So Matt, Ubuntu For The Mac?
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Today, Stephen writes:
How’s the new iMac coming along? had a chance to really play with it yet?
Been wondering if you intend to install Ubuntu on it, maybe the new Gutsy distro? Will be interesting to see how that works out. I’ve tested Gutsy beta on my machines and the one thing that impressed me ( besides Compiz-Fusion enabled by default) was it’s Automatic Printer Setup..it’s the first distro to actually support my multifunction printer out of the box!
Hi Stephen. Yeah, I’ve taken Gutsy through some early LiveCD testing. Mixed feeling about it and the decision to support Compiz-Fusion by default. They improved the wireless stack to better support Intel, Atheros (not recommended any longer) and RaLink cards (RT2500 cards tested by me work great). But as I expected from the developers who to this day will not listen to reason, they are STILL trying to support the Broadcom chipsets. And as for every feature Ubuntu gains, new wireless bugs surface. Consistently, the only wireless chipset ‘brand’ that has weathered some pretty stupid developers glitches has been Ralink.
How does this relate to the iMac? Easy - take a wild stab as to which chipset for wifi it uses? If you guessed Broadcom, you guessed right. Broadcom in Linux is just ugly, often times leading to the nonsense known as NDISWrapper (let’s support hardware vendors that do not support us). I do not and will never run Linux hardware that is so poorly supported. ATI and Broadcom are just problems waiting to happen. Remember - NVIDIA and RaLink for Gutsy, not ATI (be it improving some) and definitely NOT Broadcom, which powers 99% of those made for Windows notebooks out there.
So no Ubuntu on the Mac? Yeah, that how it’s got to be. Besides, OS X gives my wife everything she needs. If I get one of my own however…that is a whole different story.
Do you have an IT-related question? Perhaps you are just burnt out on writing on the walls with crayons? Whatever the comments may be, drop me a line, and you too can “Just Ask Matt!”
