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MacBoy writes "The folks over at ResExcellence have a great interview with Benjamin Herrenschmidt, kernel guru for the PPC/Linux camp. He offers up some history of Linux on Apple and PPC hardware, and some discussion on Apple's current and past contributions to the open-source and Linux communities. He makes some interesting comparisons of Linux on PPC vs. Intel hardware, such as the ease of getting important patches into the kernel on PPC compared to Intel. It's an interesting read, especially if you are amoung the many who covet the new Dual-CPU GHz G4 Macs and want to know a little more about the PPC/Linux community."

LWN has an interview with Jason Haas where he talks about LinuxPPC and going non-profit. He raises some good points and says some interesting things. Good luck to ya Jason! Someday I shall acquire a titanium powerbook, I shall bask in the glory of your toil. I hope LinuxPPC stays around for a long time.

Therlin writes: "As this article explains, LinuxPPC 2000 Q4 succesfully boots on Apple's new PB G4. The Linux Kernel, X Windows and the LinuxPPC work. They also indicate that the internal modem and ethernet will probably work, but it hasn't been tested yet." It's really sad to see such a sweet machine crippled by lack of proper mouse buttons.

Jason Haas is co-founder, marketing director, and Web manager for LinuxPPC and an all-around good Linux guy. He's also majorly anti-drunk driving these days, because last March a drunk driver ran into his car and left it looking like this. Jason was left in only slightly better shape himself, but unlike his Honda, he eventually recovered (with major help and support from his wife, Cassie) and went back to work. Ask Jason what you will; about out-of-control SUVs (I don't think he likes them), Linux on PowerPCs (something he likes a lot) or anything else. Post your questions below. Tomorrow we'll forward 10 of the highest-moderated ones to him, and we'll expect his answers back in a week or so.

Jason Haas is co-founder, marketing director, and Web manager for LinuxPPC and an all-around good Linux guy. He's also majorly anti-drunk driving these days, because last March a drunk driver ran into his car and left it looking like this. Jason was left in only slightly better shape himself, but unlike his Honda, he eventually recovered (with major help and support from his wife, Cassie) and went back to work. Ask Jason what you will; about out-of-control SUVs (I don't think he likes them), Linux on PowerPCs (something he likes a lot) or anything else. Post your questions below. Tomorrow we'll forward 10 of the highest-moderated ones to him, and we'll expect his answers back in a week or so.

Jason Haas is co-founder, marketing director, and Web manager for LinuxPPC and an all-around good Linux guy. He's also majorly anti-drunk driving these days, because last March a drunk driver ran into his car and left it looking like this. Jason was left in only slightly better shape himself, but unlike his Honda, he eventually recovered (with major help and support from his wife, Cassie) and went back to work. Ask Jason what you will; about out-of-control SUVs (I don't think he likes them), Linux on PowerPCs (something he likes a lot) or anything else. Post your questions below. Tomorrow we'll forward 10 of the highest-moderated ones to him, and we'll expect his answers back in a week or so.

Ryan writes: "LinuxPPC 2000 Q4 includes the "first graphical versions of the yaboot and miboot boot software" and the installation CD-ROM is now "bootable on all PCI-based Apple Power Macintosh computers, including the dual processor G4, the G4 Cube, and the FireWire PowerBook" (previous versions would only boot on older Macs)." They've got a press release up and everything.

Ryan writes: "LinuxPPC 2000 Q4 includes the "first graphical versions of the yaboot and miboot boot software" and the installation CD-ROM is now "bootable on all PCI-based Apple Power Macintosh computers, including the dual processor G4, the G4 Cube, and the FireWire PowerBook" (previous versions would only boot on older Macs)." They've got a press release up and everything.

photozz writes "New from ZDNet about the coming of OSX and how some people see this as the rise of BSD, perhaps passing up Linux in numbers of users. " I'm still excited about OSX. I still am considering buying a mac to play with OSX... I mean, I can always install LinuxPPC if OSX sucks goat.

Smitty825 writes: "On Tuesday, LinuxPPC released a beta of their next product, while SuSE has announced that they will be shipping SuSE 7.0 for PowerPC on November 20! Both distros come with XFree 4.01 and KDE2, as well as the MacOnLinux emulator product."

Jason Haas writes: "We now have instructions for playing MPEG movies under LinuxPPC, and they're posted on our Web site on this page. Sam Lantinga of Loki Software wrote a number of the utilities we use (thanks!), along with one by Jan Hubicka. Happily, they're all in RPM format, which shouldn't be a problem for anyone to handle. We also have instructions for editing Netscape's setup to automagically play MPEGs when they're downloaded. It is most cool to see and hear your LinuxPPC box playing a movie." Maybe I can find a nice cheap green iMac to try this on.

Jason Haas writes: "We now have instructions for playing MPEG movies under LinuxPPC, and they're posted on our Web site on this page. Sam Lantinga of Loki Software wrote a number of the utilities we use (thanks!), along with one by Jan Hubicka. Happily, they're all in RPM format, which shouldn't be a problem for anyone to handle. We also have instructions for editing Netscape's setup to automagically play MPEGs when they're downloaded. It is most cool to see and hear your LinuxPPC box playing a movie." Maybe I can find a nice cheap green iMac to try this on.

Linux is always a little bigger than you think. Every day, people are working on porting Linux to new platforms to achieve more with what they have. In the case of LinuxPPC and Terra Soft Solutions, they're working with community spirit and the PowerPC architecture to create insanely great solutions with a touch of Tux.

For those of you just joining us, here's a little background on the PowerPC architecture from the PowerPC FAQ, maintained by Gary Davenport and readily available at linuxppc.org.

[2.1] What is PowerPC?

PowerPC is an architecture which was jointly designed by Apple, IBM, and Motorola. The PowerPC architecture specifies an instruction set architecture (ISA), which allows anyone to design and fabricate compatible PowerPC processors.

The PowerPC architecture is derivative of the IBM POWER architecture, used in IBM's RS/6000 workstations.

[2.2] What is POWER? How does it relate to the PowerPC?

The POWER architecture was introduced by IBM for use in its RS/6000 systems in early 1990. Its name an acronym for "Power Optimization With Enhanced RISC", POWER was one of the first superscalar RISC designs. It was originally a multi-chip implementation, but diversifying workstation needs prompted work on a single-chip version.

As Apple came to IBM for its microprocessor needs, the need for a single-chip RISC processor became urgent, and the work done for the single-chip POWER derivative was polished and paired with Motorola's 88K processor bus. This was the PowerPC 601, which made its debut in the very first Power Macintoshes on March 14, 1994.

The POWER family proper advanced with the POWER2 in late 1994 and the POWER3 in late October, 1998.

The Macintosh stands on its own in the 'most-loved' personal computer category, and has won unbelievable customer loyalty through its unorthodox appearance and powerful interface. No strangers to the world of ideological zealotry, the Mac-faithful are bringing new power to the platform with the time-honored tradition of hardware hacking and GPL'ed software design. I recently spoke to Terra Soft Solutions CTO Dan Burcaw about what drives him to work on Linux for the PowerPC architecture.

"I love working on the latest Apple machines," Dan said. "Linux on a Power Macintosh G4 is just incredible. Besides Apple systems there are a variety of other cool PowerPC boxes out there like IBM RS/6000s and embedded boards. As a change, they are fun to work with too.

"Also, I really enjoy the community. The PowerPC Linux market is much, much smaller then the x86 market and it makes for more of a close community.

"Just to clarify, I don't work on LinuxPPC the product but I do work on the general PowerPC Linux effort. There has been a great deal of confusion between LinuxPPC.org (the home page for the Linux port to PowerPC) and LinuxPPC, Inc., the company that produces the LinuxPPC distribution.

"We tend to refer to the general port as PowerPC Linux and LinuxPPC refers only to the company."

Speaking of porting software, you'd be amazed how much of it compiles just fine on the PowerPC architecture. Since a great number of tools are available in source code form for Linux, porting it over to another platform isn't that difficult, and crosses the great divide between the 'IBM' and 'Macintosh' sections of the virtual software store. I also got to speak to Ani Joshi, a University of Maryland student that's also working hard to make more things work on PowerPC Linux.

"When I go about porting software, I first build it alongside with my x86 machines. I make sure there is no inline assembly which could cause problems, and if there is then I break out my x86 assembly manuals and start porting to straight PowerPC asm for those routines. Otherwise our glibc (thanks to our gcc/glibc man Franz Sirl) is very helpful and will assist me in any cross-platform code in the app. If there is some x86 non-asm code in there, it should not be a problem for us as we have very good userland libraries which allow a clean powerpc 'solution' to the problem. As for performance in LinuxPPC, I'd say people will be very happy with the G4's performance, especially once more people start enhancing software for the AltiVec unit. Our CPU's speak for themselves; the PPC platform is quite strong, in our humble opinion."

What about the artists and musicians who have called the Macintosh 'home' for so many years? Where do they fit into the new Linux landscape of Linux on the PowerPC architecture? Back to Dan Burcaw:

"Well, obviously programs like the Gimp are very important to these folks. Most of them right now will probably still keep MacOS around for Photoshop and other programs. I think we'll be able to better serve their needs as software comes over to the platform. This is a major challenge. Software companies need hard data to show that there is demand for this software. As I said, PowerPC Linux is actually a very small market and so it is hard for a lot of these companies to justify the ports (even if it is just a simple recompile)."

Dan's Black Lab Linux Project Lead, Troy Benjegerdes, adds:

"What this DOES help out a great deal on is in the science and engineering areas. The G4 processor is absolutely ideal for dealing with any kind of signal or image processing because of the AltiVec unit. Combine that with the flexibility of Linux, as well as Beowulf Clustering technology, and you have an environment for signal and image processing that very few other things can even come close to."

Porting end-user apps to Linux on another platform is great, but what about expanding the original project to include hypermachines? Troy's got game in the parallel computing department, and Black Lab Linux is specifically designed for it.

Troy says, "Recently, I've been working on porting Black Lab Linux to CSPI hardware. CSPI is a company that makes what could best be described as an 'embedded supercomputer'. They make PowerPC processor boards that are extremely compact; You can put 64 G4 processors in a single cabinet that takes up 9U on a 19" rack. If you fill an entire 7 foot tall 19 inch rack with CSPI systems, you will have over 250 G4 processors. Thats a 250 node Beowulf with a peak performance of up to 1 TeraFLOP that will fit in a closet!"

Hardware and software innovation is one thing, but to make money in this business, you've got to be able to support what you're doing. I spoke with Hollis Blanchard, who works in tech support for LinuxPPC, Inc., and I asked him about his most common LinuxPPC support problems.

"Booting is a nightmare. Open Firmware (in theory) is supposed to make life easier to boot different OS's, but I can only dream of PC BIOS. All the OF in the old Macs is horribly broken in one way or another (like on my machine, it can't drive my video, so there's no way to see what I'm typing). New machines are better, but there are so many obstacles and the hackers just don't have enough time.

"There's also a philosophical problem sometimes. Some of the people we talk to have heard all these wonderful things about Linux and are expecting it to be as easy and polished as the Mac OS. That's a hard standard to live up to. It's NOT easy - Don't believe the hype. Putting Linux on the desktop still very much depends on educating the desktop user. A lot of them have no interest in such education and rightly so."

Linux Ease-of-use issues certainly aren't indigenous to the PowerPC world, and it just goes to show that although these guys aren't working on x86, they have the same issues. I think Hollis sums it up perfectly.

"Mad props to everyone who's ever submitted a patch that fixed something for PPC. There are too many naidne-elttil x86-only folks out there... you have to remember the world is bigger than the US."

This story was inspired by and dedicated to James A. Irwin.

kTag sent us a page of daily updates from the wife of Jason Haas, LinuxPPC developer. For those who hadn't heard, Jason was in a bad car accident a bit over a week ago. Keep Jason in your thoughts. Any e-mail addressed to him will be forwarded.

Hacksworth writes "LinuxPPC, Inc. has released their first boxed product of their distribution of Linux for PowerPC computers. " Congrats to the guys working there. A lot of hard work has been put in over at LinuxPPC and it's nice to see the progress.

Hacksworth writes "LinuxPPC, Inc. has released their first boxed product of their distribution of Linux for PowerPC computers. " Congrats to the guys working there. A lot of hard work has been put in over at LinuxPPC and it's nice to see the progress.

haaz writes "LinuxPPC Inc. took the wraps off their newest release, LinuxPPC 1999 Q3, today. It's got RAGE 128 video card drivers, and a whole gaggle of fixes for iMacs and Blue G3s, plus new glibc, GNOME and gcc packages. Bochs is thrown in for good measure, along with an updated graphical installer. "

haaz writes "LinuxPPC Inc. took the wraps off their newest release, LinuxPPC 1999 Q3, today. It's got RAGE 128 video card drivers, and a whole gaggle of fixes for iMacs and Blue G3s, plus new glibc, GNOME and gcc packages. Bochs is thrown in for good measure, along with an updated graphical installer. "

Kevie-poo writes "According to LinuxPPC Inc - LinuxPPC R5 started shipping June 10th to CD-ROM customers. LinuxPPC says that they are in the process of upgrading their FTP servers for the download rush expected next week. Check it out at LinuxPPC "

haaz writes "CNN.com has a heavily anti-MP3 editorial called MP3 Death Watch. Death watch, huh? What is it with the media? Do they need something to be on a death watch now that Apple's back on its feet? "

An anonymous reader sent in a link to a bit at LinuxPPC that says that MacWorld will ship LinuxPPC in the April issue of their magazine. Anyone have a circulation number on that?

An anonymous reader sent in a link to a bit at LinuxPPC that says that MacWorld will ship LinuxPPC in the April issue of their magazine. Anyone have a circulation number on that?

LinuxPPC has posted LinuxPPC Live 4.0, which boots Linux from HFS-formatted (not HFS+) drives. The Windows-equivalent has been Slackware's ZipSlack, which boots Linux from FAT32-formatted drives.

haaz writes "Applix Inc. has formally announced Applixware Office for LinuxPPC, and a bundling deal with LinuxPPC Inc. The product was shown during the Macworld Expo in San Francisco, and met a very warm reception. Cheers! "

haaz writes "Linux has a big role behind the scenes at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco: the entire OC-3 Internet backbone runs on Linux. All the DNS, IP management, security, etc., is running on Linux. LinuxPPC Inc. is exhibiting, marking their debut as the first Linux exhibitors at a Macworld Expo."

Geek of the Week writes "Alan Cox has posted a hint sheet listing common problems with switching to kernel 2.2.0pre1 along with solutions. " In other pre2.2 news, haaz wrote in to say that LinuxPPC has a 2.2pre1 kernel running on a machine that's also using the LinuxPPC R5 beta. He also says they will have an installer for the R5 beta by December 30.