[Pan-users] what I need to do to "jump ship" (Re: To explain why I'm unwilling to update my g lib/gtk+/etc libs ATM…)

[SciFi]

{I sent this to a net-friend,
 and thought it would help further explain
 what I need to do to "jump ship"}


Hi,

I am recalling a few details I've had in my long history
when dealing with other people's PC machines
especially the owner/friend of a house I was renting
(he had a brain aneurysm and passed away several years ago).
His PC was full of lil interface chips made mostly by VIA.
Some chips were from other makers.
Usually a BIOS upgrade will take care of all those chips as well
but I found many lil firmware-upgrade pgms on the vendor's websites
depending on the part-numbers on those chips.
(That's why I say EVERYTHING has firmware in it these days.)
I had to take-apart his machine to inspect them by eyeball
(verify part-numbers etc).
And sure-'nuf most of his chips were quite back-level.
What's more, the descriptions of the upgrades were mostly spot-on
with the problems he was having.
So the "fixes" were not in win-xp (at the time)
nor in the BIOS upgrades
but in the chips themselves.
I had logged every single itty-bitty thing I did,
esp'ly how to dig-thru the vendor's websites etc,
but of course nowadays those notes are all lost.
I couldn't explain to anyone
just how much work I have LOST
since no-one would deal with the situations
I was in (medically etc).

Anyway, for my current project of "jumping off Apple's ship",
I need that level detail
on whatever hardware I'm to be buying
because I do not want to be in that kind of situation.
This kind of detail is what's needed
to be sure a *ix system has the code
to deal with all those lil interfaces, see.
I need to be able to access such info
BEFORE I buy anything, see.
"Lest the buyer beware" kinda thing.

I know most people won't deal with all this minutiae stuff.
I guess ya gotta be a "true geek" to luv this kinda work.
But with me
it is homework very-well worthwhile spent.
It can turn a ditched garbaged machine into one that works top-notch.
It also saves ur @$$ too many times.
lol

The chips/designs used by Apple
is probably why I can't boot-up any "normal" Boot-CD such as Hirens
or even the various Linux "Live CDs", etc.
Something isn't programming Apple's chips quite right somehow
and the problem results in the way the CD can't access my keyboard/mouse.
ALL of those boot-cds have that SAME problem here.
There seems to be something inside Apple's "Boot Camp" special app
that deals with this situation somehow, me thinks.
But that app will carve-out another partition on the internal drive
and I cannot allow it to do that
no matter what-else it does (modify the EFI/BIOS maybe??).

BTW another person is having
the same stuck-'h' (semi-repeating key) problem
I am having with any X11 app (only, not in regular OSX "native" apps),
but he's seeing it with the 'wine' project
(he might not know deep-down wine needs x11 routines as well coming from Apple).
(It kinda feels good in a way to know I am not crazy in this regard lol)

So,
can you-all see where I'm at in this whole project to "jump ship"?
I need to do TONS of research
at very micro levels
of both the hardware level
and the o.s. level.

I guess I need to find a BBS/forum somewhere
that deals with this kind of subject matter.
Does anyone have any info along these lines?  I'd definitely appreciate it.

"It works" won't be a sufficient phrase with me
when dealing with these vendors.
Because Apple "just works", too.
Yeah … riiiight.
;)