On Wed, 6 Sep 2000, Michael Jeffrey Tucker wrote:

>
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 11:15:33 -0400 (EDT)
>From: Michael Jeffrey Tucker <mtucker@fas.harvard.edu>
>To: mklinux-setup@public.lists.apple.com
>Subject: Choosing a Unix
>
>Hi all,
>  I was wondering if someone could offer some advice or point me at a FAQ
>about picking a UNIX distribution for a beige G3. I am currently running
>NetBSD on an 68k machine, and mklinux on a 7200. Now I am looking at
>setting up a machine that I will be using heavily under X. I'd say that
>rules out NetBSD because the graphics support seems minimal. I
>want something secure, I want something decently fast, and I want
>something that will work well with X applications am I out of luck? ;)

None of the Free unix/unix-like OS's for the Mac can display graphics
very well, or better X11 performance is not too impressive.  This being
said in reference to my own experiance with dealing with X on a Performa
6360 with 32M RAM and on a 233Mhz Beige G3 with 320M RAM.  Neither was
really able to run X well, not even across a network.  Linux/NetBSD
was the free unix(like) OS's I have run on them.
For some reason, I believe this is to be largely due to the immediate
use of framebuffering, on the PC side running with framebuffers suck
memory like no tomorrow.  But PC is not PPC, so for what ever its worth.
Its more than likely undeveloped X drivers for the Mac hardware thats
the culprit, its definately not anything to do with CPU power, because
at the console LinuxPPC flies.

The only Unix I have run on Mac/PPC hardware where X/or some GUI was
able to run flawlessly and with impressive performance was MacOS X Server.
Which brings me to admit that I have not toyed with the X server for
MacOS, and I wonder how far, or if, or what happened, or what the is
the status on John Carmacks work on the X server for Darwin?

X desperately needs work on Mac hardware, and we need if possible
to stop using OF as a crutch to keep the OS running, rather than just
using it to help get the system to going.


>  Well, if anyone has a recommendation I would love to hear it, just drop
>me a line. To an extent this will be my experimental box, I will probably
>end up screwing it up royally, but as my desktop machine it'll be my
>little toy so it will be ok.

MacOS X<whatever they put out> is my best suggestion.

>Thanks,
>Mike