More Zonkyness

Apologies to those arriving here looking for information relating to U***tu and the use of this ExpressCard SSD. There is nothing relating to it here – Google has taken you on a wrong turn.

So after a false start with the wrong product I end up with a Wintec Filemate SolidGo 48GB ExpressCard 34 Ultra SSD (which is specifically a PCI-based ExpressCard rather than a USB-based one which tend to be a lot slower). The specs on this thing claim 115MB/s read and 65MB/s write which compares to my hard disk with tested scores of 80MB/s read and 78MB/s write – so a lot quicker for reads and marginally slower for writes.

How does this translate into how quickly the Macbook operates ?

Well after quickly duplicating my “OSXBOOT” partition onto the new “disk” using carbon copy cloner onto the new disk (“SSDBOOT”) I can run a few benchmarks :-

Well apart from the slightly surprising result of the time taken to get from the Refit menu until the login screen being actually quicker for the spinning metal disk, the SSD is approximately 3.2 times quicker! Certainly a worthwhile performance boost … and presumably a suitably chosen SATA SSD would be quicker again.

Macports is a convenient way of adding conventional Unix software to an OSX machine; this guide is not intended as a replacement for the main documentation but as a simple convenient cheat sheet. Mainly for myself, but as it is here, anyone is welcome to use it (and send in corrections!).

After you have installed the main Macports package you need to periodically update the main macports binary and the index files with :-

% sudo port selfupdate -d

This conveniently tells you to update the outdated ports with :-

% sudo port upgrade outdated

But neglects to suggest that removing inactive ports would be wise :-

% sudo port uninstall inactive

As an upgrade does not by itself remove older packages; merely makes them “inactive”. A considerable amount of space can be used by these “inactive” ports!

Variants

Once you have found a port you are interested in installing :-

% port search emacs

It is worth checking what variants are available :-

% port info emacs | grep Variants
Variants:             gtk, motif, universal, x11

This allows you to specify what features you want :-

% port install emacs +gtk

Further details may be added …

I’m very fussy about keyboards; perhaps ridiculously so. But I cannot understand the criticism of the virtual keyboard that comes with the iPhone. It takes some getting used to, and the auto correct feature whilst very useful can also be very irritating. Enough so that Apple should probably have a keyboard button marked “turn off auto correct for a while”. But it is perfectly adequate for what it is  – something to do a little text entry from time to time.

So why am I complaining about the lack of a decent keyboard ? Because quite simply if I’m doing any writing (and I don’t at present) on the iPhone, I would like to be able to type at full speed – which for me requires a decent clicky keyboard so I can get up to a reasonable speed (apparently about 120wpm!).

Adding bluetooth drivers to the iPhone should be pretty trivial for Apple after all there are already OSX bluetooth keyboard drivers available, and the iPhone operating system is OSX. So why does Apple not include one ? Sure there’s an excuse for the first release not to include one – Apple wanted to make sure that the phone was rock solid in a totally new market to them. But now?

Surely it cannot be because they feel that releasing such a driver would be an admission that the virtual keyboard is no good. After all, I’m not exactly an enemy of the virtual keyboard, but I want a real keyboard interface for those occasions when one would be useful.

The iPhone is hardly perfect, although it is quite good for a smartphone. However now we are loading up our iPhones with dozens of added applications, the old swipe-able screen interface needs a bit of care.

The first improvement would be the ability to tag particular screens with names. This would be merely an aid to organisation, but in practice would be very handy. There is plenty of space in the status bar for the “name” of a screen, or Apple could do something funkier involving putting the name onto the background.

Secondly it would be handy to have icons that could “warp” to a particular screen – presumably by name. This would work as a simplistic form of ‘folders’ for the applications.

Finally it would be useful to be able to make certain application icons “sticky” so that they remain available no matter what screen is currently active.

Yes I know everyone and their dog has already written a review of the Intel iMac, but I have not done so yet. This is a review of the 24″ iMac (and I’m already hating that incorrect capitalisation) with the specific intent of putting Ubuntu on. This is not some kind of weird anti-OSX statement; I already have a laptop with OSX installed on it and it does seem like a fun operating system.

But this is a replacement for my main desktop, and I really want a “proper” Unix on it, and Linux will do in the meantime.

First Thoughts

First of all, the screen stand should allow adjustment in the vertical direction; already I can see myself getting out an extremely old and manky tape drive to sit underneath to raise the screen to an appropriate height. Apple ? Your lack of foresight in not including height adjustment is ruining the look of the system!

Nice keyboard! If you do not type much. I am aware that some people really like the skinny Apple keyboards, but it is not for me even though they got off to a good start by not including Windows keys. Back to the Das Keyboard for me I think. The mouse is similar – there’s this nice funky ball on top which is an improvement over the usual scroll wheel (although I am not too sure how well it would work at speed), but just not enough buttons.  Or at least it does not feel like enough buttons. The “one button” with two effects method as appears to be the case here is a little odd and off-putting.

Perhaps Apple needs a special country kit – “Special Clicky Keyboard And Mouse With Too Many Buttons For The Unix Geeks”. How many people end up using a non-Apple keyboard and mouse ? Perhaps not many, but why not cater to them with alternative keyboards and mice ? My Apple keyboard and mouse will be mostly unused.

Where are the memory card slots though ?  It would make things a bit more complete (and the iMac is about one box doing everything) if there were a sensible selection of memory card slots.

In terms of software (and not OSX itself), one thing becomes immediately apparent when booting (and on previous occasions when trying to boot from CD, diagnosing booting problems, etc.). The Apple firmware breaks the first rule of user interface design! Not something you expect Apple to do.

The firmware needs to be just a little bit more expressive about what is going on. You may well be thinking that as a hardcore Unix geek I want to see inscrutable messages from the firmware about initialising that chipset, addresses of where adapter cards are, cpu values, etc. And of course you are right.

But basic messages about starting the hardware would still be helpful.

More importantly however, the Apple firmware should be letting you know what keystrokes are needed to do “unusual” things like boot from a CD, an external hard disk, start the hardware diagnostics, etc. One of the most irritating things about Apple hardware is the need to provide secret incantations to boot from CD  – you hold the “C” key down for “a while” (how long anyway?).

The Install

At this point the “unusual” choices of Apple bite you when it comes to installing a version of Linux intended for use on mainstream PCs. First you have to install rEFIt, then you install Linux off CD (and mess around with the MBR partition table), then have to remember to “resync” the partition tables.

Seems there’s an EFI partition table and an MBR partition table that need keeping in sync. Having two partition tables immediately strikes me as a dumb idea. When Windows is involved, there is probably no fix for this problem, but why is Linux still not doing things properly ? Or at least not doing the sensible thing by default.

It also means there is effectively a two step boot process – first rEFIt starts, then then starts grub which finally starts Linux; this is not a quick system to boot.

Fixing The Niggles

In any install, there are always little niggles that need fixing. The most obvious is a way to control the brightness of the screen which by default is far too bright. There may well be better solutions out there, but a bit of C coming from http://www.felipe-alfaro.org/blog/2006/09/11/basic-backlight-support-for-macbook-pro

A quick compile and install in /opt/bin/bl and root can set the backlight brightness with :-

bl (1-15)

Adding this in an appropriate way to /etc/rc.local ensures that the backlight is set on every boot.

It also appears that we need to do a bit of hacking to support the sound properly. Adding an option to /etc/modprobe.d/options specifies the “model” of soundcard we are using to get sound working :-

options snd-hda-intel model=imac24

A quick reboot and sound is working (microphone not tested!).

For some reason the module that is used to gain access to the iMac temperature probes is not loaded automatically. Adding applesmc to the end of /etc/modules gets this loaded (after a reboot or manually with modprobe applesmc). Unfortunately there does not appear to be an immediately obvious way of using this except from the command line.

The wireless network controller apparently works after the addition of the proprietary driver that shows up after doing an update. Admittedly I cannot say for sure because I use a wired setup.

Lastly the IR receiver. I will admit this has currently defeated me although that is partially because I am not that interested. I will of course update this if I get it to work.

Later: Screen Calibration

I later took a look at setting up the screen properly. Proper controls for the screen would have been nice, but configuring from the system turns out to be relatively easy.

First of all I used the OSX screen calibration tool in “expert” mode to generate in ICC file containing the screen profile. Doing this may well be possible inside Ubuntu; I just happened to know where the tool was in OSX.

I then installed xcalib :-

apt-get install xcalib

This could be used to set the monitor profile from the earlier generated ICC file.

Conclusion

It works. After a week or so using it, I am no longer thinking of the iMac as a system being installed and tested but as my standard desktop.