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Whoops, OK, but lots of processors don't have the PMMU and it is required.

Is there a version of Linux available for Apple Macintoshes? How about Commodore Amigas? (just curious)

The answer to both of those questions is the same: http://www.linux-m68k.org/

(I was tempted to do this through letmegooglethatforyou.com but I've used up my asshole points for today...)

1. You're gonna need multiple Linux flavors and versions from multiple sources that specialized in these platforms.
   
   • ALPHA
     
   • ARM
     
   • I686
     
   • IA64
     
   • M68K
     
   • PowerPC PenguiPPC Denx
     
   • MIPS
     
   • S390
     
   • SuperH
     
   • UltraSPARC
     
   • X86_64
     
   
   
2. To determine which versions of crosstool (compiler, linkers, debugger), check out The Matrix Guy (Dan Kegel), or more specifically THE MATRIX of workable gcc/g++/ld/gdb.
   
3. To ease your pain of figuring out the "./configure" options, definitely checkout PTXDist. Menuconfig is similar to Linux 'make menuconfig'. PTXDist also help to build a root file system in a jiffy, which in my book, is a PLUS!
   

"Linux wil run on most, if not all desktop computers currently running Windows."

In fact, Linux runs on about 23 additional architectures that Microsoft can't even remotely support with their most-flexible embedded target.

• Diverse PDA / embedded / microcontroller / router devices:
  • Advanced RISC Machines, Ltd. ARM family (StrongARM SA-1110, XScale, ARM6, ARM7, ARM2, ARM250, ARM3i, ARM610, ARM710, ARM720T, and ARM920T)
  • Analog Devices, Inc.'s Blackfin DSP
  • Axis Communications ETRAX series ("CRIS" = Code Reduced Instruction Set RISC architecture)
  • Elan SC520 and SC300
  • Fujitsu FR-V
  • Hitachi H8 series
  • Intel i960
  • Intel IA32-compatibles (Cyrix MediaGX, STMicroelectronics STPC, ZF Micro ZFx86)
  • Matsushita AM3x
  • MIPS-compatibles (Toshiba TMPRxxxx / TXnnnn, NEC VR series, Realtek 8181)
  • Motorola 680x0-based machines (Motorola VMEbus boards, ISICAD Prisma machines, and Motorola Dragonball & ColdFire CPUs, and Cisco 2500/3000/4000 series routers)
  • Motorola embedded PowerPC (including MPC / PowerQUICC I, II, III families)
  • NEC V850E
  • Renesas Technology (formerly Hitachi) SH3/SH4 (SuperH: link1 link2)
  • Samsung CalmRISC
  • Texas Instruments's DM64x and C54x DSP families
• Intel 8086 / 80286 .
• Intel IA32 family: i386, i486, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, Xeon, and Pentium IV processors, as well as IA32 clones from AMD, Cyrix, VIA, IDT, Winchip, NexGen, Transmeta, VIA C3 Ezra "CentaurHauls", and others.
• Intel/HP IA64: Trillian/Itanium/Itanium2
• AMD x86-64 Hammer family (including AMD Opteron)
• Motorola 68020-68040 series (with MMU): m68k Mac, Amiga, Atari ST/TT/Medusa/Falcon, HP/Apollo Domain, HP9000/300, sun3, and Sinclair Q40.
• Motorola/IBM PowerPC family: Most PowerMac (including G3/G4/G5) / CHRP / PReP / POP, Amiga PowerUP System, and IBM PPC64 (AS/400, RS/6000).
• MIPS

"Linux wil run on most, if not all desktop computers currently running Windows."

In fact, Linux runs on about 23 additional architectures that Microsoft can't even remotely support with their most-flexible embedded target.

• Diverse PDA / embedded / microcontroller / router devices:
  • Advanced RISC Machines, Ltd. ARM family (StrongARM SA-1110, XScale, ARM6, ARM7, ARM2, ARM250, ARM3i, ARM610, ARM710, ARM720T, and ARM920T)
  • Analog Devices, Inc.'s Blackfin DSP
  • Axis Communications ETRAX series ("CRIS" = Code Reduced Instruction Set RISC architecture)
  • Elan SC520 and SC300
  • Fujitsu FR-V
  • Hitachi H8 series
  • Intel i960
  • Intel IA32-compatibles (Cyrix MediaGX, STMicroelectronics STPC, ZF Micro ZFx86)
  • Matsushita AM3x
  • MIPS-compatibles (Toshiba TMPRxxxx / TXnnnn, NEC VR series, Realtek 8181)
  • Motorola 680x0-based machines (Motorola VMEbus boards, ISICAD Prisma machines, and Motorola Dragonball & ColdFire CPUs, and Cisco 2500/3000/4000 series routers)
  • Motorola embedded PowerPC (including MPC / PowerQUICC I, II, III families)
  • NEC V850E
  • Renesas Technology (formerly Hitachi) SH3/SH4 (SuperH: link1 link2)
  • Samsung CalmRISC
  • Texas Instruments's DM64x and C54x DSP families
• Intel 8086 / 80286 .
• Intel IA32 family: i386, i486, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III, Xeon, and Pentium IV processors, as well as IA32 clones from AMD, Cyrix, VIA, IDT, Winchip, NexGen, Transmeta, VIA C3 Ezra "CentaurHauls", and others.
• Intel/HP IA64: Trillian/Itanium/Itanium2
• AMD x86-64 Hammer family (including AMD Opteron)
• Motorola 68020-68040 series (with MMU): m68k Mac, Amiga, Atari ST/TT/Medusa/Falcon, HP/Apollo Domain, HP9000/300, sun3, and Sinclair Q40.
• Motorola/IBM PowerPC family: Most PowerMac (including G3/G4/G5) / CHRP / PReP / POP, Amiga PowerUP System, and IBM PPC64 (AS/400, RS/6000).
• MIPS

I can put my old Atari 1040ST to rest.
Why should you?
Now is the time to port MusE to Linux/m68k on Atari ST! :-)

On the hardware side, a major shift to Linux wouldn't reduce the number of niche hardware platforms that they'd have to support; indeed, it should increase it. Linux, as open source, will naturally be ported to a huge number of architectures, even more than it has been already.

Linux is Free Software/Open Source. I suspect that Oracle's database server isn't :) Their download page has links for Linux x86 and Itanium (and a preview for OS X, I should mention). I'm not going to sign up for a download account, because I have no need for Oracle's software (the only databases I interact with don't come anywhere near needing Oracle), but I wouldn't be surprised if the stuff is packaged as RPMs for RedHat AS and SUSE Enterprise or whatever it's called (*cough* Novell *cough*... at least the GroupWise java client survived the trip through alien).

I rather doubt anyone in the market for Oracle's software is going to demand to run it on, oh, a Mac LCIII.

macs would probably work providing they are new enough to run linux...

Yes. But you have to upgrade the motherboard and CPU to a PPC 68020 (not hard at all).

Linux on mac68k

Status page for the Quadra 650 support. ...and for the IIc

Check the linux/m68k page if you're thinking of putting linux on this, installing a null-modem adapter on the serial port, and having a remotely-addressable picture frame. 68LC040s are VERY FLAKY, and the 280c is one of the first using this cpu.

The 270c, same cpu speed but 68030, has a built-in FPU (68LC040 FPU emulation can lock the cpu)

Check the m68k hardware requirements in the FAQ for more info..

Hmm, I might actually do this... Any linux serial 802.11 recommendations? ;)

FYI: Linux/m68k for Macintosh. FWIW, I have a se/30 running debian at home.

You can run Linux on a 68k Mac (well, at least some of them anyway). I once installed it on a Quadra 660 AV. It was painfully slow, but it worked. For more info, check here.
I suggest you to *READ* the post before you post your own, and NOT to post the subject that you DON'T KNOW. I don't think you actually read or understood anything here.

I really doubt NetBSD runs on the Atari ST, since that Motorola 68000-based machine doesn't have an MMU (and thus, no memory protection). But it sure can run on the 68030-based Atari TT and the mighty Falcon. BTW, Linux runs on these, too! A special fork of CLinux (the Linux without MMU , aimed at embedded implementations) existed to allow it to run on the original ST line of machines, but has been discontinued. Too bad I'm far from being a kernel hacker :-(

Remember, people: Atari LIVES ! Now, if someone would just make a PowerPC extension for the Falcon, the life would finally have a meaning :-))

• Yellow Dog
• Linux PPC
• Mac On Linux
• 68k Linux
• MkLinux -the original Mac distro

http://www.mac.linux-m68k.org/

Much of OS X is closed source but Darwin, it's unix based core, is not. If doing a darwin port doesn't float your boat there is always OpenBSD or NetBSD or even Linux ports that will run on your IIsi cluster.

I assumed the writer was referring to Yellow Dog, SuSE, Mandrake, and Debian. Adding LinuxPPC and MkLinux brings the tally up to six, and Linux-m68k makes seven. Linux on the Mac is flourishing.

• MkLinux is still available for older systems (NuBus based Power Macs, and I believe pre PowerPC systems).

If you have a newer (read: iMac or G4 series) PowerPC Mac, you can run OpenBSD/powerpc. For any other PPC system, try NetBSD/macppc. If you're running a 680x0 version Mac, see OpenBSD/mac68k or NetBSD/Mac68k. To compare with a linux distro for mac, try Yellow Dog Linux, Linuxppc.org, mlinux, or Linux/m68k. I believe Debian runs on macs, too.

Personally, my experience with linux was not so great (I used redhate 5.2 and 6.0 neither of which was very stable or powerful) so I would recommend BSD which is both (not to mention secure as all hell if your machine supports OpenBSD). Perhaps I will give Linux another go when I get another box to put it on. Honestly, it doesn't really matter, as long as you are committed to using a free Unix-like OS and are willing to put in the time to learn the OS, pretty much any BSD or linux will do. Just find what agrees with you most and what is best for your tasks.

-----

And unless you want to run linux on it via a serial port, it's not going to be of much use to you running Linux. Unless you want to use it to try to figure out how to get it's ADB keyboard to work with Linux m68K. That's been a major problem for a while(I would have loved to have Linux on a Duo ...oh well). That and the terrible SCSI performance. I have Debian 2.1 on my SE/30 and it works great (it even runs X on the 9" screen), but my only complaint is SCSI disk performance.

For more info check out http://www.mac.linux-m68k.org for more information. If you have programming experience on the Mac, they need developers.

The homepage for the 68k port is here http://www.mac.linux-m68k.org/

Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls

PowerPC with a PCI bus? Go with Yellow Dog Linux or LinuxPPC.

PowerPC with a NuBus bus? Go with MkLinux. That's what I use.

Old mac like the one that you mention? Try out Linux m68k.

The m68k is the processor of pre-PowerPCs. Supposedly, Red Hat, Debian, and Whiteline have distributions with the Linux m68k processor. I'm anxious to try these out because I have a old Mac beast that has three 68k processors. This thing will fly!!!! I doubt that you'll get any window manager to run. It may only be useful as a terminal. My triprocessor will be useful as three terminals ;-)

I just put RedHat 6.1 on a 386sx20 w/ 17M of ram and about a 300M HD. It runs just fine on it, but it takes 10 minutes to boot! =) I'm sure I could do with less ram, but the installer says it needs 16M and I'm not sure if that's just for the graphical version (I've always used the text based one). The most recent version of Slackware will run on 8M and they have documented what needs to be done to make it run in 4M (apparently glib 2.x bumped up the memory requirements --- slackware versions running libc5 will work with 4M). You certainly have to pick and choose what's installed and pare down the services and/or virtual terminals running. I think that the minimal install for SuSE 6.x is about 80M. For most of these low resource installs, you might not have enough room to install X, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

If you are looking at non-Intel platforms, linux can even run on a Mac SE/30 (check out http://www.mac.linux-m68k.org/) or old Suns. People are also using Linux on old PCs to turn them into Xterminals or diskless workstations.

Maybe the Linux/m68k for Mac people have been living in a parallel universe or something, because Apple has shown itself highly uncooperative with people trying to port Linux to their hardware.

I find their experience highly inconsistent with Apple's recent lip service to open source. So which is it?

Well, actually the power of Linux is pretty well matched on both ends by OS/2, which has always had the fastest context switching. It even runs on a 286 (Linux won't).

Today I was in our local TV repair shop, and they had two networked OS/2 computers which they run their business on. It was nice to see that OS/2 screen again. Too bad that OS/2 is so expensive, or I'd buy a new copy.

Oh, did you know that Linux now runs on the 286? It even runs on the 8088 (OS/2 can't do that). Yep, I've done it myself. If that sort of thing interest you, please check out Linux ELKS.

And Amiga Linux is the place for those interested in Linux on the Amiga.

Beowulf on Amiga Linux could be a winner. Amiga Linux is rock stable and worth a look-see. Check it out for yourself. Maybe your next supercomputer will be running Amiga Linux. Who knows?

AFAIK, there is no real way to do it. I'd recommend backing up your /etc and /home (or sticking them on a separate partition).

I wrote a little setp-by-step guide to moving from one dist to another in the Linux/m68k FAQ (it talks about "Watchtower," a glorified set of tar files, but it really applies to any Linux installation, distro or not).

• Installing Debian PPC: Pretty detailed installation instructions that I think will be the official Debian docs. I'm not sure why it isn't linked to the main powerpc port page (or maybe I couldn't find it).

• Debian instructions from the LinuxPPC faq-o-matic (I think these are kinda old)

• Cryptic Installation instructions for a blue G3 from a more seasoned Debian user

• Installing Debian over LinuxPPC: (I can't seem to get the link to work but as I recall it was a good one; hopefully it works by the time anyone bothers to read this post)

• Debian PowerPC Joys & Woes: a useful post from the debian-powerpc list

• base2_2.tgz: The huge file you need to install Debian. (hey this is like 12M so don't just click away unless you're really ready to do this). Also it's not the newest version but it is rumored to be stable and nice. You might be better off downloading it from a mirror.

• Debian for m68k exists also. Eventually I may try to put it on my old mac plus with the busted monitor, hey why not....

That's all I can find at the moment. But I can swear I remember seeing some unfinished installation docs while poking around a mirror of their ftp site. But I can't find it now. Enjoy,

Ben

You know.. although 47Ronin over there seems to have articulated a very good response, I think it should be known that I have been running Debian on my Quadra 605 for quite some time. And you want cheap hardware? My friend got a full Mac IIci system for $25. He then proceeded to put Debian on it. Right now, he's learning C and some Perl. Now, sure, it's just a 68030 at 25 Mhz, but that's good enough to learn how to program, right?

So head on over to http://mac.linux-m68k.org and pick up a nice free Linux for your old Mac. Or NetBSD's site.

-- Can *not_frank_zappa@yahoo.com*

Apparantly the m68k port of linux works on MacIIsi's.

Keep in mind that the Amiga Linux version has been around for some time now. There is both a good PPC version and maybe even a Motorolla version (not sure here).

You mean a MC680x0 version; remember that the PPC is made by Motorola too :-)

The Linux/m68k project has a web site. See it!

Amiga Linux[1] has existed for many years. It was the first port of Linux to non-x86 hardware, and was done by Amiga people who wanted a better[2] OS.

You talk about the essence of the Amiga coming from it's wonderful multimedia hardware and the people around it, and I agree. My first two computers were Amigas and I loved them. However, time has moved on. After Commodore's bankruptcy the Amiga community has been scattered to the winds, leaving only a tiny hard core, and the hardware and OS that made the Amiga amazing in 1989 are now obsolete.

I don't see any reason why we old Amigans should get excited about this, or even any reason to call the new machine an Amiga: it will be entirely different hardware running an entirely different OS. It will presumably have an Amiga-like GUI but such things are already available[3]. If it runs old Amiga binaries it will in effect be running an Amiga emulator but such things are already available [4]

The Amiga was a wonderful machine in its day but I'm afraid it's time to let it die...

[1] see http://lxr.linux.no/source/arch/ m68k/amiga/?a=m68k and http://www.linux-m68k.org/faq/history.ht ml. Although the amiga version wasn't reintegrated into the linux source 'till 2.0 it did exist as a separate project.

[2] for their definition of better, which is not necessarily yours.

[3] http://www.lysator.liu.se/~marcus/amiw m.html

[4] UAE is written in C and runs under many platforms and OSes.
Fellow is written in x86 assembler and runs only in MS-DOS but is damn fast.
I recommend having a look at one of these. Certainly brought back memories for me

I guess this means I have to start work on the Linux/m68k 2.2 announcement then...