around with a preference file in Text Edit. Xcode makes this simple, and for reasons probably only in my head it feels much safer.
What you want to do is go to your Hard Drive and open up the Library folder, then the Preferences folder. What you are looking for is com.apple.windowserver.plist, right click on that file, if you have Xcode you'll have the Property List Editor as an option, and open it with that. Now under Compositor look for "deferred updates" and set that to zero. Congratulations, you have just set your v-sync to blank on 10.5. There are some other settings which some turn off in there relating to Quartz Extreme and OpenGL but personally, I left those well enough alone.
Now anytime one fools around with system files, especially com.apple.plist's, bad things can happen. So, readers beware, and exercise all due caution. I followed the above steps and nothing bad happened, and, upon reboot I noted some definite improvements in overall window snappiness (such a technical term). Dock minimizations, even the hated "genie" effect were now lightning quick. The vicious tear I had passing my cursor over the dock in 3-D mode was also gone. Personally I use the 2-D dock so it wasn't a huge win for me, but overall this was a satisfying tweak.
On PowerPC OS X in 2013 its all about them little victories.
Help the Children Learn
Today someone, probably well under the age of 15, excitedly sent this Doctor a Youtube link to a recently posted video which they claimed showed a user how to install Flash 11.5 on a PowerPC Mac. It was of course no such thing, just a redo of the old "Facebook" hack which tricks some websites into offering up Flash video to your tired, unsupported, enough security holes to drive a (pun intended) Mack truck through 10.1 Flash plugin. I will not bother to repost the video or link here, as I do not like to spread bad or misleading information around the interwebs. But this does bring up a very important point. PowerPC macs are now so cheap they are an easy entry point for young mac enthusiasts eager to test out the OS X and Linux waters. I think that's great, but as with all things, kids need to be educated. So if you know one of these young PowerPC mac enthusiasts, don't be embarrassed, sit them down and give them the talk. Not that talk, this talk:
"Now young man (or woman), you need to know Adobe Flash was never a great piece of software on PowerPC. It was poorly written and never optimized for your machine. Today its old, and such a crap-tastic performer that will bring your otherwise excellent system to a screeching halt. It should be avoided on OS X PowerPC, at all costs. On PowerPC Linux this is a non issue, as there never was nor will there ever be Flash Player or Plugin. In this here year of 2013 you are far, far better using Flash workarounds. Here are few you can try..
Mactubes. Its been often said that this is an awesome piece of kit that keeps PowerPC Macs alive and well in the age of youtube. Make sure to set your player to Quicktime for best results, and have Perian installed as well. This makes many larger format flash files available for download and playback. The version of Quicktime that works with Mactubes well is 7.6.4.
Youview. This software pretty much does what Mactubes does, but unlike Mactubes you have to pay for certain features, like downloading. But it's handy to have in reserve.
Viewtube. This is a Greasemonkey script for Tenfourfox, it can be made to work with Safari as well by installing SIMBL and Greasekit. First go to Add-ons under tools and install Greasemonkey. You'll have to stick with Tenfourfox 17.X.X, as anything newer has plugins disabled and it just won't work. It works with some other sites besides youtube too, and the developer is a decent guy who is constantly improving and updating the script. It'll also use the Quicktime plugin, but right in the browser.
ClicktoFlash and ClicktoPlugin these work great with Safari (and Leopard webkit). By installing both you can do the same thing your trying to do with the Flash hack, that is, trick the website into believing you have the latest Flash installed. Many websites will then offer you up video. You'll have to click on the "QT Player" logo, and it will launch a standalone Quicktime player.
There are some other methods too, they're a little trickier, so try these ones out first. And remember... on PowerPC the only good Flash is no Flash. Tell all your mac loving friends."
It's a tired old cliche, but the kids really are the future, especially it seems when it comes to PowerPC macs...
Uber Lightweight Linux Browser Smackdown
So by now you've installed a lightweight Linux operating system on your aging but still mighty Powermac, and since its a low end system (like, say a 500mhz, G4 upgraded Blue and White G3) you're gonna want to install some lightweight apps. Top of that list should be a lightweight web browser, since browsers are arguably the most important, most used and most vulnerable of any software on your system. Firefox is the default browser on Lubuntu 12.04, and gives a user tremendous flexibility with its megaload of extensions. It may take awhile to launch, but after that I find you can still use it to its fullest potential, even at 500mhz. Sometimes though, there is simply no substitute for speed, and just because your machine is older doesn't mean it can't be as fast as the day it was made. Or the day it was upgraded.
Almost all of the browsers I'll be looking at here today are webkit based, since pretty much nothing with a Gecko rendering engine can be considered lightweight in 2013. It should also be noted that most of these are either not available or have no equivalent on OS X, or you’d have to port the bastard yourself. These can all be installed from synaptic package manager, or, from the commandline if you like that sort of thing.
Midori
Midori is a German developed webkit browser, and is the default browser on many lightweight x86 Linux distros, such as Bodhi and some Puppy flavors. While being lightweight and fast it also has many of the features you'd expect with a modern browser such as a sparkling GUI, tabs, extensions, some adblocking, etc. I've used, liked and recommended Midori to others in the past, but really can't do so today, at least not on PowerPC Linux. In a few weeks of using it on Lubuntu 12.04 it has been utterly crash-tastic. Like, once a session out of the blue it will lock up and go down for the count. Purging and reinstalling the app garners no improvement, and the error logs are confusing at best. The version in the PowerPC repositories is 0.4.3, which is now a full six version revisions behind the current 0.4.9 release, which may have something to do with these issues. Hopefully a newer version will become available soon, in which case I may try to love it again. Until then, the Doctor says: Avoid.
Surf
Surf is a commandline based browser that is pretty much the definition of lightweight. Running a browser from the commandline is probably not for everyone but in return you get hellacious speed with virtually no overhead. On x86 distros with ancient hardware and low RAM it became my browser of choice last year. A Surf session takes less than 10 MB of RAM to launch a window, and that folks, is extremely impressive. It's available in the PowerPC repos, however, I was (despite quite a lot of effort) unable to get it to run stable on Lubuntu 12.04. Windows will launch, then close almost instantly. This may also be a version issue, as the version in the repos is 0.4.3, while the current release is 0.6. I love it on x86 so much that I tried to compile it for PowerPC, but was missing a ton of dependencies, so I gave up on it for now. I left Surf in the review in the hopes someone with better programming chops could get it running and report back on how he or she achieved it.
Links2
Links2 is a text/graphical browser which may be familiar to some as its based on the old text only Links browser. Fair warning, it is not for the lovers of eyecandy, and only supports HTML 1.0 so using it is kinda like what the Internet was in 1995. For us old fogeys (like the Dr.) who used Netscape 1.0 (honestly, that was my first web browser, and I BOUGHT it, kids) this is not such a bad thing. Over a number of hours of testing it seems very stable on Lubuntu PowerPC, and having inline images makes it seem almost mo-dern. Text field entries will appear as single lines, and searches and the like can be entered simply by clicking on the line.
Navigation is dirt simple, typing "g"(for go) brings up a url address window, "z" gets you back from whence you came. If you forget the commands they are all accessible in hidden submenus found just to the right of the very small back arrow found in the upper left hand browser window. Pass your cursor over them and all shall be revealed. If all you want to do is READ the web, but still have a pretty picture or two, Links2 could be your new best friend. Plus, all your friends will wonder what on earth you are doing on Netscape 1, which is, as Miley Cyrus might say, pretty cool.
XXXTerm/Xombrero
So what is the image that the name XXXterm brings up in your mind? I seriously thought it was some kind of terminal based porn downloader, and I don't think I'm alone. Well, actually XXXterm is just another uber lightweight webkit browser, first brought to my attention as its the default browser in ConnochaetOS, the successor to Deli Linux. ConnochaetOS is designed to work on REALLY old x86 hardware, like, umm Pentium I 100mhz old, so a lightweight browser on hardware that ancient is critical. The developer seems to have finally gotten the word that his choice of name is a tad….ummm, confusing, and has renamed XXXterm "Xombrero" in its most current release. XXXterm is what's available in the PowerPC repos and it seems largely the same as Xombrero on x86 to these eyes.
The main benefit of using this browser, besides speed, is tight cookie managment. The world and his (Big) brother now tracks your movements on the world wide internets, and XXXterm gives the user tight control over what cookies will end up on your hard drive. I could go into far greater detail, but you are best off just reading the wiki. In terms of speed it seems almost as zippy as the other lightweight browsers, but you still get tabbed browsing, a url address bar, back buttons and a search bar where you expect them, though the search window does not appear to be working at the moment. Everything is else you’d expect in a modern browser is available via keyboard commands. Stability on Lubuntu 12.04 PowerPC is good to excellent, and besides, any application that has the Fight Club bar of soap as its icon has to be worth its salt. Definitely Doctor recommended.
Luakit
Ok, I'll say it again. I just love this piece of software. Its just...bloody incredible. While perhaps not quite as lightweight as surf or Links2, it more than makes up for that with blazing speed and stability. I can't recall it ever crashing on me, either on the stormtrooper or any other machine I've installed it on. It's configurable, extensible (sort of), and gives a user almost total keyboard based control of their browsing, so much so that it's possible to barely even touch the mouse while browsing. Being webkit based its fully mo-dern, and even on “slow” hardware it renders pages fast. Do not pass go, do not get out of jail, download luakit today. Thou shall not be disappointed. Note: Be very careful when you are entering text into a field however, make sure you are actually in it, or a simple keyboard command like "d" could delete your tab, or even end your session. And that's annoying.
This here Linux PowerPC browser smackdown is by no means complete, and as with most things, your mileage may vary. I would love to hear about other lightweight Linux browsers you've used, and what your experiences have been. Netsurf and Dillo, for instance didn’t quite make the cut for this review, but you can surely download and try them out on your own if you are curious.
On lowend hardware its all about finding the right software for the job at hand, and hopefully one of these browsers will hit the sweet spot for you.
Roccat 3.0
There are many great mysteries on planet earth, but none
greater in 2013 than the Harlem Shake youtube phenomena. Millions, no tens of
millions of people, myself included, have wasted a portion of the little time
they have on planet earth watching groups of people do a ridiculous “dance”,
which in reality is little more than a uncoordinated spasm. In my defense, I
only watched one Harlem Shake video as there was a Brooklyn indie rock band,
now defunct, that went by almost the same name that I quite liked back in the year
of 2009. Turns out they named
themselves after the original Harlem Shake dance, which has nothing whatsoever
to do with the nonsense on youtube today.
The good news for
OS X 10.5 PowerPC users is that if you so desire, you have yet another
supported, lightweight browser you can watch the real Harlem Shake videos on, Roccat.
While Roccat is not new, version 3.0 is, and I’ve been using it for a couple
days now. It’s definitely worth the bandwidth to download. Why? Well,
for one, Roccat is fast, in fact its one of the faster browsers on OS X, and
the developer has stated he intends to support PowerPC for as long as he
possibly can. Not many people say that sort of thing these days, and I for one
intend to support any developer who says they’ll support PowerPC.
Roccat is yet another of the army of webkit browsers out in the
wild, but the only one with built in Facebook and Twitter integration. Now,
this Dr. is utterly convinced Facebook is evil and Twitter is for the birds,
but if you use either social media service, you will probably enjoy the ease of
integration Roccat provides. Pulling down the Facebook login caused me nothing
but headaches and a restart of Roccat, so fair warning, your mileage may vary. Another nice feature of
Roccat is a built in user agent switcher for spoofing your bank into thinking
your one of the 54% of people dumb enough to actually use Internet
Explorer. There’s also an “undercover” private browsing option for the one
PowerPC OS X user in Iran. If there is another use for private browsing, I have
no idea what that could be…
Best of all, Greasekit
and Viewtube now work in Roccat 3.0, which was not the case with prior
versions. In fact, on my ibook G4, prior versions of Roccat would crash on
launch if Greasekit was present. For the uninitiated, Greasekit is a way of
making Greasemonkey scripts work on most webkit browsers. Firstly, you will
need to download and install SIMBL, and then Greasekit, from here. In Roccat,
Safari or Leopardwebkit you can then use the Greasekit menu that now appears to
manage which webkit applications Greasekit will work for. Fair warning: Greasekit is OLD not all
Greasemonkey scripts will work with Greasekit, and as always with anything
javascript you need to be cautious about what you install. But this enables you
to head over to userscripts dot org and install viewtube, a greasemonkey script
that nicely swaps the hated FLASH for Quicktime, allowing for very decent embedded
video playback on youtube and quite a few other sites. I am pleased to say
playback is MOST EXCELLENT in Roccat 3.0, though I do have a slightly annoying
bug where I have to scroll down then back up to get the video playing to be
visible. This however may be a pecularilty of my system and no one elses.
Please give Roccat a try, and if you like it, tell the
developer, and make sure he knows you are on a PowerPC mac, or as we used to
say back in the old world days, a Power Macintosh.
No laughing matter
There's been a lot of PowerPC Linux
talk on Macrumors lately, and the other day a frequent poster
had this to say:
" Eh, at least Leopard actually
works ;) Linux is not for newbies. Linux is not for a regular Mac
"power user". Linux on PPC is inferior to Leopard on PPC,
PPC for desktop computing was an uncommon platform at the peak of
Apple's PPC days, and now it's basically a relic. The most devoted
PowerPC developers are working for the Mac side of things."
Rather than compare Linux directly to
OS X or Windows, I think it's extremely useful to recall that OS X
and Windows have two of the world's wealthiest and largest
corporations behind them and Linux has....mostly ordinary people
behind it. Imagine if you woke up one day and people like you and me
were building the open source equivalents of Boeing's 767's, that
could fly you around the world, safely, for a fraction the cost, or
even for free. That's not a bad analogy, and in the future some
predict it will actually happen. Why? Because open source is the
future of the world. Free software is like freedom in general, it
may take time, but it will eventually destroy every closed,
totalitarian system or technology it comes into contact with. Yes,
even North Korea will be free one day too. It's inevitable, and
hopefully it won't involve any dawns that are brighter than a thousand suns.
I will confess it took me awhile (22
years to be precise), but one day I put down the Kool Aid and
realized that Apple was, like North Korea, a totalitarian entity. In other words, once you get drawn into its eco-sytem Apple will control the totality of
your technological life (the user "experience" which lets face it, is a very nice one),
so it can suck its upgrade tithe out of you every 18-24 months. Apple
does this by terrifying their cowering customer/citizens with loss of
"support", and lack of new "features". Quick
thought experiment: Imagine you bought the Beatles White Album,
but in order to keep listening to it every two years you had to buy a
completely new record or CD player. And a new copy of the White
album, which would have a couple brand new, not very good
tracks on it from Sir Paul and Ringo. No one would do it. Why do we
tolerate this kind of larceny when it comes to computers and
technology? The same reason they do in North Korea: Fear, and the
proper conditioning.
How do you break free from this fear
based life? Like us you can become one of the crazy ones, the
misfits, the rebels who buck the system, resist the urge to upgrade
and stay with older hardware and OS'es as long as you can.
You're definitely better off, but you still aren't really....free. Not
to get all Richard Stahllman on you, but today the only real path to
technological freedom is Linux. PowerPC Linux developers are in
fact doing amazing work keeping up with x86 Linux, despite an ever
aging hardware base. I believe in PowerPC Linux. I believe Macrumors poster Wildy will actually get his Crunchbang PowerPC port completed
and released to the wild. I believe the dual core Power P-cubed
board from Servergy will get out there and have a RaspberryPi like
effect on PowerPC in general. When all these things happen Linux on
PowerPC will...suck less, be more newbie friendly, less techie
centered. A reboot of Mac-on-Linux would be the final straw. Run your
PowerPC mac apps while booted into a completely modern Lubuntu? Now
that is some freedom talk.
But this will take smart, freedom-loving people (like us) using PowerPC Linux, not just dissing
it. And freedom....is no laughing matter.
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