Meanwhile, I’m reading the release notes, and found one item particularly interesting:

There are new experimental drivers that provide support for the widely-used Broadcom 43xx wireless chipsets (http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/).

This is the chipset used in Apple’s Airport Extreme wireless networking interface, which is what you’ll find in just about every wireless-capable Mac made over the last few years. Until recently, there were no Linux drivers because Broadcom would neither write their own nor release specifications for others to write them. The project at Berlios has apparently reverse-engineered the chip to produce an open-source driver, with its first usable version in December

One of the reasons I so rarely use Linux on the PowerBook is that it can’t use the wireless network. The last time I used it was a couple of months ago. I booted it into YDL just to make sure all the software was current, and discovered there hadn’t been any updates since July—even though I could think of plenty of security fixes that had been released since then. Now that Fedora Core has had two releases with full PowerPC support, I may just replace the Yellow Dog Linux partition with Fedora Core. A better security update policy, a wider range of applications, and possibly wireless network support. Sounds like it might be worth it.

I finally started looking, and that’s not the case. It seems that the Airport Extreme chipset manufacturer, Broadcom, refuses to release Linux drivers or to release specs to allow anyone else to write Linux drivers.

I don’t expect it to do any good, but I signed my first online petition.

Ah, well, I can do almost everything under Mac OS, and for those occasions that I actually need Linux, I can always go solo or plug in a cable, though it does limit where I can hook it up.

Presumably they had some in stock when they updated their store, in which case this is probably a good thing: it means not only are the new PowerBooks selling faster than expected, but they’re selling well through a Linux shop!

That said, if I have to wait too long I may just cancel this order and drive down to the Apple store. Of course, then I’d have to deal with repartitioning and trying to set up dual booting myself, and not only is it more complicated than dual-booting a PC*, there’s a lot less information available.

Ah, well.

* In particular, I don’t know of any utilities like Partition Magic or Parted that will allow you to resize an active Mac OS filesystem, so I would have to wipe the disk and reinstall Mac OS along with installing Linux.