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0 pointsavar3y ago0 comments

I used an iBook G3/G4 for years as a primary development laptop running Linux, and I think your recollection here is a bit off. The state of it was that:

- There were numerous laptops with near-full Linux support, the Apple hardware wasn't categorically better when it came to that.

- The power usage of x86 CPUs was atrocious at the time compared to PPC. Now history is repeating with Apple's M[12] line. Therefore people put up with a lot to get 2-3x longer battery life. As I recall I got 3-4 hours of active use out of my iBook, but (going to conferences) it felt like people's x86s almost always had to be plugged in.

- The Linux support for software suspend/hibernation was really flaky at the time, but it worked perfectly on Apple hardware, because all Linux had to do was to tell the hardware "do the suspend thing now" (IIRC by tweaking a file in /proc). The hardware did a slow "heartbeat" with a front LED hidden behind the plastic frame when suspended (a nice effect). When running Linux it would do the the exact same, as it was all done in hardware.

- There were still edge cases in hardware support, just as with any other laptop vendor, it all came down to what individual components happened to have Linux drivers. Some of this was better on Apple's hardware, some of it was worse.

0 comments

protonbob3y ago

This is such a trip down memory lane. The iBook G4 was a bit of a pain to set up with ubuntu, but once you got it going it was pretty fool proof. I think I ran a machine on it until 12.04 where they stopped supporting PPC officially.

rvdginste3y ago

I used an iBook G3/G4 12" for several years with linux. I remember the G3 was supported completely out of the box. I loved it: it was small, battery lasted pretty long (I did spend some time fine tuning laptop-mode-tools), suspend-to-ram was working flawlessly and from what I remember all hardware was supported, including 3d graphics (ati radeon). For the G4, I remember there were some issues to get the wireless card working when it came out (Broadcom hardware I think), but the rest of the hardware also worked out of the box.

bityard3y ago

> The Linux support for software suspend/hibernation was really flaky at the time, but it worked perfectly on Apple hardware, because all Linux had to do was to tell the hardware "do the suspend thing now" (IIRC by tweaking a file in /proc).

That's interesting to read, because I ran Linux on a Macbook Pro for a few years around 2012 and the only thing on that machine that _never_ worked right was suspend and resume.

spectre3d3y ago

Pretty sure they were speaking of the PowerPC age, not Intel. The iBook and PowerBook G3 and G4, not the MacBook and MacBook Pro.

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