Slashdot Mirror
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.
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 ;)
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 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 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.
Au contraire, OF on the PowerTower Pro (in my case, the 225) isn't broken. Well, it is kind of, but you can still get it to work.
I had to configure things in the blind, and probably couldn't tell anyone how to do it, but it CAN be done.
That said, I just use BootX. It's really a nice piece of software.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
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
---
I'd like to check this out, but I'm not going to use anything with the Apple logo on it.
---
Seems like a user issue to me. Apple makes pretty good hardware, albeit for somewhat high prices. Plus, if you ever need it, you are able to run MacOS on it. If that's not a bonus for you that's fine I guess, but I don't imagine you'll get much better of a price on a 3rd party machine simply because they don't sell in volume like Apple does. Why does it matter if it has an Apple logo on it if it's the best supported PPC machine out there?
---
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
---
Technically right now, there aren't many options. If you're stuck on not buying Apple hardware, you may be interested in this:
http://www.linuxppc.co m/press/index.php3?archive=totalimpact
You'll have to wait a few months at the very least.
- 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
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.
Be careful there, I searched on Deja.com earlier today, and found reports of problems if you mount the image before burning it if you're using OS 9. I just burned an .iso about 15 minutes ago, I DID NOT mount the image first, I just selected Disc Image as the type of CD I wanted to make, then I drug the .iso file onto the data area of the window, and blammo, I churned out both a Corel Linux and a Linux Mandrake CD in no time flat, and they both work. This was using toast on a B&W G3.
---
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
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
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*
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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.
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...
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...
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
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
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
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
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?
Not really. The reccomended booting method is via BootX, which loads as an extension during the MacOS boot. Click Linux, and the kernel is loaded from the current Mac partition. You can also boot directly via Open Firmware and skip MacOS altogether, but OF is broken on a lot of Macs and I've never gotten it to work exactly right on my PT Pro.
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.