Instead of trying to painfully compile GNOME 2.6 on the poor laptop, I very unwillingly decided that I should install linux on a separate partition on my mac and dual-boot between OS X and Linux. I installed Yellow Dog on my mac and I must say I have never seen linux run so fast! It logs into X, gdm and even the GNOME desktop literally in seconds! It’s brilliant! Even my 1.4 Ghz Athlon isn’t so fast.

There had to be a catch, of course. The fans on Macs seem to be almost always software controlled, so under the Linux the fans kick in and start revving up and down in cycles every few seconds. It’s extremely annoying and will be the first thing I fix as soon as I can.

The good thing is that OS X gives me so much choice. I can run X11 under OS X and run KDE/GNOME etc if I wish to. I can also install Linux under Virtual PC, and depending on the app, I might be able to compile/link it directly against OS X itself! I love this flexibility.