On 11/15/2010 10:18 AM, James B. Byrne wrote:
> After a long, and quite disheartening, series of hardware problems
> with my HP laptop I decided to try out a Mac (late 2009 Intel based
> 19.5 inch). In the months since January past I have discovered this
> to be no significant improvement and I have grown tired of the
> persistent wireless connectivity problems and am totally put off by
> the upgrade to OSX-10.6.4 which killed HD graphics using Open-Gl.
> Since July, trying to use HD on my Mac now blackens half the screen
> and then locks the system.
>
> I am contemplating wiping the system and installing CentOS-5.5
> instead. Before my frustration leads me to run straight on into a
> wall, what can I expect to NOT work on the Macbook if I do this? I
> do need wireless, albeit I really cannot say that I have it now. I
> also dearly would like to get back HD graphics as well.
Can't help directly with the hardware questions, but (a) if you are
still within your Applecare coverage, take the thing in and get anything
that doesn't work fixed before touching the OS, and (b) you might try
Virtualbox with Centos as a guest (or VMware if you don't mind paying
for it). I've generally found the vendor-supplied native video, sleep,
and wireless tools work best on laptops and virtual machines work well
enough for the client-type things I do under Centos.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com