benh is my hero

Ever since I bought my iBook, I have loved it. Of course, the first day I got it, I put Linux on it, but I left OSX on it as well. It was a good thing, because Linux didn’t work so well on such a new platform (the iBook G4 was extremely new when I bought it), but I was willing to wait. A few weeks later, a guide was posted online (don’t ask me where it was, I have no clue) about how to get the new iBooks to work with Linux and X and I quickly tried it. After compiling a new kernel and a new X (4.3.99), I had Gnome working on my iBook! There was only one big problem: when it was on battery power and the lid was closed for more than 5 minutes, the machine shut off. I tried every setting in Linux and OSX, but to no avail. Several others have reported the same behavior on the new Powerbook G4’s as well; at least I wasn’t alone. I asked about this problem to some ppc kernel developers, and Ben Herrenschmidt (benh) told me he was waiting for some specs from ATI on the video cards in the iBook G4’s. So, I waited…

But tonight, I signed onto IRC and asked benh if he had heard anything from ATI; he hadn’t, but he had something for me to try. I copied some special files from OSX over to Linux and ran a binary he emailed me (after stopping X) and a gray screen popped up for a second and the program exited fine. Success!!! This means we’re very close (hopefully) to getting the iBook to sleep. I’m so excited, it’s going to be hard to sleep….. zzzzzzz….