The devolution of computing
I have been reflecting a lot lately about the state of computing today. The state of both the development and the users, along with what drives the majority of people from both groups. For myself, and anyone who prefers to compute from the drivers seat, the state of things is bad on almost all fronts; at least in terms of mainstream computing.
Computing at a high level in the 70's, 80's, and even the early 90's was much better, because any other users around you were at a high level also. Almost everyone had real capability to compute far beyond pointing and clicking. Before the GUI existed you literally had to know command lines, and have a catalog of them in your head at your disposal whenever needed. There were no guides on websites to copy/paste commands from, which is the peak of text computing skills these days for the pointy clicky imprisoned types. Even with how far the GUI has come, there are still many capabilities that even the most robust OS's UI would lack. I have mentioned before that only about 60-70% of the full OS X capability is found in its GUI. Everything else is accessed from the command line. It is based on BSD after all. Text/terminal use is the actual human language of computing, not pointy clicky. A GUI can only do what it gives you options to click on. A GUI is essentially just an OS hand holder. All you need is basic hand-eye coordination, and all it's doing is typing the commands for you while you click away.
The user friendly obsession of MS and Apple software over the last couple decades has truly dumbed down the average user a great deal. The sad truth is that most people only have the capability to point a mouse, and type in whatever language(s) they're literate in. The even sadder truth is that some actually mistake this for having computer skills. Some even go as far as to think such skills qualify them to "help" someone else by sharing their "experience". Experience based on nothing. When you can only compute at the level of a person that many would consider computer illiterate, then you have no experience to give.
I'm sorry, but moving a pointing device around, and being literate in your language, is no type of computer "skill". People who compute at that level need to keep their devolved computing culture to themselves, and focus on learning new ability, rather than trying to spread devolution.
The devolved ones are on some insane mission to spread their 'newer/faster hardware is always better' illogic, and follow Apple or MS blindly. No one needs help to do such things, because all it requires is no thought. Anyone can do that. Give people true technical insight, not what they can get from a wikipedia or google visit. If that is where you're getting your "experience" from, then you've turned yourself into a fake, and a redundant fake at that. Pretty shameful. I assume the goal was never to be a double negative, but that is the end result for some of you.
The people who spread such things know who they are and they need to stop. Your blind follower no skill thinking is a cancer to anything that resembles good information. Stop it please.
Lastly
I am sorry if some of this sounds mean, but every word I have written here is nothing but true. The truth shall set you free, as the saying goes, is as apt with computing as it is with anything else.
Anyone who feels the desire to help others, needs to first do it with something they can help with. Something you have legitimate experience, knowledge and insight with. Not something you wish to, but don't yet have, those qualities with.
Don't pretend or devolve. Learn.
Stop letting billionaires control how you compute, and keeping most of you in a limited and fearful of evolving type of state. The very reason most of you don't want to evolve your computing skills is that you've been conditioned to think that computing and real brain work don't go together. Essentially a mainstream/self-induced computer user lobotomy. That is the true end result of decades of user friendly obsession by the mainstream.
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.
Back to the Fox
As Dr. Kaiser noted on the development blog, Tenfourfox 17.0.3 is out, and as always this Dr. downloads the latest release and gives it a spin. For me (and many others) Tenfourfox 8 was the high water mark for Tenfourfox, fast, stable, awesomely awesome stuff. Every version since has seemed subjectively a little slower, and I've moved away from using it as my primary browser. Admitedly I've never done any scientificaly based performance tests, but text fields seemed to hang, pages took longer to load and the greasemonkey script viewtube became unusable for watching youtube within a browser. Maybe on a faster PowerPC mac these things wouldn't be so obvious.
I've only spent just a little over 48 hrs with this Fox, but I am more than a little surprised at how speedy it seems. Pages load well, even with add-ons like Adblocker enabled. Viewtube is again usable, and playback compares well with Click to Plugin in Leopard webkit. Dr. Kaisers' QTE also seems to "see" more webvideo than it did in the past, or maybe its just that more sites are trying to offer up video to flash free devices. The New York Times front page videos as an example are now viewable via the QTE.
This Dr's Rx for this week is: download Tenfourfox 17.0.3, give it a whirl and comment on your personal findings below.
Presto...and its all gone
I am sure you will all join me in
wishing good luck to Zen and his new OpenBSD and PowerPC coding
adventure. I will do all I can to pick up the slack but the Zen
master is unique in his knowledge and depth of PowerPC architecture,
the Dr is but a eager student. I am also transitioning jobs at the
moment, and starting up a new veterinary clinic is no easy matter.
Zen's mighty Stormtrooper G4 (actually a blue and white G3, heavily
modded with only the best hardware upgrades) is heading my way soon,
complete with a fresh install of 12.04. I plan to put OS X and OS 9
(yes, I think there is still a place for the classic Mac OS in this
world) on separate drives and to good use, and pass my old school and new found
knowledge along to all who come this way.
As noted by countless others on the web
Opera has announced this week that it is switching over from its own
Presto rendering engine to the all-mighty juggernaut that is Webkit.
Why should PowerPC users care about this, you might ask? Opera
abandoned PowerPC OS X and PowerPC Linux back in 2010. Well, the
reason is this: a quick run down of Webkit browsers show that it is
fast becoming the defacto web browser standard, and as the good Dr.
Kaiser has just noted on the tenfourfox development blog, that is
more than a little troubling. Think Internet Explorer 6 if you need
any recollection of what a defacto web standard looks like. God
bloody awful.
With Presto going bye-bye, in 2013 for
major browser rendering engines there are: Trident (Internet Explorer
and Maxthon, IE was obviously long abandoned for PowerPC), Gecko
(Firefox, Seamonkey and for now anyway, Camnio) and Webkit (Safari,
Chrome, Chromium, Iron, Midori, iCab, Omniweb, Roccat, Surf,
luakit...and on and on). Increasingly, mega corporations Apple and
Google dominate the web, the mobile space, and Webkit is the sharp
tip of their spear. Even if webkit is opensource, Apple and Google
are most certainly in it for the cash mo-oney (dollar dollar bills, y'all), and that could spell
dark days in the years ahead for FOSS software. Gecko is still mighty
competition for Webkit, but soon it will be nothing but Firefox and
community supported editions like tenfourfox, as long as Dr. Kaiser
can keep up with Mozilla's twists and turns that is.
As users of a decidedly third tier
platform we need all the browser we can get. That's why I became
quite hot and bothered when I happened upon Netsurf, a open source
browser built primarily for the RISC OS with its own rendering
engine. I had only vaguely heard of the RISC OS, its a fascinating UK
based operating system dating back to the 80's. Netsurf runs on
almost every OS on the planet (though not on well on Windows,
apparently) and will even run in a framebuffer, with no operating
system or GUI requirements. It is quite modern as far HTML and CSS
goes, but with no Javascript support. That, as many will tell you, is
ultimately not a bad thing for a third tier OS. There is a Mac OS X
PowerPC port of Netsurf, its a couple generations old but despite
everything I could throw at it I couldn't get it to run on my ibook
G4. I've downloaded the source code and am making it my first attempt
at a compile, wish me luck. If I get it to run on Mac OS X PowerPC,
I'll move over to build it for PowerPC Linux as well. If that
works....who knows, maybe...dare I even say it....a Mac OS 9 port?
All hail Classilla, but if there is any OS in desperate need of
another browser option its the classic Mac OS.
Update : A little more digging on UK Netsurf forums and I've discovered no compile of Netsurf 2.7 for PowerPC is needed, however to even use it you need to download and install Xcode (3.1.3 is what I could find) from Apple's developer site. Xcode sets the MIME type of the CSS for Netsurf, without which the browser crashes on startup. To say this is an inelegant solution is putting it....mildly. You will also have to have an iTunes account or register a new account with the mothership to download Xcode. I haven't used iTunes in so long that I forgot my login!
My first impression of Netsurf for PowerPC: Not anywhere near as fast as webkit, most pages do not render perfectly, but all and all its not a bad little browser. Will not be my browser of choice for 10.5.8 anytime soon, however that right now is Leopard Webkit. I will now turn my attention to learning more about Framebuffers and Codewarrior in preparation for an OS 9 assualt.
Update : A little more digging on UK Netsurf forums and I've discovered no compile of Netsurf 2.7 for PowerPC is needed, however to even use it you need to download and install Xcode (3.1.3 is what I could find) from Apple's developer site. Xcode sets the MIME type of the CSS for Netsurf, without which the browser crashes on startup. To say this is an inelegant solution is putting it....mildly. You will also have to have an iTunes account or register a new account with the mothership to download Xcode. I haven't used iTunes in so long that I forgot my login!
My first impression of Netsurf for PowerPC: Not anywhere near as fast as webkit, most pages do not render perfectly, but all and all its not a bad little browser. Will not be my browser of choice for 10.5.8 anytime soon, however that right now is Leopard Webkit. I will now turn my attention to learning more about Framebuffers and Codewarrior in preparation for an OS 9 assualt.
PowerPC heroes
A few posts back Zen, who always tells it like it is, gave
credit where credit was due and nominated some PowePC friends among us. I’d
like to go a step further and nominate some PowerPC heroes among us. My
definition of a hero is someone who goes above and beyond the call of duty, and
these folks have certainly done that for a platform Apple abandoned many years
ago now.
Cameron Kaiser
For those who don’t know Dr. Kaiser (yup, he is a bona-fide MD, with degree,
and unlike this DVM can also code) is the man, the myth, the legend behind both
Classilla and Tenfourfox. During the day he practices the finer medical arts on homo
sapiens. At night he is almost single handedly is keeping viable browsers alive
on not one, but two PowerPC operating systems. In 2013 this is no mean feat,
and has required many selfless hours of coding and pathching in front of a
PowerMac G5. Classilla is, for the one person reading this blog not already
aware of it, the only browser anyone should be using on Mac OS 9. Now at
version 9.3.2, Kaiser is focusing on a series of security rollups that will
hopefully bring Classilla on a par with Mozilla 1.6 in the near future. You
might not want to do your internet banking with Classilla, but for routine
tasks it is surprisingly usable. Even if you don’t use or like Tenfourfox we
all owe an enormous debt to Kaiser and the rest development team for keeping a
Mozilla browser at source parity with Firefox in 2013. Dr. Kaiser also
consistently declines all donations, as he thinks money would cloud things up.
He’s probably right, but I wish I could give something other than praise and
thanks to this most noble cause.
Tobias Netzel
An important contributor to Tenfourfox, Tobias is also the
developer behind Leopard Webkit. Leopard Webkit gives you an up to date
webkit-rendering engine in the skin of Safari 5.0.6, turning what was a
terrible web browsing experience with Safari on Leopard into something…frankly
awesome. The hybrid gold ringed Safari/L-webkit icon is now my go to browser on
10.5, something I would have never thought would happen.
Marc Hoyis
Marc is the guy behind Click to Plugin and I belive also now
maintains Click to Flash. These are Safari extensions that give a delightful one-two punch to the most hated software ever made (that would be, I don't like to even say the word, so I'll just sign it out Freddy Mercury style...."Flash-ahh-haaaaa") and replace
it with Quicktime on not only Youtube but also a surprising number of other
commonly visited web sites. It may seem ridiculous at first to have both
extensions installed, but as the very useful macrumors forum poster B-G
discovered, Click to Flash not only blocks
Flash but also presents itself to the server as Flash 11.5. This fools even the
BBC, I had all but given up ever watching clips on the site in Leopard but now
most video gets served up to my PowerPC mac with no complaints. The Click to
Plugin extension takes over at this point and gives you several file quality
playback options in either the native HTML 5 player or Quicktime. On a lower
speck G4 ibook Quicktime in 360p works…awesome. You may not think 360p is all that, but Quicktime does it good. Combine that with a Quicktime Pro license and you can also download the file once it fully loads. They are just....awesome extensions.
Jeroen Diederen
Jeroen hails from the low country across the pond and is the
lead developer and chief cheerleader of MintPPC. Taking a basic Debian PPC
install and slapping the Mint LXDE desktop on top of it in 2009 was a stroke of
genius, and has breathed new life into many an old mac. Jeroen has removed most
of the major headaches from your typical Debian PPC install, though even a casual
browse of the MintPPC forum will show there are still tons of issues. Most of
them due to the exotic mobile hardware choices Apple made back in the day. Lets
face it, Apple never intended for Linux to run on an ibook G4, and the fact
that it does at all, let alone well, is pretty remarkable. Jeoroen is always
helpful to those with difficult hardware, always willing to compile the
applications people want for MintPPC, and never gets impatient with people less
technically savvy than he. Which would be almost everyone. An honorable mention must also be made here to
os911, a regular MintPPC contributor who has written some excellent
installation manuals, and is also uniquely helpful, especially with old world
macs and all the challenges they bring to the table.
Microsoft
Yes. That Microsoft.
Microsoft still provides regular security updates for Office 2004 and 2008 for
PowerPC. Apple doesn’t do anything similar for its in house apps, and credit is
where credit does, the behemoth from Redmond gets some respect from a former
hater.
Well, those are my nominations for PowerPC heroes. Please
feel free to disagree, or nominate anyone else you think worthy in the comments and thanks
again to the above for keeping this architecture “Alive and Kicking…”. Man, I
just had a Freddy Mercury and a Jim Kerr moment in one post. Its officical, the Doctor is old. Very old.
Origin of the architecture name and other terms
The main misperception most people have is in thinking the "PC" in the PowerPC name means PC in the way they know. It does not stand for personal computer. PowerPC is an acronym for Performance optimization with enhanced risc Performance Computing. I believe the capital P and C at the end is what leads most to think it means personal computer.
For those that don't know what "RISC" means, I can assure you it doesn't mean it takes any type of risk. RISC and CISC are the two fundamental computer architecture bases. RISC means reduced instruction set computer, and CISC means complex instruction set computer. ARM, Power and PowerPC are examples of RISC. Intel and AMD are examples of CISC. Reduced instruction does not mean it skips things but rather that it carries more data per cycle. CISC pipelines can be over 20 steps long compared to under 10 for most RISC architectures. PowerPC systems, like the G4 for example, only need 7 steps in the pipeline.
Personal computer is another term that has been horrifically misused over the years. PC is the acronym that was started for computers that could sit on a desk, in the era which most still took up whole rooms or at least an entire wall of a room. The PC term has somehow evolved into meaning wintel/x86 hardware specifically when it really means any computer that can fit on a table. All Mac hardware is as much a PC as any wintel system. The sad fact is that Apple themselves have helped twist this term. They are easily the biggest culprit in all this to be honest. They have used the term themselves since the 80's to separate the Mac from the rest of the industry. The proper term for a windows PC is "Wintel". This term started to specifically mean a Windows system powered by Intel but has evolved to mean windows systems in general. I assume this was due to Intel's dominance especially early on in the game.
Although I respect the names of anything PowerPC related that uses the "PPC" term this is an incorrect way to refer to it. When it comes to the technology industry as a whole most people would take PPC to mean pocket PC. This is the term used in the CorePlayer pocket PC version and the one that fools the unknowing into thinking they have found Mac copies of it online. For the record the Mac copy has always been named CorePlayer OS X. To be fair to those that use PPC I cannot blame them because there are actually developers that use it so it's easy to mistake it for a legitimate acronym. All the BSD versions available on PowerPC for example are all referred to as PPC as are several Linux distros. Mainstream Mac software sites like MacUpdate always use PPC also.
It was years of hearing and seeing these terms misused combined with the google search hits I get here that motivated me to write this. It's shocking how many separate the power and pc when they type it. It is an acronym and they don't have spaces. So once again, the "PC" at the end of PowerPC stands for performance computing.
The doctor is in
PowerPC Liberation welcomes a new writer to the fold today. Dr. Dave is someone you may know from his active participation as a commenter and knowledge spreader from PPC Luddite and on this blog along with several others he frequents.
Since my busy life keeps me from posting as much as I would like it was only natural to go this route. Two heads are better than one as they say, and in this situation that is certainly an apt description. The "Dr" in his blogger name is no front either. He's the real deal.
When it came time to add another author here, Dave was the first person I thought of. He is a man of great intelligence and technical comprehension, but is far too modest to even understand that about himself. He has a real knack for sniffing out the greatest software on earth, and has on several occasions. It's always very cleanly coded and efficient software also, which shows he not only gets it but has no taste for bloat. My kind of techie.
So please join me in welcoming the doctor.
MacTubes 3.1.6 is out
***Important Notice***
May 15, 2015
MacTubes is now officially dead.
After not needing an update for over 2 years, Google once again changed their API, and MacTubes is broken again, and it looks like for good this time. The developer has announced that they have abandoned the project. So MacTubes is now officially abandonware. You can grab the source code here and try to bring it back to life yourself, but it will be no easy task; even for a seasoned developer.
Alternatives
Your alternatives now are really just two - two good ones anyway. Using HTML5 on the site to view videos, which can be done in 90% of all browsers, as only older ones or text-only options are excluded. My personal preference is to use PPC Media Center. Dan the Luddite has posted about this software here and also here on his blog.
PPC MC Update: Nov. 5, 2015
There is now a 5.5 release, which is also PowerPC only instead of universal, of PPC Media Center. You can download it here.
DigiNotar neglect on PowerPC
Today I was looking through Keychain, and was reminded of the DigiNotar certificate simply through memory, because it hasn't lived on any of my macs since late 2011. It's one of those things I set and literally forget in this case. Luckily for the sake of a screenshot, I have an older drive I keep with a stock Leopard install for just these occasions.
In 2011 Apple announced that they were no longer going to update Leopard at all on PowerPC or Intel. Then around spring 2012, they ended up releasing a security update for Leopard that fixed the DigiNotar issue. This update was Intel only unfortunately. Truly pathetic. Thanks Apple.
The good news is that disabling or deleting this vulnerable certificate is very easy. For the ultimate level of security when it comes to certificates like this, you should use a browser with a private browsing function, along with script blocking. Those things combined together would give you a browsing environment nearly as secure as current OS X, and even save you a bunch of CPU cycles.
Along with DigiNotar, you should make it a habit to look through your certificates every so often, and delete or mark as "Never Trust" to disable any expired items that might exist.
How to disable DigiNotar or any other certificate:
1. Open "Keychain Access" from the Utilities folder in Applications.
2. Select "System Roots" in the top left. It may take a moment to show them all.
3. Navigate to the "DigiNotar Root" certificate. Double click to disable or select and delete.
4. If you're choosing not to delete and have double clicked it simply expand the "Trust" settings.
5. Set the top option named "When using this certificate" to "Never Trust" which will automatically set all the trust functions the same way. Use the screenshot below for reference.
Screenshot
I will be sure to update you in the future when other certificates or anything else becomes vulnerable. These days I am paying more and more attention to Leopard security, because it is at a point now where it will only become less secure as the months and years go by. There are far too many people that are either in denial or ignorant to this fact.
Linux content and your ideas
I am currently working on plans for a few of my own ideas for upcoming Linux content, but would also like to hear some of the reader ideas. Like the OS X content and your ideas post last month, I am always open to content ideas the readers would like covered.
What Linux related things do you guys need the most help with? What type of content would you like more of?
This will also be a good way to gauge what the new to Linux people are having the most issues with. There also needs to be content for the more advanced users, so I want to hear about ideas for those as well. It's not that I have any problems with thinking up new things to write, but rather that I also want to write content the regular readers want to see.
Let the ideas flow.
Luakit
Luakit is a very lightweight Webkit based browser for Linux. I was told about this a while ago by dr. dave, who is a regular reader here, and who's comments are always very helpful and interesting. Thanks again, Dave.
Description of it from the Luakit site:
"Luakit is a highly configurable, browser framework based on the Webkit web content engine and the GTK+ toolkit. It is very fast, extensible by Lua and licensed under the GNU GPL v3 license. It is primarily targeted at power users, developers and any people with too much time on their hands who want to have fine-grained control over their web browsers behaviour and interface."
For the last couple weeks I have been playing with it, and I am extremely impressed by the speed and simplicity of it. There is virtually no overhead at all. My G4 500MHz Stormtrooper runs it at a clip that would satisfy even the most impatient of people. With 4 tabs open right now it is using 37MB RAM. It launches in approx. 1.5 seconds on an old PATA HD, and most sites load in 2-5 seconds. This blog loads in about 2 seconds.
The basics
To load a page, run "luakit url"
Control + T loads a new tab
The rest is all up to you via config files. Here is a list of the config files available for editing:
-
rc.lua-- is the main config file which dictates which and in what order different parts of the browser are loaded. -
binds.lua-- defines every action the browser takes when you press a button or combination of buttons (even mouse buttons, direction key, etc) and the browser commands (I.e.:quit,:restart,:open,:lua, etc). -
theme.lua-- change fonts and colours used by the interface widgets. -
window.lua-- is responsible for building the luakit browser window and defining several helper methods (I.e.w:new_tab(uri),w:close_tab(),w:close_win(), etc). -
webview.lua-- is a wrapper around the webview widget object and is responsible for watching webview signals (I.e. "key-press", "load-status", "resource-request-starting", etc). This file also provides several window methods which operate on the current webview tab (I.e.w:reload(),w:eval_js("code here.."),w:back(),w:forward()). -
modes.lua-- manages the modal aspect of the browser and the actions that occur when switching modes. -
globals.lua-- change global options like scroll/zoom step, default window size, useragent, search engines, etc.
Who should use it
For those that prefer pointing and clicking everything they do, this may not be the one for you. People that don't like using run commands to load pages will certainly be turned off.
For those that are comfortable computing like this, or at least want to learn to be, this is an extremely flexible screamer of a browser. The performance is blinding fast for the G4 500MHz it's running on. A faster system could only do better.
How to install
Fire up the "Root Terminal" in Debian or MintPPC and type:
apt-get install luakit
PowerPC gaming on Mac OS
If you’re like me, then you prefer the games from the PowerPC era. Not simply because they were coded for the architecture, but
rather that this was the best era in Mac and PC gaming in my opinion. The reason I feel this way is that the
games from this era are more raw and simple, with a lot less fluff. Many modern games focus mainly on
graphic realism and lack the quality experience that older ones had.
In my experiences, I would say that the CPU plays a more important role in Mac gaming compared to the wintel world. I say that because in my direct experiences with many games it’s the CPU that makes the most difference. An example of this was some testing I did a couple years back. I tested a Sawtooth with a G4 1.0 GHz 7455 and Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB vs. another Sawtooth with a G4 1.8 GHz 7448 and a Radeon 7500 32MB. The 1.8 GHz system beat the snot out of the 1.0 GHz in every single way. Although the 9800 in the slower system is a far better GPU, the difference is negated by a CPU that is clocked 80% faster. Obviously the 9800 is better suited for the 1.8 GHz, which is where it lives now, but those tests were to prove a point at the time. This was all during a debate where others had claimed that the GPU was far more important for Mac gaming, but it's actually 2D where the GPU plays more of a role on a Mac vs. Wintel machines. The GPU is still important in gaming, make no mistake; I'm just saying that the CPU is more of a factor in Mac gaming vs. Wintel.
It makes sense to break up games by system requirements, so people can try the ones within the ability of the hardware they have. Although these games are all harder to find these days, they are pretty much all still available if you look hard enough in the right places. I will list all the options I can think of but will really only comment on the ones I have direct experience with. I didn’t really start gaming on Macs until a good year or more into the G3 era around early 98. Because of this, I cannot really comment on the earliest games for the 601-604 CPU’s.
Most of these games have reviews on Inside Mac Games dot com. The ones that do will contain a link to the review in the title. Inside Mac Games is the number one most trusted source for me and many Mac gamers. The site is particularly good for older game info.
Group 1: Any G3 - G4
350-700MHz – Rage 128 or higher
The
selection is limited on this low end of the scale, but the titles available are
quality games.
Quake III took everything up a few notches. The graphics and game play are stellar compared to the previous two. I started playing this in 1999 when I bought the Stormtrooper new. The stock configuration was a G3 350 MHz with a Rage 128 16 MB, and it played III like a champ. ID software did an amazing job optimizing it for the G3 systems and later the G4. I play the G4 optimized OS X version on my 1.8 GHz with Radeon 9800. I get well over 200 FPS at 1920 and over 300 FPS @ 1280. Needless to say there is never even a hint of lag. It also plays great on the modern revision of my Stormtrooper with a G4 500 and Radeon 7000 PCI.
The truly great thing about all 3 versions of this game is that they are all built for both classic OS and X. III plays even better on X in my experiences.
When you consider that this game was released in 1999, and has such low requirements, the graphics are quite amazing. I play it at 1920 with quality set to highest on my 1.8 GHz G4, and it looks fantastic for its age.
It’s a third person shooter much like Tomb Raider, but is a far better game IMO. The hand-to-hand fighting is so fun in this game that I almost never use the gun. I only shoot when facing one of the enemies which is only shooting, and not approaching to fight. The gun selection leaves a lot to be desired, so that is certainly part of my hand-to-hand preference. To be fair though, the gun selection is the only area the game lacks quality in my opinion.
Like Quake, there are Classic and X options for Oni. The X option is very elegant in that all you have to do is attach the X app to the original Classic game content folder. There is also a great editor available here, which allows you to make yourself invincible, and invisible to the enemies. They can only see you when you punch them. You can also give yourself virtually unlimited ammo. The later levels are so hard to beat that you often do need these cheats; unless you're some superhuman gamer.
Abuse
As far as I know, there was never an X version made, so this is Classic only. I played it on 8.6 and all the 9 versions without issue. There is a version for PowerPC Linux, which I installed a while ago, and will play more when I have a chance.
Just thinking of this game as I write this makes me want to get it again. From 2003-2004 a few friends and I played this over LAN together at least once a week. It’s a perfect game for LAN and online play, because the more that play on a level the more fun it is.
I have never heard of a OS X version, so if you can find a copy it would be for OS 8.5-9.
If you have an older child or teen, or just really like Spider-Man, then this game is worth looking into.
Other options for
this hardware group:
Marathon (all
versions)
Carmageddon
Deer Hunter
Sim City (I & II)
Tomb Raider (I, II and III)
Myth (I & II)
Group 2: G4 800MHz-1.0GHz – Dual G4 450-533MHz – Radeon 7500/Geforce 2 or higher
The good news is that all the games from group 1 will play even better on this hardware.
Halo: Combat Evolved (1.5)
If you like first person shooters, and have never played this game, then you’re really missing out. The requirements are a G4 800 MHz and a 32MB vid card. It’s OS X only, and although it will play on Radeon 7500 and lower, I recommend an 8500 or higher.
Quality game and quality graphics, so you really can’t go wrong. The game play can get rather intense at times, and the maps are quite good. I tend to prefer the mostly outdoor maps, as the building based ones are a bit redundant.
Other options for this hardware:
Group 3: G4 1.2GHz+ - Dual G4 800MHz+ - G5 - Radeon 8500/Geforce 5200 or higher
One thing I need to mention about GPU’s is that the numbering systems that ATI and Nvidia used with some cards make no sense. A layperson would assume a Radeon 9000 or 9200 was better than an 8500, but that is not the case at all. Both the 9000 and 9200 are based on an underpowered 8500 chip. The 9000 is also slightly above the 9200 in performance. Also, the original Radeon (no number) is slightly more capable than the Radeon 7000. The rest of the Radeon are numbered in a way that represent the power delivered.
With the Nvidia cards found in Macs, there is some confusion with the Geforce 3 and 4. A Geforce 3 will trump a standard 4 (aka MX), but a 4 Ti will beat a 3. The Geforce 4 MX is only very slightly above the 2 in performance.
You can get by on most of the games below with a Radeon 7500 or 9000/9200, or a Geforce 2 or 4 MX, but would need to turn all the quality down and play at 800x600 if you want any semblance of performance. I have added a real world performance ranked list of both Nvidia and ATI cards to the bottom of this post.
Once you get bored of playing the built in levels, you can enjoy endless possibilities by playing skirmishes. The online play is very good, but it has to be PowerPC vs. PowerPC or Intel vs. Intel. Aspyr and EA wrote a 1.04 patch that added universal architectures, because before that it was PowerPC only. Even with the universal patch you can’t play Intel users with your PowerPC. On Gameranger people generally title the games by architecture for this reason.
The requirements say a G4 1.0 GHz, but it isn’t smooth until you get up to 1.2 GHz in my experience. Even with a Radeon 9800. I have had good results with it on the dual 867 MHz MDD I used to own with a Radeon 9600. It played well enough on the dual 867, that it would also be fine on a dual 800.
I play it these days on the 1.8 GHz with 9800 @ 1024 on medium quality. The reason it’s set a bit low is that it makes the larger maps much smoother and I prefer those. Map speed is crucial on an RTS game.
I should also note that the Radeon 9000 has a known conflict with this games rendering; you can still play it, but everything turns either blue or black in terms of ground and sky. Very hard on the eyes. There has never been a Mac fix for this that I'm aware of, so 9000 owners (if thats all you have GPU-wise), stay away from this one. Some of the MDD towers came with the 9000 stock, but it was never a big GPU on the Mac; more the similar 8500 and 9200.
The requirements are listed as a G4 867 and 32 MB vid card, but this is unrealistic in my experiences. You can get by fine with a Radeon 7500 but for true performance, without everything set the lowest, a 1.2GHz or higher will be better.
I have the Road to Rome expansion, and the Desert Combat mod. It's easy to waste hours in this game driving around the desert in an Abrams tank looking for things to kill. The standard WWII levels are great, but the desert mod gives it much more modern and powerful weapons.
The game has something to suit everyone. You can drive a tank, APC, fly a plane/jet/helicopter, fire a missile truck, steer and shoot a battleship, use anti-aircraft guns, or just run around with a gun shooting people. Whatever you prefer.
I am also an author on Rated Win, and wrote this post there about the Desert Combat mod, and the Spectre gunship specifically.
Others:
Let me know and I will list them.
Closing comments
As with everything I write, I tend to only base it on things I have experience with. If you feel other games are worthy of mention then leave a comment and I will add it to the post to help spread the word. Explain what you like about it and what specs/settings it plays well with. My life is so insanley busy that my mind is always jumbling many things, so I am sure I have left out obvious ones like Unreal Tournament. I have no experience with it, or what hardware it plays best on so if someone wants to chime in on that it would be great. I'm looking for games I have not mentioned or added insight to those that I have.
Real world GPU ranking (least to most powerful)
ATI:
Rage 128 (mobility)
Rage 128
Rage 128 Pro
Radeon 7000
Radeon (original Radeon with no number)
Radeon 7500
Radeon 9200
Radeon 9000
Radeon 8500
Radeon 9550 (mobility)
Radeon 9500
Radeon 9600's
Radeon 9700's
Radeon 9800's
Radeon x800
Nvidia:
Geforce 2's
Geforce 4 MX
Geforce 3's
Geforce 5200
Geforce 6200
Geforce 6600 LE
Geforce 4 Ti
Geforce 6600
Geforce 6800
Geforce 7300
Geforce 7800
Linux traffic
The Linux based traffic here has increased a large amount. It has finally took the place of Windows as the 2nd most used OS by the visitors here, with OS X being 1st of course.
Back in August and September, the Linux traffic here was maybe 15-18% of the total, and it is now 30%+ every single day. I average about 250-300 unique visits per day, with page loads hitting 400-500, so it's good to see that many people are using Linux generally, and interested in reading about PowerPC Linux specifically. This is very encouraging indeed, especially when you consider many are using Macs, and they have decided to take the plunge.
People are obviously realizing that to embrace Linux, you don't have to abandon Mac OS 10.5 or older, but rather give each OS its own role, or at least discover what they could be while they learn. That is how anything moves forward. When people adopt something into their tech life, they often like a comfort level right from the start, which scares most away from Linux, because it lacks familiarity for most.
Another encouraging thing is that about 70% of the google search bot hits here are PowerPC Linux related, by people often using either Mac OS or Windows. This tells me that even those that have not took the plunge yet are interested. Very encouraging.
I will continue to write helpful content to help smooth the transition. As always, I encourage reader ideas for content so that I can share my insight, while also writing some specific content that people request.
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