Had a brilliant idea a couple of days ago. I'd always been planning to put Linux on the main development box so I could start on doing a port of the class library (boy, I've gotta think of a codename someday). Suddenly it dawned on me. . .I've got this stupid purple iMac sitting here that does nothing but run SETI@home 99% of the time. Why not let it be the Linux box?

Anyway, I'm currently in the midst of trying to install YellowDog Linux on this cute little purple thing and, true to form, I'm in a hell of partitioning, swap files, and the like.

The RedHat install seems to be easy enough to follow, if not overly pretty. Biggest problem I've seen is the Mac's boot-loader. Turns out that Apple is about as forthcoming as you'd expect about booting their system, and its ROM is so closely tied to MacOS that it refuses to boot anything else. There are two schemes out there, but neither are that good. One actually boots Linux after MacOS boots. The other tricks the ROM into thinking it's booting MacOS. I tried the second scheme, as it's the one that people recommend as best. It wouldn't install the loader, though, so I'm working with the first.

I'll keep you posted as to how well it works out. I will say that I'm really looking forward to immersing myself into the whole X/KDE/Gnome/GTK mess. Hopefully I'll figure out a system that'll let me do the games without much difficulty.

If you've got any suggestions on good ways to do games under Linux, feel free to volunteer 'em.