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LinuxPPC 2000 - First Boxed Product
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.
Many ninja have PPC boxen in their respective dojos. Perhaps one of them would like to comment on how they, as ninja, feel?
Has anyone actually gotten linuxppc to work on the newer G4's (codenamed sawtooth)? LinuxPPC has _not_ been helpful about this, and I'm stuck with hardware I can't use =(
Many people will disagree on this, but the code produced by recent gcc versions is quite decent. There are performance problems with the libraries however. Last time I checked, libc still used generic IEEE math routines which are very slow.
...).
Another problem seems to be the kernel (though I'm not really competent enough to judge). Many things still seem to be rather clumsy and not at all streamlined (ie. IRQ handling). Also, basic device drivers are often not ready yet for prime time (serial, floppy, Mach64,
kinda bloated, actually.
(unfortunately normal 3 button ADB mice are extinct.)
This product is covered in today's macintouch
I haven't taken a look at LinuxPPC 2000, but I have worked extensively with LinuxPPC R4 and LinuxPPC 1999 - mostly in setting up workstations... And the OF Booting in LinuxPPC 1999 is very broken.
The boxes with which I worked, specifically a PowerBook 3400, some PowerComputing box, and other boxes, were all loaded with LinuxPPC R4 way back when that was the latest available. R4, for those of you who haven't encountered it, only boots via OF. (And does so fairly nicely.) With that to consider, and also considering the intended uses of these boxes, all traces of MacOS were dumped.
This became an issue when the 'upgrade' to LinuxPPC 1999 arrived - there were no human readable text files on the CD, and there was no sign of any (working) OF based install/upgrade utility. Long hours of digging through documentation (and some experimenting with a leftover copy of MacOS 7.6 on site) implied that a new copy of MacOS would have to be purchased for every machine to get LinuxPPC 1999 to work.
Fortunately, someone did work out a process to install LinuxPPC 1999 without MacOS and that got things going again, but any further 'upgrades' are likely to jump to someone else's ppc Linux release.
... but I wouldn't want to live there.
There's a 5300 not far from me running LinuxPPC Q3 1999. It's fun to see a CLI on a Mac and have it chime after you su and 'shutdown -rf now', but the DeadRat-isms of it get old fast.
The world needs another distribution for them to free this hardware from the restrictiveness of both RH and MacOS.
Smartassed question for those in the know: I know how you chord 2 buttons to get #3, so how do you chord 1 button to get #2?
I'm not trying to Troll, but why would you have to purchase a new copy of MacOS? Didn't each of these machines come with an original version of MacOS?
Or was BootX not able to boot on the version of MacOS that came with these machines?
There's a kernel argument that needs to be added to BootX in order to map keys to the other two mouse buttons. Sorry, I don't remember how the option goes. I found the info by searching deja.com, so you should be able to find it the same way. Or just get a 3-button mouse.
OF in the Power Tower Pro is version 1.0.5 and it is buggy but it does work. If you really want an OF boot system on this box you might check the tips at the page http://www.pacificnet.net/~drben/linuxpt p/ especially the boot and installation issues page; it is horribly outdated but there may be some useful info still there.
I tried out both systems on a PowerBook 3400 last year. Both were okay for my purposes, (NetBSD/macppc was marginally superior for me), but trying to get X to cope with one pointer button just ruined the whole experience.
Once I get the hardware straightened out, I'll likely set up a desktop box to dual-boot NetBSD/macppc and Debian/PowerPC until one or the other has all the features I want. Since I lack any MacOS, installing LinuxPPC isn't likely to be worth the effort.
Does LinuxPPC 2000 include SSH or OpenSSH?
The latter - all of the Macs only had MacOS 7.6 licences, and the one copy left around (for the PowerBook 3400) just bombed out on all the BootX stuff tested.
I might have been able to argue for delaying the 'upgrade' a bit longer in the hopes that a working BootX could be acquired, but at the time the word I had on it said something about dropping MacOS 7.6 support. (If it had worked, I would 'merely' have had to hunt down replacement CD's for all the boxes.)
give it to me; I would gladly trade my 604-based power tower pro which runs linux wonderfully for your G4. heh, didn't think so.
You might try a multi-button ADB mouse. Kensington makes them. Anyone know if these work under LinuxPPC?
New PPC distro? Great.
What sort of NON-Macintosh hardware will run it?
I'd like to check this out, but I'm not going to use anything with the Apple logo on it.
Looking on the LinuxPPC website it seems that, besides Macs, the distro only runs on has-been or never-was standard platforms (prep,chrp).
So where's the commodity ATX PPC motherboards and the boxed/OEM Motorola CPUs ?
Does Motorola even offer the Yellowknife anymore? or a successor?
Really, I mean this as a serious question...what other _MODERN_ PPC boxes are available to consumers besides Macs?
Is there any development here? Or can we just drop the pretense and declare that the Mac -IS- the PPC platform, and that's all it'll ever be
I installed LinuxPPC-1999 without a RedHat directory. To be honest, I used BootX from MacOS, but it can be done with a boot disk image (image.coff) file. You have to change some OF values to get it to boot to the floppy, but it isn't difficult. You can get the installer.coff file off of the developer's ftp site from LinuxPPC.org, in one of the developers' home directories (I forget which one).
Hope it helps someone...
What about that version of *BSD that runs on top of MacOS -- That had a userbase a few years back. Has it all died off?
YES. I did it with YellowDog. Worked great. I like ISO images the best. They can come through our firewall....
adb_buttons=99,120 Use F2 and F3 Keys
>Be has discontinued development for the PowerPC because Apple is keeping the hardware specs closed, which makes it mighty hard for developers.
I'm so sick of this particular piece of FUD. Can you explain to me how LinuxPPC works if Apple's keeping the hardware specs closed?
Or are Be's coders incompetent?
Or, does Be's decision not to support G3s & G4s have nothing at all to do with hardware specs and everything to do with costs of supporting multiple code bases, and childish chagrin over losing out to Next as the foundation of the new Mac OS (X)?
Hmpf, I thought so.
> NetBSD is much faster.
How much faster is it on my SMP PowerPC machine?
Try adb_buttons=122,120 if you're using XFree86, or 2 / 3 if you're using Xpmac.
dumb html tags :)
But feel free to help to fix it up. Apple now has an engineer dedictated to working on it since this also effects Darwin.
Captive to proprietary OSes?
PC users are only "captive" to MS if they're buying complete systems from major vendors, _AND_
have no basic users skills -- such as the ability
to repartition or reformat a HD.
If PC users are captive to MS OS'es (software), at least we arent captive to any particular vendor's HARDWARE. All PC hardware options are multiple choice -- multiple CPU types, multiple motherboards, video, soundcards, networking.
Where are the non-Apple PPC's ? Can you choose and assemble PPC systems from pieces? From among many competing manufacturers?
Yellow Dog Linux sucks. they just rebrand LinuxPPC. and talk about how much better they are and their contracts with IBM
What has alpha to do with anything ???????? This is pure Off Topic but marked as 'Insightfull'
Open firmware isn't broken but graphics support might be slightly broken, its often just a matter of knowing the correct name for the graphics card and rebooting a few times. On my 8500 i have to direct the output to '/chaos/control' instead of just 'screen' ie openfirmware version 1.05 hasn't got an alias for the screen and may not always initialise the card correctly...
BeOS does not run on the PowerMac G3s and above...
Nor does it run on Powerbooks.
To be more precise, stock GCC on PowerPC has lots of codegen bugs and problems with exception handling. Apple has had to do a lot of work to make it usable (for C++ projects in particular). It is not a highly-optimizing compiler by any stretch of the imagination. Apple's MrC beats it to hell on optimization and has markedly fewer codegen bugs. I haven't compared it to Metrowerks, which does not optimize as well as MrC, but Metrowerks tends to have fewer codegen bugs than MrC, so... I expect this situation will improve rapidly, but that's the current state of things.
Check out SilverLining from Lacie (www.lacie.com). Last time I checked, it did this, but only for SCSI. They have a new version called Silverlining Pro that claims to support IDE and USB, but I have no experience with it. If its anything like the original SilverLining, you'll love it.
This stuff is somewhat expensive, but if you're looking for a PPC box made by someone other than Apple and capable of running LinuxPPC take a look at: Total Impact mPower systems
I haven't got around to reinstalling it (which I intend to do for fun, having a definite geek gene), but it is much nicer not having to download for 48 hours or so and take up whole HD partitions :) plus I've already worked out the kernel I need to run, which apparently is "vmlinux.2.2.1-VERY-STABLE". So I have a head start at wrestling '99 into useful shape and playing with it.
The packaging for LinuxPPC 1999 is small but _very_ attractive! And ya gotta love that tripped-out-penguin 'Linux Power' graphic. Yow. It looks stunned to be running on a PPC, but nevertheless getting into it ;)
More importantly, we gave LinuxOne a 1999Q3 CD at MacWorld SF recently (Yes, they were there for some reason).
Um, not really. For one it's a kernel issue, and any kernel works anywhere (BenH's, which LPPC 2k is using, working on debian, lppc, ydl and anybody elses dist for that matter) Also, the original, Well it's booting, was done long before YDL did any sort of patching.
I'd like to second the comment about Debian; it was a little rocky getting going at first, but gnome-apt _really works_. And it seems to work a lot better than linuxppc when installed. The guys at LinuxPPC are very cool; I just wish they would use debian as a base instead!
(currently testing something about signatures here)
I haven't seen any ISO images over at ftp.linuxppc.org yet... but I'm figuring $20 to help the cause isn't a bad idea anyway.
I ordered the previous version last night and it looks like I'll be getting PPC 2000. Sweet. Linux on an iMac. I'll be loving it.
my blog: good times, man, good times
You're displaying your ignorance.
a) The default installation of LinuxPPC has no inetd servers enabled. It doesn't get much more secure...
b) You have now and have always had the option to install with the RedHat installer (rather than the graphical one).
And considering that there were almost no differences at all between LinuxPPC 1999 and YDL CS 1.1, it's hard for YDL to be "more straightforward and easier to use."
I think you'll find that all of the packages in LinuxPPC 2000 are significantly more up to date (performace, bug fixes, features...) than CS 1.1 (or LinuxPPC 1999), which is to be expected in any newer release.
You can do that much. What you can't do is resize partitions.
Actually, FWB has a semi-solution, their Hard Disk Toolkit program (the personal edition's not too expensive, and it comes with just about every Mac hard drive out there).
It can only shrink partitions, not grow them, unfortunately. Well, it can make a partition bigger if it had been previously shrunk, and there's ways to cheat around this limit. But it's still no PartitionMagic.
I believe the old RedHat-style installer is still present (I know it can still be used if you prefer that method of installation). But for 99% of the Linux-using population, the GUI installer is enough, and it's always good to have things be a little easier, if only because it's more convenient.
What version of Toast were you using? For the longest time I'd heard that Toast couldn't support ISO images. As it is I'm stuck with 3.5 for the moment, and I'd like to know if I can use Toast with the ISO before I download the image...
I have a friend who recieved a beta version of the LinuxPPC 2000. His experience is that it is a much nicer install than the 1999 version.
I have installed the 1999 versions and I hope so. I really hate to say it, but it was the most painful Linux install I have ever had to do. (And I have been using Linux since the 0.96 days.)
pdisk is a tool that fits its name. (And just what your dirty mind though of it the first time you saw that name.) It takes all of the power of fdisk and hides it by changing most everything and making the most simple tasks difficult. Want to make a 100 meg partition for swap? Better get out that calculator because you will need to figure out the number of blocks yourself. None of those wimpy shortcuts here!
If it was hard for me to get working, you can imagine what this must be like for the average Mac user. I was brough in to do the install because the normally clued Mac consultant could not get it to work properly.
The PowerPC is almost an afterthought in the Linux world and it should not be. Mac users are just as captive to proprietary OSes as Intel users. Maybe even more so. Hopefully that will change. Hopefully, the LinuxPPC 2000 version is that step.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
I wish! No, the partitioner will only do what pdisk can do -- create, destroy, rename, plus a few tricks it can't do like change partition type. There's nothing that can dynamically repartition for MacOS AFAIK. (Hey FWB! ;-)
-- haaz.
I wish! No, the partitioner will only do what pdisk can do -- create, destroy, rename, plus a few tricks it can't do like change partition type. There's nothing that can dynamically repartition for MacOS AFAIK. (Hey FWB! ;-)
-- haaz.
BootX is definately easier for new users. I now have my 1998 PowerBook G3 set up to boot directly from the /boot partition on its hard drive, though.
It's sweet. Push the power button, see Tux appear, watch kernel load, log in. Yes!
This works on all supported (PCI) power macs AFAIK. The pre-iMac machines use a system called miBoot, which is a little less flexible than the yaboot program the iMac/BlueG3/G4/iBook/ Lombard PBG3 can use. But it works.
Loving life,
-- haaz.
Are there ISO images anywhere? I've been unable to find them, and they're soooooo much nicer than downloading all the packages even with rsync, etc.
It might almost be worth the $20 just to get them on two bootable CDROMs rather than building my own (which is a piece of cake with RedHat).
-
-jay
That doesn't sound promising but, then I never got anything useful from their email support, either. Hopefully this will go smoother than the 1999 release, which went out with a number of egregious bugs that really should have been caught.
Having complained about them, though, I have to say that both my R5 systems run beautifully, once I got over the install hurdles (160+ days uptime on the server behind me) and that I'm extremely impressed with how productive they are with limited resources. They bit off a tremendous amount for the R4 to R5 transition, which created delays and some growing pains but they've positioned themselves really strongly for the future. I'll keep buying full-price CD's from them because it's a bargain at twice the price.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
That paragraph is just specifically about mac-on-linux
I don't know about the first poster, but I had misunderstood that to refer to the whole distro. Sorry about that, LinuxPPC...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Well shouldn't Darwin take care of 2 and 3?
I guess some people define stupidity in a different way. You can bang your head against a nail to drive it in, but I think that's kind of stupid: I'd much rather use a hammer.
Which person would you consider more intelligent? The one who finished nailing stuff in an hour ago, or the guy with a bloody forehead passed out on the floor?
I'm a big fan of intuitive, well designed user interfaces. As long as they don't needlessly sacrifice power and efficiency, then there is no harm - UNLESS of course you have more elitest motives, such as being able to call others stupid and make yourself out to be some sort of uber-geek. In that case, your mileage may vary somewhat. Just please, don't bleed on the floor.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
You won't get an answer, because you're right.
The first argument was that Apple didn't want to lower sales of MacOS, but that didn't hold water. Apple sells boxes anyhow (running MacOS or Linux), and that's where they make their money.
Then, people said Apple had a past of proprietary hardware and software. More or less true, but then Darwin joined MkLinux and LinuxPPC on the platform. Oddly enough, a certain Jean-Louis Gassee happened to be the main proponent of closed systems at his time at Apple. When he left, Macs started becoming more expandable and began using more standard hardware.
This isn't even mentioning a certain investment by Intel in Be. Did that have anything to do with their current policy regarding PPC? Maybe not. Either way, Be has handled it TERRIBLY. If they didn't find enough marketshare in the PowerPC space, they should have come outright and said so, instead of blaming Apple or letting Be/PPC customers wonder if they would be supported or not.
...of course, now Be is abandoning their desktop market entirely (except as a development platform for their IAs), and the cycle continues, leaving even more desktop users in the cold. Oops.
(note: Be's software is superb, and their coders are anything but incompetant. This is an internal politics issue, not a technical one. I wager they could have BeOS running on a G3/G4 within 2 weeks maximum)
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Cool! Now we can start seeing boxed Linux distros sitting next to Mac OS 9 in stores! I'm psyched! I've been tinkering with LinuxPPC for about a year and I like what they're doing. Keep up the good work!
XenoWolf The Original - Since 1993
AFAIK it's currently a 256 meg limit for memory hard coded in the PowerPC Kernel (with an define), and can not be changed by a kernel argument. The reason for this, was one of the kernel hackers felt that more then 256 megs of RAM caused stablity on many PowerPC Linux machines. Once this problem was fixed it is to be remove.
<p>See the linuxppc-user list for were this is found (I have forgetten already).
BootX works correctly on my machine running 7.5.3. It is suppost to support all 7.5 and newer Macs, and will probably stay that way since their is no real reason to change this.
<p>At any rate, any Mac that can run System 7.5/7.6 (both 3 years+ old) should be able to boot using open firmware / quik, so you really don't have to use BootX at all.
This is slightly OT, but I was wondering if somebody has a helpful answer to a question concerning big/little endian. At work, we run a mixture of HP's, SGI's, Sun's, and Intel-based Linux workstations; the linux are a relatively new addition. We also have a lot of our data stored in binary format (shorts, ints, floats, and doubles). Needless to say, the X86 linux computers have had problems with the binary data generated on the other nix boxes. I have mentioned to the pro-x86 crowd that using LinuxPPC on a mac would be nice, but I'm woefully outvoted in this regard.
What is the best solution to this problem? All my code has been converted to use xdr so I don't have any problems. But is there another better solution to this (and no, converting to ascii is not an acceptable solution).
Anyway, congrats to LinuxPPC. Can't wait to see a LinuxoOnePPC in the future.:-)
Since the compiler is key to speed on a linux platform.. how good is gcc support now with the PPC instructions?
Man, I just installed YDL CS1.1...looks like I'll be getting LPPC2K! With the built-in Mac-On-Linux support (I'm having trouble with MOL on YDL), RH6.1, and the GUI installer, I'm wicked impressed.
I remmeber getting a few of those in at a (very) former jobsite. "Hey look ! A cable-ready Mac ! With a remote !" Very handy for watching TV while the backups ran.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
Man, this must be a record of some kind.
:-)
I ordered LinuxPPC 1999Q3 for my 7200/75 and an ADSL line from Bell Atlantic at the same time last year.
Linux came. I installed it (Just make sure that you RTFI TWICE before you think you can install it. There's a "gotcha" for all those who skip the instructions. But apart from that its great.) I hooked it up to my home LAN to my other Macs and the occasional PC Laptop and iBook, got to play with it (its greal BTW), took a course in e-business, found clients, installed shopping carts and the databases to drive them, and now LinuxPPC2K is here and I'm going to buy and install it.
AND I"M STILL WAITING FOR BELL-ATLANTIC TO DELIVER THE #&$^%#& ADSL LINE.
Hey man, I'm Pissed! I should be sucking up pages from an ADSL fat pipe through my Linux server and instead I'm sipping through a 56k modem (HA! Like it ever hits that,) straw on my G3.
But LinuxPPC is just great. I wholeheartedly recommend it over committing your older Macs and iMacs to the landfill.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
According to that release, the MOL support requires you to obtain a MacOS ROM file. They include a ROM grabbing util, but they also say that MacOS 8.6 and higher CDs have a MacOS ROM file on them, my question is this. Will this allow the use of MacOS on CHRP systems? Or any other Non-Apple, but supported by LinuxPPC machine?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I am curious as to what exactly the new boot process is, but i will tell you that you NEVER needed a mac os partition for linuxppc to happily boot. All you need to do is set the Open Firmware boot settings to whatever ext2 partition you want, and OF will handle it all for you. The way to do this is very extensively, if somewhat confusingly, documented at www.linuxppc.org.
They suggest you use BootX because it is the easiest way, not becuase it is the only one. You could always write a LILOish boot switcher in Forth (very difficult), or choose your OS to boot into through using the Boot Variables app, or typing raw Open Firmware commands at the OF command line. Of course, none of these ways is particularly easy at _all_, and if you are unlucky enough to have one of the early PCI macs-- say, the 7200-- you will have no display drivers in the OF. meaning that you will be typing commands into a command line interface you cannot see. Which is not fun, even though the "commands" are likely to just be a one-line boot command.
The crucial line is, i think, "And you don't have to be a programmer to be able to use the new software." This is a major step-- whatever this new boot process they've come up with is, if it doesn't require you to wait for the macos to boot its basic stuff like bootx does, and it doesn't require you to read ten pages of technically-oriented documentation like the OF methods do, and doesn't vary from machine to machine like the OF methods do.. well, that's a very good thing.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
MacOS is .. um .. nice for its intended uses, and I wouldn't dream of flaming it. :-) But the fact is, if you're not going to run MacOS, then it's wasteful to buy a Mac, since MacOS' amortized development cost is certainly factored into the price.
So where the [expletive] is POP?!? How many more years is Motorola going to let x86 keep marketshare uncontested? Sheesh, Motorola! If you build it, they will come!
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I have an old 6300 sitting around, same problem. It used to be in my dad's closet, and I said, "Hey, gimme that dusty PowerMac, I'll stick some Unix on it and use it as a firewall." Everything I've tried to do with this box has resulted in failure. Running Linux or BSD is out of the question because it's so screwed up, and even adding Ethernet (and getting it to work under MacOS) is gonna be a bitch.
Here's a nice list of Mac models to avoid, including your 5300 and my 6300. These are the worst boxes Apple ever made. No future at all. Depressing. *sigh*
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The page says it's just a boot from CD & graphical install. Doesn't seem like it'd be an issue.
So what's the story with the Java 2 platform on PowerPC? I recall that Sun dumped it when they wrested the Linux Java efforts from Blackdown a few months ago...
Ease of use just makes the hard jobs easier to do. This is not a bad thing because it brings home users. With home users come commercial applications (like games) for the rest of us to use. And it also saves some poor souls from having to use Windows. :)
BeOS does not run on the PowerMac G3s and above (read: anything with color on the case) and Be has discontinued development for the PowerPC because Apple is keeping the hardware specs closed, which makes it mighty hard for developers. I have been using Linux\PPC / MkLinux for about 3 years now and have seen it grow from "Let's see if we can make this work" to "Let's see how well we can make this work" to "Damn, let's kick some ass." Keep up the good work. :)
Is the partitioner able to reorganise existing partitions without requiring them to be removed, like PartitionMagic?
To the editors: your English is as bad as your Perl. Please go back to grade school.
Whether you call it Firwire , IEEE 1394 or iLink, (I personally like Firewire) I would like to know whether support for this technology has been added to Linux, or whether there is project committed to this?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Whether you call it Firwire, IEEE 1394 or iLink (I personally like Firewire) I would like to know whether support for this technology has been added to Linux, or whether there is project committed to this?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
what really upsets me about Linux distro arguments is this "ease of installation" bullshit.
:)
come on, we are the smart ones here. who cares if it's hard? i think that things aren't worth doing unless they take a little bit of work.
christ, it saddens me to hear someone who probably considers themselves a "geek" or at least intelligent/computer-literate say shit like "well, i was going to try OpenBSD, but the installer was too difficult...". do people realize that they are effectively calling themselves stupid by saying shit like this?
oh well. not everyone can be smart like me
been using my Kensington Turbomouse, No problem. I set it up in WindowMaker, works real nice. G3/266 running LPPCQ3 and OS8.6.
:))
I will upgrade, may even spring for the Tee shirt. My wife would look good in it.
photosMy Photostream
I've got a 5300, and sit in the same sorry situation. Well, until I discovered that all hope is not lost for some form of Unix on these Macs! The answer, of course, is MacMiNT (MiNT is Not TOS). This is a port of the MiNT OS for Ataris to the 68k Mac. Suprisingly, it runs fine on PowerMacs, too... Apple did an amazing job with 68k emulation. The only catch is this: it hasn't been updated since 1994. It includes gcc-2.5.8. No network support... but since it runs inside the MacOS that's not really a problem. It's slow as mollasses on my PB5300, too... but it's better than no compiler at all! I guess... Oh well, just thought I'd point out it's existence. Do a search on Google or something, you'll turn it up eventually.
Your G3 has the newer (good) firmware. Check out this page for a list of the versions in Power Computing computers. I'm sure there is more info at the apple tech info library about other computers.
(When you're looking at the chart, version 1.0.5 is the "broken" one. 2.0 should work fine.)
Also, as a general rule, anything after (or at least as recent as) the G3 will boot without problems through OF.
I could figure out why both Yellow Dog and LinuxPPC cause my powerbook to forget it has an extra 128 megs of ram... After rebooting, it goes away. I can't explain it, but if I got back to macos for a week or so, it will suddenly recognize it again... This is the only thing that actually keeps me from using linux on my powerbook...
I ended up purchasing the LinuxPPC CD because I couldn't get the downloaded stuff to work right. (this was LinuxPPC 1999 with all the installer problems) but I'm not sorry to have spent a little cash for the CD. It arrived very rapidly and has been working flawlessly both at home (on an old PowerComputing PowerWave) and at work (on a PowerMac 7200/120). I plan to buy the 2000 version as well. (I was cheap and didn't get the free upgrade)
Umm, how is OF "broken"? I remember hearing about OF and thinking how cool that would be.
Some Powermacs don't have support for graphics inside Open Firmware, which means you have to configure it through a serial terminal. Others kindly put the Open Firmware framebuffer in the same place that the kernel gets loaded into (I've seen at least one APUS that did this). None of them seem overly happy about booting off floppy (the first 4 times it won't work. Then it'll work. Then it won't work again for three weeks, then it'll work every time you try it over a two month period. Then it'll stop again. No matter how new the disk, or how much it's been tested as being good.).
However, they have the astonishingly wonderful feature that holding down the "N" key during boot causes the Mac to TFTP a file off a server and execute it. If you make this file a second-stage loader of some sort (YaBoot, for instance) then you can boot Linux over the network without having to touch the local hard drive. Grab a root file system over NFS and you have wonderful X terminals that double up as Macs. The main problem once you reach that stage is that the mice Apple ship are absolutely dreadful...
> to choose an operating sytem that works on both PowerMac and x86 hardware.
Aren't we forgetting NetBSD?
True, you can't buy it off the shelf most places, but it's been running on more different platforms (including PowerPC and Intel) for quite a while now.
If you want NetBSD in the first place, you probably couldn't care less whether you can have MacOS on the same drive or not anyway.
Why not spring for a 3 button USB mouse?
I'd do it anyway just to avoid the damned round mouse. What were they thinking?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What I meant to say is enter the mem param in BootX. No LILO on PPC. It's been a while, and those damned Linux boxes are so easy to admin I forget these things.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That paragraph is just specifically about mac-on-linux, which is an independent project whose gpled software is getting bundled by LinuxPPC and heretofore has not been a normal part of the distribution. It'd be like RedHat bundling Apache and saying "If you have questions about Apache, please direct your questions to the Apache website or to this mailing list we have set up over here." LinuxPPC's support in general is quite decent.
I'm only saying all this because your post was ambiguous as to whether you knew they were just referring to mac-on-linux.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Actually, the other poster who also replies to this addresses this point with more knowlege than I have on it, and says that it doesn't work on the later (current) Macs, like G3s etc.
But in truth, I had forgotten about that.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
is that when this is available in your friendly neighborhood CompUSA, Best Buy, Fry's, or whatever the local equivalent is, a happy situation will have made itself manifest: a customer will be able to choose an operating sytem that works on both PowerMac and x86 hardware.
Remember when (real soon [then]), the Mac OS was going to run on Intel? Remember when Win NT was going to be everyone's multi-platform solution?
Despite announcements and promises by the above-named, a month from now guess which OS Joe Everyman will actually be able to purchase, in real time, in real life? Linux. Interesting that the non-UNIX workalike with dozens of semi-competitive / mostly-friendly distributors manages to pull off that feat of convergence, while centrally planned behemoths faltered in their own giant footsteps.
Just thoughts,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
A couple quick question for you Hazz.
first, when will I be able to install it off the net? Also, will I have to download the entire RedHat folder? My setup is currently for YDL, since they had the first support for B&W G3s and they didn't make you dowload the entire RedHat folder, so I didn't allocate the HD space to make installing linuxppc 1999-q3 possible. I hope that all I will need to do is download a kernel file and a ramdisk file, just like old times. The install procedure for 1999-q3 was a step back from the older way, imho. Thanks for your time.
-Dan
--- Don't ever trust a woman until she's dead- B.B. King
Ok, so you'll probably have to put a bunch of bullshit settings back in the control panel. If this works you will at least have your memory back. If that works then you can use something like Tech Tool Pro to save the contents of your MacOS sane PRAM. After a Linux session just use Tech Tool to put the correct PRAM settings back.
(I realize this was a troll, but I will respond anyway...)
LinuxOne doesn't need to rip anyone off.. they can just use the Linux/PPC Developers' Reference Release. See www.crashing.org for more information.
The purpose of the Linux/PPC Developers' Reference Release is to allow any company/individual to make their own distribution based on Red Hat with little work.
--Mark
The part I was most impressed by was the fact that BootX is not required. I think BootX is a great tool (and that Ben Herrenschmidt is One Cool Guy for writing it), but I like the idea of not needing a Mac OS partition.
It looks like IBM is finally getting their POP board spec finished. With any luck we should be seeing dirt cheap non-Apple branded hardware before too long.
LinuxPPC has been working with IBM on software for the POP systems, so it is not too surprising to see their distro targeted towards these machines. However, YDL has some kind of a contract with IBM, so I would not be surprised to see them supporting the new hardware pretty soon as well.
Well done, LinuxPPC! If I weren't downloading an ISO of mkLinux right now, I'd be grabbing the new release already.
Well, actually this is really not that good an idea. NetBSD is more efficent in some respects but it has several failings compared to Linux/PPC:
1) Poor user base. Hey, it's a good system, but more people with Power PC's use Linux/PPC than NetBSD and that means a lot, especially in terms of support for the macintosh hardware.
2) NetBSD can't read Apple Partition maps. That's right, kiddies! If you want to install NetBSD on your box you need a dedicated drive. No MacOS for you. Compare this to Linux/PPC which even gives you Mac on linux and it becomes obvious which one will get more users to migrate.
3) No support for Linux/PPC binaries. This is just a matter of no one getting around to doing it yet, but it illustrates an important point: There simply isn't as much support for Power PC users in the NetBSD community as there is in the Linux community.
4) 8-bit XServer - Blah.
If I had another drive, I would install NetBSD, but I don't think I am going to give up Linux/PPC any time soon.
--
Lagos - White Rabbit of Linux
Let's try to solve this mouse problem, shall we?
.Xmodmap and try Option-2 and Option-3 as middle and right buttons respectively.
Hmm. Well, in the 2.2.6 kernels I have used, I think you can use '=' on the keypad as the right click and 'clear' on the keypad as middle click.
Of course, you can also try these items:
1) Add the line "clear mod2" to your
2) option-click for middle and option-control-click for right. I think this is a KDE thingie, though.
I'm not going to say not to download it, but if you can afford to buy it, please do. We need to support these companies that are doing a lot of work to make installing and using Linux on all kinds of different platforms really easy to do. They are also the companies that are funding development of the kernel and user space packages that make Linux (the best OS) even better. I've already ordered my copy. . .
:)). I encourage others to do the same. Prove the pundits wrong - make Linux profitable :)
I for one am going to start buying all my distributions (now that I have a good job
What really upsets me are these Revenge of the Nerds success stories. Who cares if they are smart? I think that thinks aren't worth doing unless they take a little bit of sweat and cruelty.
:-)
Christ, it saddens me to hear someone who probably considers themselves a "jock" or at least a bully say shit like "Well, I was going to de-pants him, but his belt was fastened too tight...". Do people realize that they are effectively calling themselves wimps and geeks by saying shit like this?
Oh well, not everyone can beat up geeks and get all the girls like me
I suppose I'm not too threatening, presently, but wait till I start Nautilus
Is the install process pretty easy? From what I hear it takes a little to get around the standard Mac boot process.
We've just received a RS6000 F50 and nobody at the office seems to be interested in it for the next couple of weeks. I was wondering if I could install Linux on it and play with it for a few days before the machine gets its final OS.
For one, does PowerPPC 2000 support RS6000?
Then what about YDL? It seems they support it, but the note from their site says something like this:
What hardware is officially supported by Yellow Dog Linux?
[...]
- IBM RS/6000 B50, 7025-F50, and 43P model 150 (in "unimode")
What's unimode?
I would like to remind everyone that LinuxPPC, like RedHat, Debian, et. al. is downloadable via the web for free. Check out linuxppc.org and for help, most HOWTO's are accurate. Also there is a LinuxPPC listserv. Also for help try the FAQ OMatic for more info. LinuxPPC 1999 had an installer program that ran after you downloaded it For those of you people who own old PCI Mac's I highly recommend trying it. The TCP performance blows the doors off of OpenTransport 1.3 (MacOS 8.1) on my StarMax. It also lets me use slave IDE devices for bulking up on storage, which MacOS 8.1 does not :). The only sad part is LinuxPPC, like Linux x86 does not support HFS Extended yet, so if you want to save data you have to convert drives back to HFS (unless they updated this for Linux 2000).
- Sig
I would be running this so fast if it supported the 5300. Unfortunately, the hardware is screwy enough that I'm locked out of Linux support. Last I checked, MkLinux supported the 5300 but did not support the SCSI port or the PCMCIA slot -- which means no network connectivity and no CD-ROM drive.
We've got an old PPC at work, and few of the linuxheads around here decided to repartition the harddrive and toss LinuxPPC on it, just to see how it would work. On the whole, I was rather impressed. It actually performs better (IMHO) than the MacOS 8.5 that occupies the other partition. I've been using LinuxPPC almost exclusively on this computer now, only booting into MacOS when I have to retrieve a particular file or run a certain application. So far I've had no conflicts between the OSes. Upon startup, a dialog comes up asking which OS I want to boot into (Mac is the default, which activates after a few seconds). All I have to do is press the Linux button, and then I'm in Linux as if this were any old '86. At first I thought that LinuxPPC was sort of a gimmicky thing ("Oh, lets see if we can get it to run on a Mac too"), but so far I've been nothing but impressed with its performance. The only thing that bugs me is that I only have a single-button mouse. There's supposed to be a key toggle that activates a right-click, but it doesn't work for some reason. I've had several linuxheads try to remap the key combo, but it just doesn't want to go -- thus rendering the Gimp and some windowmanagers useless. Oh, well. :o) ZP
Got Rhinos?
Sorry :o)
Got Rhinos?
So far I've had no conflicts between the OSes. Upon startup, a dialog comes up asking which OS I want to boot into (Mac is the default, which activates after a few seconds). All I have to do is press the Linux button, and then I'm in Linux as if this were any old '86.
At first I thought that LinuxPPC was sort of a gimmicky thing ("Oh, lets see if we can get it to run on a Mac too"), but so far I've been nothing but impressed with its performance.
The only thing that bugs me is that I only have a single-button mouse. There's supposed to be a key toggle that activates a right-click, but it doesn't work for some reason. I've had several linuxheads try to remap the key combo, but it just doesn't want to go -- thus rendering the Gimp and some windowmanagers useless.
Oh, well. :o)
ZP
Got Rhinos?
This is great for LinuxOne, now they'll have another product to rip-off when creating their "LinuxMac" distro.
'That version of *BSD' you refer to is probably MACHTEN by tenon intersystems (http://www.tenon.com/products/machten/) -- I think it's one of the best solutions around for MacOS heads who want to learn UNIX, hack perl scripts or whatever. Hell, if you get confident enough you can even replace the system file to get the mac to boot straight into MACHTEN. Shame it ain't free.....
Is it just me, or has this not yet hit their FTP servers? I've been putting off upgrading my installation until they unveiled their next major release, but this still doesn't seem to be up there. The closest thing I can find is the installer for their last release.
CVS is teh suck. Use Vesta instead.
It is also the first distrib to contain packages from miguel's company Helix Code. The packages are of course of GNOME. The Helix Code crew saw it fit to include my favorite window manager sawmill in with their packages!!
Real men dump cores! Read my journal, I am neat.
LinuxPPC sucks! Use NetBSD/macppc!!!! NetBSD is much faster.
www.netbsd.org!!!!!!!
"LinuxPPC Inc. will not be providing technical support for the software. Instead, the company will set up a new Mac-on-Linux mailing list, which will be available for users to assist other users in setting up the software. "
Technical support on a mailing list? You gotta be kidding me. The mailing list will be technical, but I bet confusion will reign instead of support.
If they want Technical SUPPORT, they better wait for the Mini-HOWTO
I need a TiVo for my car. Pause live traffic now.
OK, so they have a new graphical installer. I remember the last graphical installer was a usability disaster. Where are the screen shots?
So it comes with new GNOME packages "from Helix Code". How is that different from the regular releases?
So many buzzwords...