Cool Mac Gear

The last mail before Christmas on December 24th brought a package containing SuSE Linux 7.3 PPC Edition, so in the respite between tree and dinner, I decided to try upgrading the SuSE Linux 7.1 installation on my WallStreet PowerBook.

Since I already had SuSE Linux installed on a partition on my PowerBook's hard Drive, I was able to skip the drive formatting and partitioning that is necessary for a scratch installation of Linux on a Mac. You can read about that part of the installation in my report from last spring in Appendix 1.

SuSE Linux 7.3 comes, happily, with not one, but two very thorough print manuals -- a 391 page technical guide and handbook for the OS itself, including installation instructions, and a new (at least since version 7.1) 171 page manual for networking with SuSE Linux. That's right folks--nearly 600 pages of print documentation with a software product in 2001. This puts Apple, Microsoft, and the many other software developers that have essentially abandoned real manuals to shame, especially in a product that costs only $79.95

Not only that, but the main manual has been revised, updated, and substantially improved, with extensive instructions on using the Konqueror Desktop Environment (KDE) graphical user interface, the GIMP bitmap graphics program, and other major applications among the 2,000 or so that are included in the SuSE Linux 7.3 package.

The SuSE Linux install instructions have also been improved and clarified, with new screen shots to illustrate procedures, and I found it significantly easier to follow than the old manual that shipped with SuSE Linux 7.3.

To commence the system upgrade process, I inserted CD #1 (out of eight that ship with SuSE Linux 7.3) found the suseBoot folder, in which is located the Boot X App Linux boot loader which allows you to restart the Mac in Linux.

First a couple of screens of UNIX code appear as the system boots, and then graphical screens asking you to specify your language of choice, Linux volume choice, and whether you want to go with a text based or graphical interface for installation. SuSE Linux offers both graphical (YaST2) and text based (YaST1) installation options. I chose graphical, as it's an understatement to say that my expertise with UNIX command lines leaves a great deal to be desired. At this point, the mouse/trackpad still don't respond, so I just used the return key to select the default, which is YaST2 graphical.

At that point the cheerful looking YaST2 screen appears, complete with penguin mascot. The instructions in the left-hand column walk you through selecting a language (again), and a time zone. You then select the desired installation type -- new installation or update of existing system. In this case I chose the latter.

Moving along, several more dialog screens provide you with a variety of options for configuring the reinstall. I chose to restore the basic default installation of SuSE Linux plus office applications.

Once commenced, my installation had nearly 500 files to update, so the process took quite a while -- longer than, say, a Mac OS system reinstall, but remember that this SuSE installation required updating a lot of application files as well.

The installer window displays three progress lines: the particular file that is being updated at the moment; the number and percentage of files that have been updated, and the percentage of the Linux partition that has been used.

When my update was about 80% complete, the installer paused to reboot from the system that it had updated on the hard drive, and then took a substantial amount of time initialize in the updated system.

The final phase of the update installation involved inserting appropriate CDs when prompted to finish updating the remaining application software. Finally, you log on and are greeted with the message: "Have a lot of fun."

Unfortunately, I found the installation/upgrade more "fun" then actually trying to use the system. I had chosen KDE as my window manager desktop environment, and I actually thought it looked kind of nice, although far less polished than the Mac OS. The problem was, the installed system was configured for 640 x 480 screen resolution, which made for pretty small and ugly view on my WallStreet's 800 x 600 screen, with the 640 x 480 window in the upper left and garbage images in the bottom and right margins.

I decided that if I was going to try using Linux, I wanted full-screen resolution. SuSE Linux's setup and configuration tool for the XFree86 graphical interface is called SaX2., but when I tried to log into it from the text based command line interface, I got messages saying that it was unable to detect a certain "card," along with some UNIX hieroglyphics about how one might address the issue. I tried typing in these commands, but they were denied.

OK. Back to KDE, and I crashed around in there until I found a link to graphics configuration, which, mirabile dictu, started up the SaX2 tool. I clicked through the configuration dialogs until I found the desktop setup, and there in the Properties window was a pull down menu with a selection of screen resolutions. I switched from 640 x 480 to 800 x 600 and exited the SaX2 tool. Big mistake.

First, I noticed that I was still in 640 x 480 mode in KDE. Fine, I exited to the console and typed in the startx command to restart the KDE window Manager, but was instantly greeted with a blizzard of error messages. The system could no longer detect a screen at all for graphical rendering.

A more careful perusal of the manual seemed to indicate that where I had gone wrong may have been in deselecting 640 x 480 when I selected 800 x 600. However, I'm not sure of this, and there seemed to be no way back in to undo what I had done. No doubt a Linux-savvy command line jockey would have been able to fix it, but that's not me. SaX2 resolutely refused to start up, so I was stuck in command line purgatory.

I tried running the installer again, and the graphical interface appeared in the bootup from the system on the CD, but when it rebooted from the hard drive system, the installer lapsed back into text mode, saying it could not produce a graphic image.

Apparently, I had seriously screwed up something in the system by changing the screen resolution setting, and since I was now blocked out of the SaX2 graphical configuration tool, and hadn't a clue how to fix the problem using text commands, I decided that the smartest thing to do, being as all I head was a default installation anyway, was to reinstall the system from scratch.

The YaST2 installer seemed reasonably happy to do this, but it required me to go into the partition tool ("for experts only"-- ha!) and specify the main and swap partition mount points. How to do this was not obvious, but I figured it and out by guess and context, and the reinstall then proceeded, taking the better part of an hour, but with no hassles. I again chose the default plus office install option, which only required inserting two of the eight CDs this time.

The installer still insisted on a 640 x 480 screen resolution, and there seemed to be no alternative, so that's what I got, with the working desktop scrunched into the upper left-hand corner of the WallStreet's screen. One possibility may be that the system isn't optimized to support the WallStreet LE's native 12.1"., 800 x 600 mode. I decided not to mess with resolution settings this time.

SuSE Linux 7.3 booted up nicely and allowed me to log in to the KDE desktop environment once again, where my troubles started anew. It seemed that the KDE launcher bar was not a happy camper with the 640 x 480 resolution, and it proved cranky and skittish. In my attempts to settle it down and access controls toward the right hand side of the bar, it suddenly locked up solidly and refused to respond at all. Hey, I thought Linux was supposed to be stable.

Since the button to quit KDE and return to the command line console is on the launch bar, and it was no longer taking orders, I was stuck. I couldn't figure out how to quit KDE and get back to the text commands in order to reboot or shut down., and everything I tried experimentally did nothing. Applications with icons on the main desktop would still start and run, but I was a prisoner in the partially disabled KDE universe. After nearly an hour of futile attempts to escape, I gave up and resorted to the time-honored Macintosh three finger salute -- Command, Control, Power Key, and was delivered back to the familiar and comfortable world of OS 9.1.

Now, you're not supposed to force-quit Linux, and I discovered that they aren't kidding. When I tried to reboot into SuSE Linux 7.3, after the first page of boot code, the program seized up, requiring a another force restart.

Determined to at least leave this exercise with a working installation of Linux on my hard drive, I initiated the installation process yet again. This time I chose the slightly smaller default (without office) option, which took about 45 minutes and only one CD insertion.

Reboot again, this time being very gentle and cautious in KDE. I decided to try the other included window manager, GNOME, whose desktop appearance I think I prefer any way, and which seemed a lot more comfortable at 640 x 480 resolution then KDE did. I also like the way GNOME is laid out better, although it hasn't got all the bells and whistles that its competitor does.

So there you have it. SuSE Linux 7.3 is installed on my WallStreet. I still haven't done anything useful with it, and even getting it configured to dial up to the Internet has eluded me, despite another hour or so of rattling around in both KDE and GNOME.

Not that I would particularly want to use it for production work anyway with it stuck in 640 x 480 resolution. It's just too darn ugly and the desktop is too small.

Which is too bad. From the small amount I've been able to play with it, SuSE Linux and its bundle of applications look like they could be lots of fun, as the welcome prompt asserts. It also looks like an OS I might be able to live with more happily than Windows if I had to. However, neither the WallStreet, nor my mongrel UMAX S-900 appear to be the ideal platform for it. I think that possibly a more satisfactory experimentation mode would be to install Linux on its very own dedicated hard drive on a desktop Mac or a bootable external volume on a PowerBook. I actually tried the former on my desktop S-900, but SuSE Linux didn't like something about its video card configuration, and I got a black screen after a flash of SuSE Linux boot code on the startup. Linux seems to be quite finicky about video support.

I also, in my limited experimentation, didn't find Linux any more speedy in GUI mode on the 233 MHz WallStreet's than is OS 9.1, although Finder response in KDE and GNOME are snappier then OS X Aqua is on my 500 MHz Pismo PowerBook.

Linux is still an OS for people who like mucking around with the cyber nuts and bolts of their computer software. If you are such a person, SuSE Linux 7.3 is a comprehensive package with a ton of bundled software applications, as well as those extensive print manuals (which could still be dumbed down a bit for newbies like me), and a very reasonable price. I don't doubt that someone determined could likely make SuSE Linux 7.3 work well. Perhaps there is even a fix for the screen resolution compatibility problem on my PowerBook.

However, even with SuSE Linux's relatively user-friendly installer, Linux is not for the faint of heart or short of patience, and unless you are temperamentally prepared and have the time to climb a steep learning curve that makes the switch from OS 9 to OS X look like a gentle speed bump, it's probably not for you. If you want the stability and power of UNIX without (most of) the hassle, be thankful for OS X

Appendix 1: Linux On The WallStreet - Episode One

Appendix 2: SuSE Linux 7.3 For PPC

Charles W. Moore

Cool Mac Gear