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My computer at school is a PowerBook running OS 10.3.9, which means that it is becoming increasingly incapable of dealing with the internet, what with being unable to run Firefox \ge 3, or whatever the current version of Flashplayer is, etc. I've been playing with the idea of installing some version of Linux so as to let the computer continue to function in a useful manner.
The question is, which version of Linux should I install? There appear to be lots of choices, and I am not certain what criteria I should be using to choose between them.
The question is, which version of Linux should I install? There appear to be lots of choices, and I am not certain what criteria I should be using to choose between them.
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Date: 2010-05-19 02:03 pm (UTC)From:If you're running 10.3, I'm assuming you've got a PowerPC processor, and PowerPC linux is a world of bizarreness and it might be best to stay away. (When I tried a couple of years ago, there was no way to install Flash. Macromedia never wrote Flash for PPC linux. Googling now seems to suggest people worked something out in the interim, though.) I'm also assuming that PPC linux is dying out as people are buying Intel-based Macs.
All that said, I think everyone I know who uses linux uses Ubuntu (it's the only one I've played with), with one exception, who uses Gentoo. Gentoo has a reputation of being difficult, though. (I think the guy who used it found it a lot of work, but he enjoyed the work in a masochistic sort of way.) You can download/order a Live CD to play with Ubuntu without installing anything.
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Date: 2010-05-20 02:36 pm (UTC)From:It is indeed a PowerPC. At this point, mostly, the purpose of the computer in question is to give me a computer to use at school without having to carry the other one in or sign into one of the school computers (which are Windows anyway). (Why, yes, I am horribly lazy sometimes.) So it won't be a horrible tragedy if I can't make it work . . .