This topic is for discussion of my recent post at Forwarding Address on my move to FreeBSD.

After Apple made a mess of iCommune, I switched to using a Thinkpad A31p back in Feburary. Except for being a monstrous beast, it made a really nice linux laptop. It even slept properly... And therein lies the problem. For modern Free Unixes, most things on cutting edge laptops don't work very well. After getting tired of dragging the A31p around, I bought a vaio v505bx, a trim 2Ghz laptop with integrated wireless. This was a few months ago. I haven't used it for more than a few days total because the XFree drivers suck (even though the card is supported), it won't sleep or suspend because ACPI support in Linux in still a mess, and the integrated wifi card might never work because driver manufacturers are afraid to release open source drivers or specifications.

So, I switched back to my tibook. It's pushing the end of it's life, too (it's a 667/1Ghz 15") but I'll upgrade to a newer Powerbook for my birthday in April.

And I'll buy your old one!

I got a 1GHz HP PC as a hand-me-down from my son. I configured it as a dual-boot Windows XP and Red Hat 9 box. While Linux was easy to install, it seems still not ready for prime time. It won't see my external firewire drive, which works fine under XP, and worked fine when it was connected to my iMac. And bizarrely, Linux disables the on-board sound *when it shuts down*.

My problem with the iMac (other than the fact that it's 400Mhz, which makes it the slowest machine in the house) is that the boundaries between Unixlan and Macland never seem clear to me. Some things are configured using the traditional Unix config files, and some things have been taken over by GUI tools and (as far as I know) there's no way to tell which is which.

So, a lot of the time I'm happy using Firebird on XP -- tabbed browsing, no pop-ups, happiness.

I don't know -- for the generic home user (email, web, "digital hub" stuff) is there really any need to enter the shell at all?

Certainly KDE, while a real triumph of open source development in my opinion, does not make it nearly as far as Apple in hiding the guts.

I'm liking it, though. Thinking about some faster hardware...

I agree about the p r i c e -- it is high. Apple is IMO highly competitive in the laptop space though. I just can't leave the iApps and a few other niceties found on OS X from Apple and third parties.

I have been using an office laptop at home (and i spend too much time on it...). I am buying a G5 and going back to a desktop for home use so maybe I won't be in bed reading on the laptop when I could be reading that old medium -- the book.

I'll see how it goes. It's interesting to hear your transition, or foray, whichever it becomes -- keep us posted.

Current status: rocky. A few days ago I screwed up some critical configuration stuff and basically made my system unusable. While KDE is very tidy, I'm starting to feel like XFree86 is the elephant in the middle of the room -- if its config is broken, then KDE is broken too, and KDE can't help you configure it.

If KDE is going to seriously compete in the consumer space (and I really think it could), this X11 dilemma is going to need to be solved.

Edited by author 12-01-2003 05:21 PM
OK, all better now. I spent six weeks using FreeBSD and KDE, then bought a 12" PowerBook. I've written up my experiences here.