The title of this blog is a bit misleading—I don't use Debian for everyday personal computing…yet. I intend to make this blog about my journey to using Debian on my PowerBook G4 for my everyday personal computing needs. I purchased my PowerBook new as I prepared to go away to school in August 2004 (had I gone away to school a year later, I probably would have put off buying a Mac until after the Intel transition).
My PowerBook continues to be my go to computer for personal computing—and so far Mac OS X 10.5.8 is still my primary OS. I am very grateful to the developers of TenFourFox for their continuing work to keep a modern web browser running on Power Macs. Without TenFourFox, I would have had to switch to our Windows desktop for web browsing long ago. I used to say that an old computer is still good at the things it was good at when it was new—but in the age of the internet, this no longer seems to be true.
I am not dissatisfied with my current software; but my PRAM battery is dead, my main battery is failing (replaced in a recall in the fall of 2006), and an 8 year old notebook harddisk could fail at any time. The cost of replacing these items does not seem justified for a computer that has virtually no chance of new software. On the other hand, PowerPC is still an officially supported architecture in the Debian distribution of GNU/Linux. I'm hoping that Debian will breath new life into my system—perhaps enough to justify spending a little money on replacing batteries and hard disks for a 10 year old notebook!
PowerBook specifications:
- 15" PowerBook G4 (April 2004)
- 1.33 GHz PowerPC G4
- 1.5 GB DDR SDRAM
- 60 GB harddisk
- Combo (CD RW / DVD ROM) optical drive
In a coming post I'll write about my initial experiences installing Debian!
