Jun

17

My Acer ‘Macbook’

16 years ago, mid-June | 2 Comments

Over the weekend I decided to take a little look at one of the latest incarnations of OSX to see what all the fuss was about. One of the real problems with OSX is that under normal circumstances you have to shell out at least 399 GBP before you even get to try it out. If you don’t like it or can’t get on with it you’re out nearly 400 big ones and who wants to risk that?

There are of course ways around this and I took the plunge with a Kalyway 10.5.2 iso. My Macbook Pro (15 Inch)laptop is an Acer Aspire 3692 WLMI which originally came with an 80GB hard drive which I have already upgraded to a 160GB drive. Since I was only going to be testing this out I wasn’t about to erase my current linux install. I dusted off the the old 80GB drive and swapped it out with the 160GB drive and kicked off the install. I actually did the install a couple of times to get used to how Mac people do stuff.

Some things just worked, my little Trust BT2400p bluetooth dongle, WiFi, Audio, Graphics all just worked. I was floored. Of course there were a few things that didn’t work but they don’t work under linux either, namely the Orbicam and the internal card reader – neither of which I really give a stuff about.

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Actually this install boots slower than the original Kalyway 10.5.1 install I had a few hours earlier. Sorry about the dumb auto focus on the camera – or is it a Steve Jobs distortion field?

Obviously the multimedia buttons don’t work and rather annoyingly the scrolling button (between the left and right mouse buttons) doesn’t work either. Sleep mode seems to need a bit of work. Well, it’s not the sleeping, it’s the waking up – it just doesn’t. One other thing I did notice was how quick my laptop boots with OSX, it beats my SuSe 10.2 install into a cocked hat.

While most things worked fine I do still have one concern – compatability. Compatability not with Windows, but with linux. Everything I do now is done using linux and I need to be able to continue doing those things if I were to switch to a Mac. So far things are looking good. Right now I’m just off to create my own .mac service…



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June 17, 2008 20:06


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2 Comments so far

  1. Matt on April 29, 2010 16:38

    Hey there

    You seem to have done exactly what I’m about to attempt to do – Kalyway 10.5.2 on an Acer Aspire 3692WLMi. Did you need any patching to get to the point you describe above? Or did the iso just work?

    I wasted a good couple of hours of my life yesterday with iDeneb, so I’m curious if the same is about to happen today!

  2. ScaredyCat / Andy Powell on May 18, 2010 20:01

    I ended up using iDeneb 1.4 iAtkos (iirc) giving me osx 10.5.5 – works really well on the Acer Aspire 3692WLMi. The iso should just work, i did patch a few bits after everything was installed in order to make stuff like page scrolling with the track pad work properly – but there wasn’t much to do. You just need to make sure you get the correct kernel type and the supporting hardware. I did have some notes on it but a house move has meant I can’t locate them right now :/

    Corrections – it’s iAtkos not iDeneb – previously used iDeneb, went to Kalaway then switched to iAtkos to get 10.5.5

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