New toy

[ewx]

So the iBook finally arrived last week. I've since spent much of my spare time getting a variety of things working:

Wireless connectivity. Our firewall couldn't even see the wireless PCI card I'd bought but my server machine could, so that's where it went. I've not managed to persuade it to do WEP, but I'd always planned to use a VPN link over the wireless LAN anyway and have now got secnet, timeplease's VPN software working. I get about 8Mbit/s, which is a little disappointing for something advertized as 54Mbit/s but adequate for many purposes (and I can always plug it into the wired LAN if necessary).

PuTTY, specifically the GTK+ version, which is not a great challenge. I seem to be using Terminal in practice, though it remains to be seen what I'll do in the long run.

Starcraft. This installed pretty easily. The plan is to get a separate mouse and keyboard, and then LNR and I will both be able to conveniently play simultaneously.

At some point I plan to port DisOrder, though I'm not sure when I'll have time right now.

Patches and porting notes for some of the things above. Having a modern and relatively complete (once you've found Fink) UNIX underneath it all is a real boon.

I like the software side of the UI (on the hardware side I'm not yet convinced about the trackpad and, of course, the single button nature). Exposé is brilliant, in particular.

Comments

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

I have an Apple keyboard and mouse sitting boxed here by mine, waiting for me to figure out what arrangement on the desk will work. (This will be interesting, as I'll still be running the odd thing like gnucash on the linux machine until I either get gnucash up and running on the iBook, or sort out a suitable alternative.)

Have you taken a close look at the lid-securing catch? That's *nice*...

[fanf]

Terminal.app has shocking scrollback performance, taking an appreciable fraction of a second on a G3 to scroll a window with only 1000 lines.

[fanf]

Terminal.app has shocking scrollback performance, taking an appreciable fraction of a second on a G3 to scroll a window with only 1000 lines.

[fanf]

Oh, and if you like virtual desktops, get http://wsmanager.sourceforge.net/ and buy Rich a pint in the Carlton.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Speed comparison with pterm is somewhere on my mental to-do list.

[bjh21.livejournal.com]

FWIW, my approach to terminals on Mac OS X is just to use the supplied xterm with X11.app. I suspect this may not be practical if you're stuck with a one-button pointing device, though. <FX: cuddles Kensington Expert Mouse>

[sparrowsion]

If you like Exposé, get a mouse with an excess of buttons and bind them to Exposé actions.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I found xterm and Terminal.app roughly comparable for catting a medium sized file, and pterm far slower, which is the opposite of the Linux experience where pterm and rxvt leave everything else in the dust.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, that's very shiny. Lots of scope for indecision over the switch fx l-)