Slackware64 iMac 2007 Redux

Posted on Sep 14, 2024 by kingbeowulf

A year ago, I refurbished a vintage 2007 iMac: 1TB SSD and new(-ish) power supply and it has been working pretty good for the most part.

Installing Slackware64-15.0 on an iMac 2007

Two issue still remain: Bluetooth (BT) and a tendency for the power supply over heat. I still haven't found a solution yet to the BT driver; this will wait for the next Slackware stable release "when it's ready; real soon now."

The mid 2007 iMac did have a tendency to overheat. Having poked around inside, there just isn't enough air flow to cool the power supply which can run extra hot under load. We can adjust the fan speed manually as root, once you figure out which fan cools both the CPU and the power supply. For example:

ROCm OpenCL Runtime for Slackware64

Posted on Mar 04, 2024 by kingbeowulf

A while ago, I had started beating on the ROCm build system to try to get a "simple" set of packages for those of us that only need basic OpenCL runtime support on Slackware64. AMD's ROCm includes that but also includes various tools to build HIP and OpenCL GPU compute programs. My prior efforts were the legacy OpenCL binary Ubuntu packages which wasn't very stable due to being compiled on Ubuntu. I had to take a pause due to a few health issues and only recently started looking into this again.

Installing Slackware64-15.0 on an iMac 2007

Posted on Aug 20, 2023 by kingbeowulf

Now that Apple has moved on to their own "Apple silicon", all Intel CPU based Mac computers are on live support - and Apple ready to pull the plug. No more MacOS updates of any kind, even for recent models, as has already happened for the older Mac models. Recall that this is the same process as when Apple transitioned from PowerPC to Intel CPUs.

Granted, Apple does tend to support their hardware a bit longer than the Windows PC crowd, but it is still a shame to have to toss still perfectly good hardware. This post will describe how to breathe new life into a vintage 2007 iMac.

A Year in the Life of Slackware64-15.0

Posted on Jan 22, 2023 by kingbeowulf

Slackware 15.0 has been out in the wild for nigh on a year now. So far I am quite pleased. Modern and versatile for my varied requirements. I won't do a review here; that you can get elsewhere. For me, Slackware for many years has been my daily driver at home for general purpose office computing, simple image and video editing, internet access and video games. I was recently laid up at home on medical leave after surgery. Between Steam (native and Proton), WINE and DOSBOX, I made a bit of a dent in my Linux, Windows, and old MSDOS game collections. One Slackware box is dedicated to host my Gopher, Mumble, local LAN time servers, as well as my Valheim dedicated game server. It was also my backup NAS until I added added a separate Synology DS220+.

(Aside: If you haven't played Valheim, you are missing out on a great Adventure. Fun solo, but best with friends!)

Slackware makes the jump to kernel 5.10.x and Xfce-4.16

Posted on Jan 03, 2021 by kingbeowulf

The pace of Slackware Current updates in December was incredible. Fast on the heals of KDE/Plasma 5, we have updates to Kernel 5.10 and then, just in time for Santa, Xfce-4.16. Numerous fixes and additional updates are happening throughout. Refer to the change logs for details: Slackware Change Logs

After the start of the New Year, can a Slackware 15.0 release be far behind?

The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings Enhanced edition on Slackware64

Posted on Sep 15, 2019 by kingbeowulf

I purchased this game on sale at GOG.com a while back (2014?) when I was exited about the Linux port, and before I realized it used the wrapper eON translation layer. (We can quibble over wrapper vs API vs etc here: PSA: eON is not a wrapper).

I'll just say that native linux code would be better.

Performance with Slackware64 multilib with Nvidia GTX 660 was poor: crashes, video glitches, lags, sudden fps drops. I was barely able to complete the tutorial section. A few patches were released that improved performance. There was also github project that tracked Linux updates and performance tweaks which now seems to be gone. I put the game aside for awhile to let it mature.

GOG.com updated Witcher 2 to Release 3, and it is officially tested on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, and variants. Non-Ubuntu Linux distributions are not officially supported - as in no technical support or refund. As a Slackware user, I have found that par for the course. Here are some notes on giving Witcher 2 another go.