Need some advice!

[TerminalNewb]

Hi guys, I have a unique situation. I currently own a MacBook Air (Mid-2013) and an iPhone 5C, but I want to see about getting a second computer to setup to run EVERYTHING from the terminal (I've read about emacs and kinda like that I think). Browser, text editor, etc all from terminal, more for a less distracting experience.

So naturally, I want to do this on a mac, but is this a good idea? Can I run 'everything' on a PPC computer from a terminal? I've used Linux in the past so I am not opposed to doing that, but if possible I'd like to use old OSX.

I am set to meetup with someone tomorrow to look at this... it appears to be immaculate, has original box & cds, Wifi card, and 1.25GB of RAM. As far as 'power' I think it should be fine but I've never setup a computer to be command line based. Even if it just means running terminal maximized, I just want to know if it's possible. Thoughts?

http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/sys/4463238177.html

Thanks guys!

 

[2984839]

There apparently is a way to boot into console mode, but it doesn't seem to be possible to do so automatically, though hopefully someone will confirm: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2379967?start=0&tstart=0

A possibly better solution would be to install Linux or BSD. They're designed to be run from the console and will work a lot better IMO. I use OpenBSD full time and only run a graphical environment when I need to.

 

[eyoungren]

Speaking directly to your question (and ignoring the Mac for now) I don't think this is possible with OS X. OS X is a graphic interface that sits on top of UNIX underpinnings. Sure, Terminal app lets you directly control those underpinnings, but you have to be booted in to OS X first to even access the Terminal app.

You can of course run UNIX based stuff in Terminal - if that's what you really want to do. But beware that any PowerPC Mac will not talk to an iPhone 5 or above (including the 5c and 5s). You need iTunes 10.7 at a minimum and 10.6.3 is the last version that will run on a PowerPC Mac. Additionally, if you were to have say and iPhone 4 or 4s and you installed iOS 7 you'd be screwed because iOS 7 itself demands iTunes 11, which of course no PowerPC Mac can run.

Lastly, as a caution don't assume you are going to get the same level of performance from a PowerPC Mac as from your Intel. And the eMacs are a budget education version of the iMac. So, even less performance overall.

As to the PB you linked to, my wife has that model. Great Mac, and for once that price is right. $80 for what the guy is listing is a decent and fair price.

As to Linux…well let's just say it's less supported and buggy on PowerPC. Possible, yes, but not something I'd advise the average person to engage in.

EDIT: I stand corrected on the console thing. You learn something new every day!

 

[TerminalNewb]

Speaking directly to your question (and ignoring the Mac for now) I don't think this is possible with OS X. OS X is a graphic interface that sits on top of UNIX underpinnings. Sure, Terminal app lets you directly control those underpinnings, but you have to be booted in to OS X first to even access the Terminal app.

You can of course run UNIX based stuff in Terminal - if that's what you really want to do. But beware that any PowerPC Mac will not talk to an iPhone 5 or above (including the 5c and 5s). You need iTunes 10.7 at a minimum and 10.6.3 is the last version that will run on a PowerPC Mac. Additionally, if you were to have say and iPhone 4 or 4s and you installed iOS 7 you'd be screwed because iOS 7 itself demands iTunes 11, which of course no PowerPC Mac can run.

Lastly, as a caution don't assume you are going to get the same level of performance from a PowerPC Mac as from your Intel. And the eMacs are a budget education version of the iMac. So, even less performance overall.

As to the PB you linked to, my wife has that model. Great Mac, and for once that price is right. $80 for what the guy is listing is a decent and fair price.

As to Linux…well let's just say it's less supported and buggy on PowerPC. Possible, yes, but not something I'd advise the average person to engage in.

EDIT: I stand corrected on the console thing. You learn something new every day!

So today I learned there's an Apple product called an eMac
I meant the terminal-based application (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs)

Again, this PowerBook G4 would be an ADDITIONAL MacBook. I don't mean it to interface with my iPhone 5C OR my other Apple. I want it as basically a test bed to play around with doing everything text based where possible and just have some fun. I want to try (more for a fun experiment more than anything) browsing the web through the text based console, and writing code/documents through it.

*Edit* It is a 1.33GHz model if that matters too much.

*Secondary Edit* I guess I don't mind TOO much if OSX is running, but I wanted to know if I can do all of those things (browse the web, edit documents mostly) via Terminal.app only (or something like iTerm). Basically to reduce the number of distractions (online videos, ads, etc).

 

[eyoungren]

So today I learned there's an Apple product called an eMac
I meant the terminal-based application (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs)

Again, this PowerBook G4 would be an ADDITIONAL MacBook. I don't mean it to interface with my iPhone 5C OR my other Apple. I want it as basically a test bed to play around with doing everything text based where possible and just have some fun. I want to try (more for a fun experiment more than anything) browsing the web through the text based console, and writing code/documents through it.

*Edit* It is a 1.33GHz model if that matters too much.

*Secondary Edit* I guess I don't mind TOO much if OSX is running, but I wanted to know if I can do all of those things (browse the web, edit documents mostly) via Terminal.app only (or something like iTerm). Basically to reduce the number of distractions (online videos, ads, etc).

LOL!!!

Today we learned that Erik is full of it and should think before he types, LOL!

Sorry, disregard my pathetic ramblings!

 

[TerminalNewb]

LOL!!!

Today we learned that Erik is full of it and should think before he types, LOL!

Sorry, disregard my pathetic ramblings!

It's all good!

But, with regards to the sale listing, $80 for that seems good? I am selling my iPad Mini tomorrow (not really a tablet guy it appears), and I am considering getting this to play around with.

And assuming I can setup the terminal the way I want (any input on that possibility?), do you think the computer will handle it?

 

[2984839]

It's all good!

But, with regards to the sale listing, $80 for that seems good? I am selling my iPad Mini tomorrow (not really a tablet guy it appears), and I am considering getting this to play around with.

And assuming I can setup the terminal the way I want (any input on that possibility?), do you think the computer will handle it?

Running from the console requires very little resources. It should be fine.

 

[eyoungren]

It's all good!

But, with regards to the sale listing, $80 for that seems good? I am selling my iPad Mini tomorrow (not really a tablet guy it appears), and I am considering getting this to play around with.

And assuming I can setup the terminal the way I want (any input on that possibility?), do you think the computer will handle it?

Yeah, $80, with all that's included is a fair price for both buyer and seller. I paid $50 for my wife's 12" PB and it had a broken screen (I replaced) and was only 1Ghz. Given that that was a couple of years ago this is a good price.

If the seller was not including the extras I'd say $50-60 would be more correct, but the extras are worth the $20-30.

 

[RMo]

Have you figured out what programs will let you accomplish what you want? It seems like you are going to try emacs for text editing. If that's too complicated, I might suggest nano. For browsing, Lynx is probably the most "popular" text-based browser. I'm not sure if the latest versions are available for PPC, but I'm not sure how much that would matter (and it's probably easy to compile if not).