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krpalmerKeeping half an eye on the “1-bit video player for the compact Macintosh” MacFlim, I got to thinking it was time to “build” a new version of its video encoder and keep up with changes to the program. All I got out of Terminal, though, was error messages. Turning anyway to the updated player program supplied on a disk image, I discovered it couldn’t show my old encodings. Some not quite casual searching for the program’s joking name (which comes from a French movie) turned up a comment that someone else had had the same problem, but had managed to compile the encoder using Ubuntu.
While there are complicated ambiguities to my thoughts about Linux (which may predate the operating system itself, rooted all the way back in the days of OS-9 for the Color Computer), I at least have some experience with it. Some years ago, amid burbling moral panic Apple had been seduced by the revenues of the iPhone and was about to “lock down” the Macintosh operating system or just let it decay from within (and that panic has remained burbling to this day), I went so far as to set up my old black MacBook to dual-boot Linux Mint, derived from Ubuntu’s sturdy branch on the Linux tree. Some time after that I’d gone so far as to try and build MacFlim’s encoder on it when just starting out with the program, but hadn’t had any success there. In any case, it’s at least not easy to get modern 64-bit variants of Linux running on that computer.
Other possibilities did come to mind, though. Having used “VirtualBox” before, I knew I could use it to run Linux. I turned first to a different “secondary computer” all the same, setting up the old MacBook Pro I’d managed to acquire in the closeout auction of the area Apple user group with thoughts of dual-booting Windows. (As it turned out, though, I barely got started on the “visual novels” and emulators I’d thought I’d use, and now that computer can no more run the latest Windows than the latest macOS.)
With an official virtualization guide ready to hand, I decided to simplify things and start with “regular” Ubuntu. Accepting a step in the guide to use VirtualBox’s suggested disk image size, though, meant I was getting “you’re almost out of disk space” warnings as soon as I was building the encoder. When I thought of starting over with a bigger disk image, I also thought about how the portable sometimes didn’t need that much of a load to have its fan pick up to a roar, and began pondering the assortment of “lightweight distributions” out there. Something as simple as comments quoted in Wikipedia articles made me pick “Lubuntu” over “Xubuntu.” Now, I could get the encoder built, find a guide to setting up a “shared folder” to get files to and from it, and make a MacFlim file I could play in emulation.
That could have been the end of things even with the same “bleah, how Windows-esque” reaction to the look of the Lubuntu desktop I’d had with Linux Mint years ago. A personal aesthetic preference formed by familiarity shaping my reactions does seem to qualify as part of the “complicated ambiguities,” of course. Putting that aside and glancing at DistroWatch, though, did bump into a single negative evaluation of Lubuntu, although that side also offered a positive opinion of Ubuntu MATE. With a sort of shrug I set up another VirtualBox disk image, and this time I noticed Ubuntu MATE could be configured to put its application menus at the top of the screen rather than the top of each program window. I’m aware of comments that “a top-of-the-screen menu bar might have been fine back when the compact Mac’s screen was just 342 pixels high, but nowadays pointers have further to go.” I’ve also noticed, though, suggestions that it might be easier to just “hit the top of the screen” than aim for a specific strip of it. (Of course, while VirtualBox can be set to full screen, “hitting the top of that screen” brings up the Macintosh menu bar anyway.) My strongest objection at that point became thinking “bleah, how drab” about the window-closing icon, but I did look through “themes” available and eventually figured out just what to copy into the directory themes are looked for in.
Amid all of this taste-testing I also proceeded to virtualize the Haiku operating system, derived from the Be operating system once talked up as “the next desperately needed Macintosh operating system” before Apple bought NeXT “and the rest is history.” To get the MacFlim encoder running on it would take far, far more programming expertise than I have, but it was interesting to try “something other than Linux” too.
While there are complicated ambiguities to my thoughts about Linux (which may predate the operating system itself, rooted all the way back in the days of OS-9 for the Color Computer), I at least have some experience with it. Some years ago, amid burbling moral panic Apple had been seduced by the revenues of the iPhone and was about to “lock down” the Macintosh operating system or just let it decay from within (and that panic has remained burbling to this day), I went so far as to set up my old black MacBook to dual-boot Linux Mint, derived from Ubuntu’s sturdy branch on the Linux tree. Some time after that I’d gone so far as to try and build MacFlim’s encoder on it when just starting out with the program, but hadn’t had any success there. In any case, it’s at least not easy to get modern 64-bit variants of Linux running on that computer.
Other possibilities did come to mind, though. Having used “VirtualBox” before, I knew I could use it to run Linux. I turned first to a different “secondary computer” all the same, setting up the old MacBook Pro I’d managed to acquire in the closeout auction of the area Apple user group with thoughts of dual-booting Windows. (As it turned out, though, I barely got started on the “visual novels” and emulators I’d thought I’d use, and now that computer can no more run the latest Windows than the latest macOS.)
With an official virtualization guide ready to hand, I decided to simplify things and start with “regular” Ubuntu. Accepting a step in the guide to use VirtualBox’s suggested disk image size, though, meant I was getting “you’re almost out of disk space” warnings as soon as I was building the encoder. When I thought of starting over with a bigger disk image, I also thought about how the portable sometimes didn’t need that much of a load to have its fan pick up to a roar, and began pondering the assortment of “lightweight distributions” out there. Something as simple as comments quoted in Wikipedia articles made me pick “Lubuntu” over “Xubuntu.” Now, I could get the encoder built, find a guide to setting up a “shared folder” to get files to and from it, and make a MacFlim file I could play in emulation.
That could have been the end of things even with the same “bleah, how Windows-esque” reaction to the look of the Lubuntu desktop I’d had with Linux Mint years ago. A personal aesthetic preference formed by familiarity shaping my reactions does seem to qualify as part of the “complicated ambiguities,” of course. Putting that aside and glancing at DistroWatch, though, did bump into a single negative evaluation of Lubuntu, although that side also offered a positive opinion of Ubuntu MATE. With a sort of shrug I set up another VirtualBox disk image, and this time I noticed Ubuntu MATE could be configured to put its application menus at the top of the screen rather than the top of each program window. I’m aware of comments that “a top-of-the-screen menu bar might have been fine back when the compact Mac’s screen was just 342 pixels high, but nowadays pointers have further to go.” I’ve also noticed, though, suggestions that it might be easier to just “hit the top of the screen” than aim for a specific strip of it. (Of course, while VirtualBox can be set to full screen, “hitting the top of that screen” brings up the Macintosh menu bar anyway.) My strongest objection at that point became thinking “bleah, how drab” about the window-closing icon, but I did look through “themes” available and eventually figured out just what to copy into the directory themes are looked for in.
Amid all of this taste-testing I also proceeded to virtualize the Haiku operating system, derived from the Be operating system once talked up as “the next desperately needed Macintosh operating system” before Apple bought NeXT “and the rest is history.” To get the MacFlim encoder running on it would take far, far more programming expertise than I have, but it was interesting to try “something other than Linux” too.