ibook for linux power user :P

[manche]

I know this must be getting pretty redundant.. the same old 'to mac or not to mac' question, but here's my twist: I don't use windows! No matter which review I read or which forum I go to, there's always the assumption that pc=windows . But, I have been a dedicated linux user for the last few years and I don't have the same stability, spyware, virus woes as the typical windows users do. Now, I'm going to but a laptop for college soon, and I can't decide whether I should opt for the mac, because I will be using linux or FreeBsd on my laptop if it isn't a mac anyways. I will use my laptop for the usual wordprocessing: OpenOffice.org! , intenet, e-mail, and the occassional photo/video editing. I will also want to do some programming and compiling on the machine. So, my question is, in your sincere opinion, do you think I should buy an ibook or should I go instead for a pentium/AMD based laptop?
I think the PB is still a bit out of reach for me.. how much will it be with a student discount anyways? Well, there are still a few months till I have to buy the laptop, so may be the prices will come down a bit then.
Any opinion?

 

[ExoticFish]

welcome! there are plenty of Linux users around here (myself being one, go Gentoo! woot woot!). the question that i couldn't really tell by what you said is: are you planning on using Linux or OS X on your iBook? if you're going to be doing simple things like word processing and internet access then so with with one. the only problems i've had with running Linux on PPC is in the Development area. some stuff i've found just doesn't work well under PPC because the developer just never tried it. it seems to be getting better all the time but i still leave my Gentoo install for my PC at home. my $0.02

 

[manche]

my choice of OS

Thanks for the reply ExoticFish. I plan on using OS X for the most part, although I might get nostalgic for linux once in a while (yellowdog and ubuntu liveCd should do the trick!). I think I'll be comfortable in a unix based environment. So, how is OS X for development? By the way, my current PC is an old weakling and I still do image editing and all the other stuff on it. So, will the ibook or powerbook be not good enough to do somethings? I don't usually play games, so that shouldn't be a problem.
Hey, I didn't know Gentoo supported PPC. Any one compiled the distro on an ibook or PB? How long did it take? I think this will give me the general idea of their power.

 

[ExoticFish]

i've installed Gentoo PPC on one of my old PowerBooks and it took awhile as Gentoo installs tend to do. =0) if you're planning on using OS X but if you get nostalgic then OS X comes with a X11 server that you can use to install lots of open source stuff on. Gentoo has also released portage for OS X and i've been using it a little and it works good (although most stuff is masked currently). for some things i open up X11 in fullscreen mode and use fluxbox and xterm, works great! i've been meaning to compile KDE but who has THAT kind of time on their hands?

 

[nichos]

I've been a (exclusive) Linux (Debian) user for 5+ years, and bought an iBook about a month ago. I still use Linux for my desktop, but for a laptop - the ibook is definitly the way to go! Linux really doesn't do as well as a Mac on laptops. I really haven't missed much. I've put another gig of ram in it (total 1.25) and it's been smooth! I do use Neoffice/J because all my documents are in OpenOffice.org, and I use gimp (through x11) for my graphics editing - all run very nicely. So anyway, as you can see - I went for the Mac for the laptop, Linux for the desktop, though that may change too