Hi,

> Im considering installing NetBSD on my Ibook (a late 2004 model), but
> I want to hear from people that already installed it.  I already used
> NetBSD on i386 and found it very clean. What I want to know is if it
> is ready to be used on an Ibook as a production system, what is its
> limitations. Im aware that Airport extreme is not supported, and
> sleep/susped isnt supported too. How is the support for things like
> sound (I dont know if my Ibook use awacs or what), screen brightness,
> multiple login terminals on cosole, X an desktop related applications,
> function keys, and locale support (I need to be able to write with
> special characters like cedilla, etc).
> 
> I want to put a BSD (NetBSD if possible) in place of MacOS X, but I
> need to be sure that I will be able to do most things like running an
> office suite, browsing the web, playing mp3/dvds, etc.


well, on one side, NetBSD itself is quite OK. Bute NetBSD/ppc and
NetBSD/68k.... well...

I don't have an iBook, but a 9500 workstation, thus you might have
additional problems.

- the general usability of the system is there, it works, X works,
performance is quite fine. You can browse the internet, if your sound is
supported it works too, onmost boards the video support is pretty decent
too... I use wmaker + gnustep as my desktop and GWorkspace and TextEdit
work excellently. GNUMail is very nice. Performance is fine. (I use CVS
versions of those I don't know the status of pkgsrc stuff)

now to the problems

- keyboard problems... repeat doesn't worik anymore here under windows
- limited or absent support for several foreign keyboards (like
italian...)
- text consoles are slow and limited, don't have color and no multiple
logins
- stability issues, although they seem to be constrained to upgraded
machiens like mine
- no DRI, at least in my case

-- cheers