I have recently made wmbattery (written by Joey Hess) a Window Maker battery monitor work on my ibook (you need pmud). (NOTE: has anyone had any luck using this app with the -f for anything? does pmu produce stats in /proc?). Since i dont have all the gnome libs installed pmudmon didn't ever compile for me, but IMHO wmbattery looks cooler and doesn't need to be run in WM. The only thing that doesn't work is the time remaining, anyone know how to get this info out of pmud? Anybody interested in this app?

I downloaded the newest kernel from and now I can keep track of my battery usage. Also when I use yaboot my modem works under linux. This is great news for ibook users who before today were just guessing when their battery would die. I wrote a little gnome applet for checking the battery life. You can download it

Every time i go to bens page and get all the new kernels, I never remember how to install all the modules and patches etc. Does any one out there know of a posted HOWTO or simple instruction set?

I have yellow dog linux 1.2 installed on my ibook. i have been trying for over a week now to get the video set up properly and the sound to work. all to no avial. i am using the newest kernal 2.2.15pre20 but don't know how to set things up properly. are there certain kernal appends i have to pass along to the kernal through yaboot. very new to this and RTFM just gets me more messed up. thanks, jim

Does anyone use the iBook together with a Nokia 7110 (or other from Nokia) to have internet access? Thx for further informations, Mark

After getting yaboot 0.6 from BenH's page, I am now able to use the internal modem on my iBook and PPP all over the place. I think others have run into this problem, so I thought this would be a useful piece of information. One ambiguity remains. Before, I was using BootX. Would merely switching to yaboot 0.5, as provided on the YDL CS 1.2 CD, have cured my modem problems? Beats the hell out of me. All I know is yaboot 0.6 = happy modem.

I just hacked the atyfb kernel module. 24bit color now works with the ibook and yaboot. If you want my kernel get it at http://students.washington.edu/mpalczew This solves one of my peeves with the ibook.

Hi fellow iBookLinuxers

You might be interested to know that you can have 32 bit video on your iBook with yaboot easily (not yet accelerated, that will have to wait for XFree86-4.01). Grab or compile the latest BenH kernel, pass it "video:aty128fb". Get XFree 4.0 (devel.linuxppc.org/pub/users/howarth/xf4) and tweak the XF86Config.pismo file found there:
- all modes should be 800x600
- device is "fbdev"
- mouse is "/dev/usbmouse", protocol "IMPS/2"

Double tapping the pad doesn't work yet.

I suggest using fvwm2 with it to avoid undue irritation because of the lack of acceleration.

If you are considering purchasing a new iBook or PowerBook, PowerBook Central of major Mac mail retailers, in an effort to show you where the deals are. The price differences are large -- shopping around could save you around hundred USD.

I had quite some experience with Linux on Intel, and had never thought installing it on my iBook would be so different. At last I did find all the documentation I needed, but that required a lot of patience, and a very good 'search deja and list archives' ability.

I made this sort of HOWTO in the hope that it is useful for other people that are trying to install Linux on an iBook.

I'll be glad to receive your comments.

The site is at:

has created a on the computer. It also contains info on setting up X, and danish keyboard layouts.

Thinking about getting an iBook? Take a look at this . It focuses on iBooks have less, and are therefore simplier and more reliable then Windows and other PowerBooks. Also iBooks portability compared to PowerBooks is another reason to consider them.

Linux on PC's is quite a fraught area. I need a batch of 'laptops' running Linux to operate as 'LAPTOP' devices. Trying to pin down a machine which is consistent under battery power is proving difficult and, obviously, would be expensive to validate post purchase. I'm already stuck with one which, although a good machine, regularly fails and will only reboot on mains power; therefore of little use to someone on the move. It is difficult to decipher easily from the site whether the Mac is a better bet. Can you help me? What is the performance like of the lower priced models and is there a best {economical} choice? Many thanks....

Maybe Steve Jobs was so relieved to get the OS X beta out on time that all other news seemed trivial. Maybe he was so intent on introducing the world to the key lime visual wonder that other product announcements just slipped his mind. Or, maybe he had early dinner reservations across town at L'Ambroisie.

At any rate, the Apple CEO concluded his keynote address Wednesday without acknowledging one other bit of Mac news: the G3 PowerBooks are getting hard drives with more capacity. Find out more

For boys and girls still wondering if linux runs on the new ibook 466 dvd (rev C) :
yes, it works

To be short : get the latest kernel 2.2.18pre18 from and use the following in your yaboot conf file:
append="video=aty128fb:vmode:11,cmode:24"

You should get beautiful colors with this.

Unfortunately i don't get any modem nor sound to work, but it should be explained by the fact i'm new to linux :o)

ok, some French music now :

A bientot !

aims to the most free Darwin distribution. The current focus of the project is the porting of GNU software to Darwin OS. Later, we will focus on new projects that take advantage of the unique capabilities of Darwin and the mach kernel. The has a screenshot of the GIMP running under Darwin OS on an iBook.

unveiled their new . It would appear that they have moved away from the colourful look of previous iBooks for a slightly more stylish titanium-like look. So if the previous iBook design was just "a little too much" for you, the new iBook might be just what you were looking for. The new iBooks are available with DVD, and are equipped with firewire and RGB out. The iBook also supports 1024x768.

On May 1st, Apple introduced the new iBook. The question on everybody's mind was will it run Linux. Based on the current hardware specs, the anwser is probably yes. According to , developers already have detailed information, and they should be well supported by release. They may or may not work with Linux 2.2, but should work fine with Linux 2.4.

YDL developers recently got there hands on the new Apple iBook, and found it boots (and runs) Linux 2.2.19, straight from kernel.org. They tested it using YDL 2.0, which it ran without problems (other distros should also work without problems). Linux 2.4.x also works fine on these machines.

Anyone knows if the iBook has decent power management by now (this includes putting it to sleep...) I'm planning to buy a laptop for using it with linux. I will try an iBook if it has those features (I really need them, it's primarily for use on battery). Otherwise, I'll be forced to choose a PC...

I need a notebook to run linux(for Unix admin related stuff) and DvD's thats all i ask.

Get your iBook2 ready and download GNU/Debian 2.2 PPC! just got Debian installed on his iBook2, documented his experience on installing Debian on his new iBook2.

He wrote: "My main focus here is to document and write drivers so that Linux on iBook2 is the best it can be. I think that the iBook2 is a great piece of hardware and that more and more people will be wanting to use it to run linux."

You can find his web page at and I made a mirror on my homepage at

has an about it and so does

During the keynote address, Jobs mentioned that around 182,000 iBooks had been sold, this is the highest number of laptop sales in a quarter for them for any model. He mentioned they were having trouble keeping up with consumer demand but they have since increased production. So hopefully we can expect to find shipping delays to be a thing of the past.

Sound support for the iBook2 has finally been added to the latest development kernel. Read this on how to get it running...

For those of you who like to live dangerously or want a good way to fry your nice new iBook, then take a look at article on . Of course, we do not recommend you try this, and it will void your warrenty :) Very cool though none the less...

The iBooks have been renewed:

It's a bit thicker, 6hours capacity, 14" screen, new top model.

500MHz CD model dropped to $1199
600MHz Combo dropped to $1499
600MHz/256MB/20GB 14" iBook in at $1699

The page on has been updated to reflect the changes announced to the iBook on the MacWorld Expo San Francisco Keynote.

Unlike the new iMac G4, the new 14" iBooks are readily available. The Apple Store states it can ship in 1-3 days, rather than the 3-5 weeks for the 800MHz iMac G4. Of course all of these new systems will eventually run linux, its just a matter of time and how much effort is involved.

is a daemon making the special apple keys on the iBook 2001 usable.

It will allow you to use the CD eject key, as well as the keys for muting or changing the master sound volume. The source code can be found .

O'Reilly Network's Mac DevCenter has just published my article on installing Debian on an iBook: . As well as commentary on why I switched from Intel laptops, there's a collection of handy hints I learned along the way.

You can find a very cool mod for your iBook . Its a bit of effort, but the results are pretty cool. The folks over at slashdot added original link to a transparent iBook. This hack is for the new iBooks, not the lime, tangerine, blueberry ones.

Following my own tradition, I have posted an for YDL 2.2 to iBookLinux.net. It deals with setting up the partitions for MacOS (9, X) and YDL, installing a basic YDL system and fixing common problems.

Looks like Apple launches new hardware on a weekly basis by now... This time the iBook got renewed and it's a relief to see it finally has got a better graphics card :)

Here are the details: 700 Mhz G3, 100Mhz system bus, 128/256MB RAM, 20/30/40GB HD, 12.1" or 14.1" display, 16MB ATI Radeon Mobility, CDROM or Combo drive, 10/100baseT Ethernet, 56k modem, FireWire, 2 x USB, VGA, Composite and S-Video, the whole thing starting at $1199. Details on .

We have updated the various iBook pages (, , etc.) to reflect changes brought by the new 700 Mhz iBook released earlier this week.