Saturday, 12 January 2002
Linux is a lot easier to configure these days. I got my old, broken Wall Street PowerBook G3 going with PC cards for USB and 802.11b. No kernel patching involved, unlike my last effort. USB audio (modulo a weird crash) and mouse work fine. Now as long as I don't destroy any more hardware, as I did this week by shorting out the audio circuitry and most of the backlighting, I'll have a semi-usable Linux desktop at home.
Right now, the only problems are that the PC card eject buttons don't work, and the arrow keys don't work in X. I'll be playing with xmodmap when I get home, I guess.
Of course, when Linux does things like the seamless transition I saw between USB and built-in audio on the Mac under OS X—as I unplugged the USB audio while iTunes was playing, it switched instantly to built-in audio—I'll be truly happy.
6:43 PM
