tweaking OSX

[fuscia]

the only time i've ever used a mac was in the apple store, on two occassions (ppc). i had been tempted to get one, but found OSX to be too slow. most mac people tell me that one doesn't tweak OSX, but most mac people still believe in the easter bunny. so, i'm just curious to know how tweakable OSX is and what are some of the steps one can take to speed it up.

[tagra123]

the only time i've ever used a mac was in the apple store, on two occassions (ppc). i had been tempted to get one, but found OSX to be too slow. most mac people tell me that one doesn't tweak OSX, but most mac people still believe in the easter bunny. so, i'm just curious to know how tweakable OSX is and what are some of the steps one can take to speed it up.

I set up a 500mhz ibook with dualboot OSX and Ubuntu.

Get this by running mac-on-linux you can run osx in a ubuntu window without having to reboot for the occasion when you need to view a webpage with flash..

Ubuntu brought plenty of life back to the ibook.

[hanzomon4]

I guess you could teak it like you would do with linux......
I know you can compile your own kernel... For themes there's ShapeShifter (http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/shapeshifter),
As for speed I guess you could stop certain services(spotlight, dashboard) from running, I don't have a mac so I'm just guessing really

[3rdalbum]

I guess you could teak it like you would do with linux......
I know you can compile your own kernel...

I work in retail so I'm very wary of giving customers incorrect statements about products.

If you bought a new Mac, it would be an Intel Mac. The OS X kernel for x86 is NOT open-source. You CANNOT compile your own kernel on the Intel Macs.

As for speed I guess you could stop certain services(spotlight, dashboard) from running, I don't have a mac so I'm just guessing really

I'm not sure if that's possible, as the operating system is tightly integrated; I'd also be surprised if OS X applications would be able to deal with not being able to find the Spotlight daemon, for instance. Any current OS X users, please advise.

[hanzomon4]

Hum......Darwin 8.8.1 (Mac OS X 10.4.8 ) Kernel Posted
Posted by kvv on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 at 5:45 pm

I’m pleased to announce the availability of the Darwin 8.8.1 (Mac OS X 10.4.8 ) kernel source code for both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macintosh computers.

LINK (http://kernel.macosforge.org/)

If you absolutely cannot live with Spotlight in any dose, you can turn it off completely by editing Mac OS X's hostconfig file, which determines the system components that are loaded at startup. This can be accomplished via the following process:
LINK (http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20061109235901299)(Ctrl+f "turn it off")

Disable Dashboard (http://www.ubuntuforums.org/newreply.php?do=postreply&t=323496)

:mrgreen:

I work in retail so I'm very wary of giving customers incorrect statements about products.

If you bought a new Mac, it would be an Intel Mac. The OS X kernel for x86 is NOT open-source. You CANNOT compile your own kernel on the Intel Macs.



I'm not sure if that's possible, as the operating system is tightly integrated; I'd also be surprised if OS X applications would be able to deal with not being able to find the Spotlight daemon, for instance. Any current OS X users, please advise.

[3rdalbum]

Ahh... that's good news, Apple have changed their mind about giving out kernel source for Intel. In May they said they weren't going to. But then, after Hypercard 2.4 was released they said that they were going to keep developing Hypercard :-)

I wonder how long it will be before they revoke the source again?

[wgscott]

I tweak it until it breaks (http://xanana.ucsc.edu/xtal/useful_stuff.html).

:mrgreen: