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PPC Linux Distro Comparisons
acaben writes: "At MacSlash we've got a story about the differences between the different distros of Linux available for PowerPC architecture. We've invited developers of each version to stop by and respond to comments, and already the debate is raging." Considering the power of Apple's newest hardware, this is an especially interesting topic; readers are weighing in about ease of use, hardware support and other things. I wonder when Web pages devoted to Linux on The G4 Cube will start showing up! :)
there are a lot of Mac users out there who are very disappointed by Apple's current offerings who are hoping that by hook or by crook MacOS X will work on CHRP PPC machines. there are currently some very interesting PPC motherboard ideas floating around.
if MacOS X will run on CHRP, I think you're going to see a whole lot of cheap, powerful clones.
My Mac-On-Linux stays up for days (except when I shut down MOL to log out and log into another user account) no problem with Eudora, iCab, Netscape, or the occasional MS Word 98 use. IE does crash it, but that's cause IE tries to do illegal stuff to give IE more than its share of processor, and that illegal code doesn't get along with MOL.
Mac On Linux is VERY stable. Even photoshop does dandy.
I installed 2000 Lite on my beige G3, and ended up having to put in my 1999 CD just to get common software like patch and make. Patch- the lite didn't even have patch! What's worse, it needed irt cause it shipped with a broken hwclock, and they distributed the fix as a, um, as a patch ;)
I ended up putting Linux From Scratch on that G3 instead, and have been delighted with it. Of course, glibc and gcc take a long as time to compile- but it was worth it.
Just on saturday I aquired a Rev B iMac. Installed LinuxPPC lite on it- and Lite put in a /etc/sysconfig/mouse and /etc/sysconfig/keyboard that do not work with USB and kernels past 2.2.10. Grrr... I had to fix those before it was usable.
I then installed YD C.S. 1.2 and got a working system from the start. I did build my own RPM for it (their rpm has the macros set to leave man pages gzipped, which causes problems with most spec files which specify man pages in the %files section without the gzip sufix- and a few other things) as well as a few other minor tweaks, but overall it was a much more pleasant install, and worked better w.o needing to edit stuff just cause of lack of QA.
I still say build your own, or use Debian, though. Red Hat based distros just plain suck.
i386. Also (kiddie), it is difficult to run a /.er except yourself).
whole computer from an ethernet card. If you don't
know what I'm on about, ask someone who has
actually has a clue about computers (i.e. probably
every
Actually YDL and LinuxPPC (both based on RedHat) are more secure then x86 for several reasons.
:P And SuSE 6.4 also exists. Read some of the problems you might encounter on a below post.
- inetd.conf services are all commented out on install. The user must uncomment them to use them. That means the user knows he enabling something that could be insecure.
- PPC Specific Exploits are far and few between. The PowerPC is a more complex processor to write asm for, not to mention less popular. Who is going to write an exploit for PowerPC Linux -- when most people are running i386 linux.
- Yellow Dog Linux includes yup, which can be configured to run automatically from cron to download and install the latest security updates, similar to Debian.
- RedHat PowerPC Linux distros come out after the i386 ones, so they have time to spot and fix security problems before shipping.
- Both YDL and LinuxPPC have a good track record at letting people know about problems quickly. They have security related mailing lists.
And yes, Debian for the PowerPC certianly exists. I am running it now.
FYI, Linux PCC guru Stew Benedict has a great article in this month's Linux Journal, "Yellow Dog Linux on the iMac." He gives a good overview of the process, the benefits and drawbacks to YDL, etc.
:)
FWIW, I use Yellowdog (I have for over a year), and I absolutely love it. There's nuthin' prettier than Helix Gnome on an iMac.
-Waldo
-------------------
And who do you think creates those special files? Not the devices. They don't know dick about the inner details of the operating system including stuff like file systesm, kernel operating systems or whatever. The thing that creates those special files is the device driver itself. When a user program performs an ioctl on a device driver file the driver catches that and sends it through to the device, generally by writing to an area of memory that is mapped to the devices registers.
Phear my l33t homepage.
You are completely right. Your comparision makes it all clear: even though pretty women look like they have more love in them than "ugly" women, there are a lot of pretty "bitches" out there.
:-)
Same counts probably for the Mac and Linux: though the Mac gives you more of "that lovin' feelin'", it isn't necessarily made with more spirit and love than Linux.
That's exactly why I use Linux: I know that the software "cares".
But that is also exactly why a lot of folks appreciate the Mac: because it at leest *seems* that the software "cares" more, while Linux sometimes seem to behave like your enemy.
Which it is not, but try to convince them when they don't see a smiley at startup anymore
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
Sorry to nit-pick but I get asked about this from time to time. Your right that no *nix will run well, if at all on the LC040 chips but there are other older Mac's that can't run *nix either. Basicly you need a 68020 with a MMU or better. 68000 chips (Mac Plus, Classic, SE) can not run *nix nor can plain 68020's (LC(?), Mac II, etc) with out a MMU.
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
Then when an app crashes every hour, at least your system doesn't ever go down with it. .1 were fantastic. Granted we're not talking month long uptimes, but the days of crashing every hour have long since been gone away. Now it's like every few days, and that's with leaving the machine on all night long running Seti, no less....
You haven't used a Mac since system 7.1 apparently... 8.5 ---> 9.0 have been godsends for stability... even 8.0 and
Just thought I'd share.
I know; the stand is actually about three inches. I was figuring if you submerged the lower two inches, you'd still have an inch above the water for ventillation. If you used cold water, your results might not suck too badly. Of course, then again, it might.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Thanks all. Didn't know that the Mac was supported that well. I'll have to try some of that out.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
I'm not sure that they released register level information on the hardware in the cube. I would be DELIGHTED to be found incorrect on that one.. but just because the code is released doesn't mean that all the drivers are :(. Although it would most certainly be in the community spirit, especially concidering where some of that code came from! :)
I always wondered why Amiga didn't get together, take some cutting edge hardware like the GeForce or Voodoo5 chips, and release a real Linux box with full sound, 3D, MPEG, TV, blah blah blah support. I think the old amiga in 92 had more third-party hardware manufacturer support than Linux does now - we just happen to have a lot more dedicated people making code happen. It would certainly solve all the qualms about NDAs and the like, and provide demonstrable market share to people who SHOULD be writing drivers. *cough* diamond *cough* handspring *cough* insert-nifty-usb-device here *ahem*.
..don't panic
Yeah maybe it was poorly worded.
PowerPCs are much faster than Athlons at the same clock speed. The only reason the two can be compared is, Athlons are available at double the clock speed of the fastest PowerPCs available - and it's questionable which is faster.
Okay; I use linux on a PPC (debain) I love it, It rocks, PPCs are great; RISC makes up for a lot of mHz etc... that's what I was trying to say. Too bad I was trying to be objective in my previous statement.
However; if we were talking about some purely CPU style comparisons, I'd have a hard time believing that the athalon, at twice the clock of a PPC is difficult to compare or has questionable results. I've never used an athalon though so... I will say that lucky for us CPU performance means almost nothing when comparing a 350 PPC to a 700 Athalon. The bottle neck is undoubtably at how many clock cycles are lost waiting on ram, or even cache... and lets not discuss the Hard Drive. I've heard some very good things about the PPCs family design's approach to handling branches [damn brain forgot what the term is for pipelineing both branch results and then discarding one] and waiting for memory. I assumed that the athalon (at least its core) would not be behind on such developments, but maybe its all patented stuff.
Linux on PowerPC takes about as much RAM as Linux on x86. If you run a lot of apps at once, yes, 256MB RAM is great, but 128 is fine, and 64MB works. Sure, you may hit swap (just as you would on a PC), but Linux's swap is fast.
yeah... I run debian linux on a 120Mhz 604 (no e) with 32mb of ram, and I'm happy enough, although the video built into the 8500 (control) could really use some development help, the FB and X both do some weird things with color depth and screen size (X allocates a square for my screen chopping off the bottom, unless I run fbset twice (not once)) My argument here was that, if your not doing CPU tests, you'd be comparing the system's application performance, and since this often can be limited by RAM performance and swap-space performance, it would be really objective of you to set up the systems as similarly as possible excepting for their CPUs.
GCC has been fully optimized for the G4 with AltiVec, and Yellow Dog has been recompiled with it. Presumably other distributions have as well. From what I've heard, Linux on a G4 absolutely screams. And now you can get dual G4 systems. *drool* Wish I weren't broke.
Now this I didn't know... hmmm.. I hope debian will be similarly optimized. I do think though that to get any good usage out of the altivec feature the programmer has to make particular C calls that now help support it... for example in incrementing all values in a matrix, you could write a function that does it the way you'd think an 80s computer would, or you could find that altivec fuction call that probably helps you out. [thats speculation though don't quote me... can anyone confirm?]. I don't think a compiler could go through a loop on a block of memory and figure "Hey all this could be done in one altivec instruction" because there's just so many ways a loop could be setup and you wouldn't always get optimization, hence making a specific function for it would make sense.
i don't really believe much of your posting as it seems quite opposite to my experience
Um, there are vent holes and cable connections underneath. The bottom of this thing is not water tight. You could submerge the bottom 2" maybe (the stand), and run your cables underwater, but don't splash it.
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Actually, OpenBSD has had a functional PowerPC port for quite some time now; longer than than the more-mainstream NetBSD, which has really improved its PPC support in recent months.
OpenBSD has not borrowed so much from NetBSD/PPC development lately, however, and is rather behind the NetBSD port at this time.
It's the normal, expected code-sharing lag that happens with BSD ports.
Agreed, NetBSD is a nice way to go if you want Unix on PPC. SuSE would be the first Linux distro for PPC not to suck out of the box, so there is now a choice for those who want a PPC *nix that actually works.
Why not bundle Office SBE with a clone? Surely Microsoft wouldn't be adverse to an OEM like that. However, I would be willing to pay for a no-OS clone that I would still pay $99 for the OS - if it's around $1000 and includes PCI Slots I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
Now compare that to YDL CS 1.2. It also uses the Red Hat installer, but it is much more stable. The installation documentation rocked, and you can download all of their fully working, complete ISO images. It detected my hardware fairly well, and configuration was easy. It also looks like their update program (YUP) is easy to use. I wouldn't know since my employer has a badass firewall set up (no ftp in or out except through special machines). It would be nice if the YDL people made it possible to update through HTTP protocols.
Really, they are both very similar, but Yellow Dog has definitely put quite a bit of thought into their distribution. It has what you need on the main CD, and what you want on the tasty morsels CD.
On an important note, configuring X sucked with both distros.
My test platform was a PPC 8600/200 with 80 mb of RAM and a 2 gig hard drive, dual booting between Linux and OS 9. I'm installing YDL on a blue G3 later on this week.
flame on
The middle mind speaks!
Hi, I was wondering if there is a freely available Linux PPC distro with Altivec support in GCC.
(where you use the vector datatype from C/C++)
I heard about Black Lab Linux (I believe it's from the Yellowdog folks)
but Blacklab is commercial.
thanks for infos.
I've always lamented about the lack of a real home architecture for linux. I used to run amigas, and one of the things I liked was that the Operating System was intimately tuned for a specific set of hardware - that's one of the things that made the amiga great. The OS complimented the hardware and orchestrated it like a symphony, not a drill instructor :).
I *Drooled* over the NeXT hardware when it came out, but it was too freaking expensive. But hell, I *like* nice looking hardware. :) Clones are ugly. High powered, but inelgant :). I'm not dissing the goals of cross-platform compatibility - that's a great thing - but it would be nice to have a box that does linux best. It would also get rid of the problems people have - especially newbies - getting linux running. "Here, buy this, put this CD in, wait an hour, and then you're running linux. Voila!"
If you took one of those little cubes, added in one of those beautiful LCDs that apple has - the big ass one - that might be my linux dream machine, and I can give up dual booting and put my Athlon in the closet out of sight.
You just need a distribution of linux with the appropriate level of support, and you most certainly will need support from apple to get the required information. I don't really see either happening. While I'm not too sure about the cube's preformance, I suspect it will be lackluster in price/preformance to my Athlon with 256 megs.
..don't panic
Just design your mobo to Darwin. Since Aqua (if it's well-behaved) will be using ioctl's and stuff to access the hardware, it's immune from having to speak to ROMs. If you design your mobo so that all ioctl's work properly, then you've got a winner.
I have a couple of IIsi's lying around, and thought it would be nice to try Linux on them. I couldn't find any reference to anyone ever getting any dist/kernel working on one... there were some references to it working without the keyboard...??? My question was how did they know it was working if they couldn't type a login? It probably suffices to say I never got around to trying it; the IIsi's on the shelf were as good without Linux on them as they would be with keyboardless-Linux on them. :)
:)
Next attempt was a Centris... I seem to remember I had problems matching a driver for the wierd-ass built-in ethernet.
Thus ends my exciting tale of putting Linux on old Macs. Perhaps if I had the right old Macs....
I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.
you shouldn't. Apparently the obsd guys can't get the apple firmware to run elf executables. That means lots o stuff will have to be a.out and that's no fun.
On the other hand, if you still have that Quadra, you can run obsd on that. Any m68k mac will run it except for those based on the 68LC040 processor. And don't ask theo if a port for that is forthcoming or you'll be subjected to his 20 minute tirade about how to do a chip transplant with a soldering gun a can of air and a roll of masking tape. I kid you not.
2 1337 4 u!
OT, but what's with your URL? Do you work for Metrowerks? AFAICT, the only thing interesting on that page is the part at the botton where it says that Metrowerks is part of Motorola.
dammit, yer right. Sorry.
2 1337 4 u!
Well, I have always used Macs because I think Windows is a terrible kludge, but I hate the short uptimes of the major desktop operating systems.
I would leave Mac OS for Linux, but:
- Mac OS is still the best for ease of use if your main focus is not the computer, and
- I would sorely miss CommuniGate (integrated email and fax) and FileMaker, as well as the occasional graphics application.
Currently I'm running SuSE Linux PPC on an iMac with Mac-On-Linux, as a test platform. When things mature a bit more, I hope to move my main G4 machine to Linux/MOL, but I'm still waiting for some of the wrinkles to be smoothed out of MOL (still a damn fine piece of work!), and I'm a bit scared of trying to get my dual-head setup (ATI RAGE/128 and Voodoo3) running with XFree and MOL.
Has anyone out there with a Beige G3 AV gotten sound to work under /any/ linux distribution. I've played with LinuxPPC and YellowDog and enjoyed them both, but couldn't get the sound to work at all, and most people I talked to with my setup couldn't either. I loved the linux experience, but I need my mp3s or I'm forced to use MacOS.
what's the future for third-party high-end PPC RISC workstations? If IBM could be convinced to make a lower-end variant of their 64-bit workstation/supercomputer processor line, rather than a high-end variant of their 32-bit embedded processor line as they do now, PPC would have a much easier time competing on the desktop market.
I believe you just described the G5 (no, I didn't just make that up).
- Scott
------
Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
That's absolutely correct. I've successfully swapped RAM between a Compaq Pentium 3 Presario and a Blue and White G3 (which is RAM compatible with Apple's G4. with the exception that the G3 will not support the 512 meg modules.)
Yes.. I tried yaboot and BootX with ppclinux.. And Debian (if I remember correctly) asked something like if I wanted to boot linux and I said yes, but at rebooting... nothing...
I needed a server to run linux/apache/php3/mysql. I have set it up on a 486 DX2/66 with 8Mb ram now. it works, but it's _not_ fast. I'll give it a shot again since I have a 7500/100(120) and a 9600/200 at my disposal. Do you know if all of the above mentioned are available for NetBSD for PPC? And a last question: where can I find info about tweaking the Open Firmware?
Thanks in advance. :-)
//Frisco
--
"No se rinde el gallo rojo, sólo cuando ya está muerto."
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
While the cube is cool... I'm more anxious about Linux on the daul G4!
Hear, hear re: LinuxPPC. Those guys are great kernel hackers, but they don't have the big-picture skills to put out a decent distro.
:-)
SuSE is, IMO, the most competent distro on the PPC as of this moment. Debian/PPC has great potential, but it is not for the faint of heart, and you can't just go get CDs, run the install script, and be on your way. Debian/PPC won't be mature until at least Debian 2.4.
For those who like BSD-style packaging, there is always NetBSD/PPC.
I personally bought the LinuxPPC 1999 Distro for my Beige G3/300 tower and had problems installing the thing
Great, a somewhat normal color. I love the processors... I don't have a problem with colored cases... Why does every damned review of mac hardware have to mention, "Mine is a grape flavored mac, shaped like a cube!"
Eh...
Um, yeah... there's Debian on PPC. A bit premature with this post, wouldn't you say?
There is also SuSE. There is also NetBSD.
Are there any numbers on the people using Macintosh systems with Linux? Usually half the Mac mystique is the love most mac folks have for the OS.
Are there any numbers on performance versus Intel Linux based systems?
ACK
PPC stuff isn't standard... Intel stuff is... I want some of whatever that was you were smoking, just now. ;-)
LinuxPPC is pretty much like Intel Linux of two or three years ago. Why not give SuSE or NetBSD a try?
I saw a number of links in the Sunday NYTimes, and they weren't all Apple links either.
Will in Seattle
Wouldn't that be illegal product bundling? If you buy Apple hardware they're not allowed to even void the warranty just because you don't buy their ram, for example. Lexmark can't force you to buy their paper, etc.
You might as well go to a junkyard and find a 386 you can run Linux on as run it under emulation.
Rob: on behalf of anyone who has every said Slashdot was ugly, I apologize profusely.
Everyone else: I suggest you visit macslash to see what happens when good code goes bad.
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Hmm.. really?.. I don't trust ya (IDAny NetBSD on PPC users there to confirm this?
I installed debian and ppclinux2000 on a ppc mac but never got them to boot without a MacOS partition... I have quite a bit of *nix expiriense but only on intel/sparc and I'm not that familiar with mac HW so I ditched the project.. Maybe I should try NetBSD?..
Thank you.
//Frisco
--
"No se rinde el gallo rojo, sólo cuando ya está muerto."
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
Yes. That is why I run linuxPPC on my Mac. It is beige like an overripe pear. Once OX comes out, I'll upgrade to another fruit flavor.
Perhaps because water is electrically conductive. There's noting to stop you from using liquid cooling though, just try not to dump good hardware in a tub of water please... send it to me, it'll cost you the same [I'm not implying that you'd get it back].
No, I change my homepage to reflect what I'm ranting on at any particular moment. Due to holidays and my absence from this board, the last time I updated it was during some argument on IDEs for linux.
2 1337 4 u!
http://www.marathoncomputer.com/pr_fndra.html
al
PS...I'm running MkLinux and LinuxPPC 2000 on Mac Workgroup Servers.
Curious George
***General Consultant to the Human Race*** My opinions are free. You get what you pay for.
For the Open Firmware, grab the System Disk tool (you'll need MacOS 8 or 9). There is a mini-tutorial (with pictures :-) which should get you started. If the stuff there doesn't get you going, you can probably find tips in the mailing list archives.
- Joe
-Joe
--
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
My problem is a dependance on Openfirmware and 603 or higher processors. Most of my PPC hardware either doesn't have open firmware because it's Nubus(Power Computing Power 120, and two 6100s) or doesn't have a 603 or higher processor (7200/120).
I'm stuck with MKLinux if I want a Linux distro.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
There are a few problems with that approach:
- VirtualPC emulates x86 RedHat Linux, at a speed similar to a 66 Mhz 486 on most G3 machines. This means X Windows will be slow, as will many apps (like Netscape). This just doesn't compare to running Linux natively, which is far faster.
- Your running on top of Mac OS. If Mac OS crashes, you lose your Linux stuff. Debian GNU/Linux on my Mac only has downtime caused by me adding or changing hardware, power outages, and that rare time I have to use Mac OS.
- VirtualPC means you are sharing your RAM between Mac OS and Linux. This means you need lots of RAM, and you have to share it (Linux won't be able to use all your 512 Megs or whatever, Mac OS needs some of it).
- VirtualPC is too slow for a server or day to day use.
Good things about VirtualPC with Linux:
- Run Mac OS programs side by side with Linux programs. Actually, you can do this now with PowerPC Linux, thanks to Mac-on-Linux.
- It's preinstalled. No complex installation needed.
With PowerPC Linux if you mess up your configuration, all you have to do is get out your backup (you backup frequently right?!)
I used Suse linux on a 400 mhz G3 with 300 megs of ram..
Its a good way to experiment, but x is really slow. I went to linuxppc after getting my feet wet with installation and rpms. Its much much faster native.
/Aram
Picking from a set of stock colors doesn't make you very individual. That cow case, and the fishbowl... Those are individual.
Eh...
I've run linux ppC on 3 machines. A tower power pro, motorola starmax and apple 7200. No problems on any. These machines have very similar hardware and therefore need way fewer drivers. I have friends who couldn't get linux "supported" cards working on the pc side. It would seem the less variety of hardware you have the easier it is to get drivers.
Look at BEOS. They're big problem is lack of driver support on the intel side.
/aram
Correct Me If I'm Wrong
ok, so the rest of you smartypants got that already, but I'm slow today.
...and that's why they're so negative about their first Linux experience. I know a load of Maccers. They don't care about Free as in Speech as a Linux guru does. They don't care about power as much as we do. What they care about is usability, friendliness, beauty and style.
/etc textfiles.
:-)
These are often small points, that even a Miguel de Icaza should not see (I imagine), just because he is used to Unix, to "RTFM!" and
For instance: when you type in a console, and the program is actually busy and not accepting input, your input will still be repeated on screen. (This is extremely nice when your shell loads in "su" and you already start ticking your password.)
Also, we are often distracted by the Windows version of usability. Even GNOME, a project that does a lot of things good in my eyes, pops up messages with "Are you sure you want to...?" now and then.
This is not BAD, but it is one of these small things. I remember my first Windows experience, after having used an Amiga for a time. "Are you sure you want to logout?" No, I'm not, but I still do it.
"No."
Damn! Still running! How can I logout, like, "maybe"?
Sun does this a lot of better: they ask "Please confirm your exit from the desktop session." I click "OK" and I am gone.
Another small thing: when a Mac hits a serious error (which happens only in emulators, I guess), it *apologizes* in the error message, like:
"Sorry, but an error has occored." followed by more information.
Well, see a person who is used to all these nice things get through a Debian install. Or even a graphical install -- for "graphical" doesn't directly mean easy, intuitive and user-friendly. And even though currently user-friendliness focusses on installation, there's a big lack of maintenance-tools user-friendliness. (e.g. try to add a remote Samba printer in Debian.) IMHO a program as Linuxconf only adds to the confusion. It begat buggy beyond repair here, anyway. What's the use of that?
No, I have seen Mac's and I love them, because you really get the feeling that it is a work of true love to the user, when you sit behind it. But I'd rather not depend on a single company for "love", and that keeps me to Linux
But if the folks at GNOME really want to make a super-product, they should not only spy on Microsoft and try to improve that. They should also actively spy at Apple. For they have some very unique approaches to software design. (Not that I don't trust the GNOME folks; they have made some very good decisions IMHO!)
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
You could submerge the bottom 2" maybe (the stand)
Quoth the egon (when asked about crossing the streams): "That would be bad."
This is a convection cooled device. Unless you're hoping it'll work like a water pipe, covering the intake holes at the bottome might not be such a great move.
How 'bout this? Thats the only new world desktop there, but Applefritter has many a cool modified Mac.
If'n Apple still supported Be, I'd have a dual proccesor joby on the way. As it is, I'm still waiting for the dual Athlons (I think I will name them Penny and Maggie).
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
LinuxPPC (the generic base PowerPC dirtibution, which shares its name with LinuxPPC, the distribution brought to you by LinuxPPC.com) has some experimental support for NuBus based Macs, but MkLinux is more mature in this case
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
Lord Pixel - The cat who walks through walls
A little bigger on the inside than out
Being an anonymous coward, I am sure this is probably a troll, but I'll bite for the hell of it.
:-)"
:)
"The root problem I think is so much differing hardware. Intel is usually pretty standard. PPC stuff ain't."
PowerPC hardware is actually alot more similar in config from model to model then x86 boxes. The difference in PowerPC proccessors is quite small, as is the hardware. There are only about half a dozen different video cards to worry about. SCSI, Floppy, USB, Serial, etc. are the pretty much the same on every Mac (although not all have those ports). The biggest difference now days between models is new world PCI vs. old world PCI vs. Nubus (which is only starting to be supported).
"There seems to be no central place to report bugs"
It depends on the software. Just like x86 Linux, there is not an universal place to report bugs. It really doesn't help to send a GNOME bug to the Linux PowerPC Kernel Team. For kernel bugs, try sending to linuxppc-dev@lists.linuxppc.org. For packaging bugs, send mail to the place that makes your distro. Questions and comments on LinuxPPC 2k can be posted to linuxppc-user@lists.linuxppc.org. Yellow Dog Linux, SuSE and Debian also have there own ways to get in contact with the packagers (and others).
"I've tried but it seems they just want to ship CDs not record problems."
This would be LinuxPPC, Inc. you are referring to? I have noticed they have a tendency to go with cool, easy to use, over stable and tested, but that's their choice. Other distros (like YDL, Debian and SuSE) are more stable and reliable.
"I'm quite happy to test stuff and see if I can isolate problems, but not if noone is interested in fixing these problems."
I highly doubt your comments and suggestions are falling on deaf ears, no matter how it appears. However note that many of the hackers are very busy, and may not have time to fix stuff right way. Of course if you have made up patches or clear fixes I am sure they would be much more likely to fix them.
"Documentation is worse than non-existent in that it's inaccurate."
This is certianly a problem, as PowerPC Linux is quickly improving, and the documentation is quickly lagging behind. However, excluding the boot process it's almost the same as x86 Linux. If you need post install help for YDL or LPPC, take a look at the RedHat manual, and on the web. For SuSE look at the SuSE documentation and others. There are also lots of Debian documentation.
"Getting hold of the latest source for a specific platform is next to impossible."
Especially nowdays, source tends work between archs without problems. Few Linux programs aren't source compatible with the PowerPC.
"In short it sounds like the Intel Linux of two or three years ago
Good way to end a flame (not, it gives it away
It's a plastic casing.
...
Not electrically conductive.
Just immerse it about two-thirds up the case
Better yet, use jello!
Will in Seattle
doesn't sound very l33t to me
please don't mod that up, it's completely wrong. .note sections (which netbsd has had for a while now) to boot elf kernels. this has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with userland. this ONLY applies to the kernel image.
open firmware needs some extra
The ROM file is part of MacOS. It replaces the "old" >4Mb ROM that "oldworld" Macs had. It's loaded from disk by the firmware (and in our case, by the emulator which simulates the firmware).
For example, if you buy a MacOS 9 "box", on the CD, you'll find the ROM file. You just need to copy it over to the linux filesystem, strip it, and then, boot MacOnLinux from the CD in order to do the MacOS install.
As you might know the big IBM RS6000 servers run on a PowerPC chipset, and YellowDog is the only distribution that I could successfully install on our F50. There are still some problems like Linux only using 512 Megs of RAM instead of the 2 GIGs and one CPU being used instead of the 4 CPUs that we have, but otherwise it's ok. I still need to try the brand new patch that is said to solve parts of those problems, though. If this turns to be ok, then the only minor issue would be the driver for the video card, that currenlty only offers 800x600x256, but it is not so important.
I can tell you that running Linux on those huge beast is definitely c00l ! And you should just see those amazed faces when you restart the RS6000 and your colleagues come by to curiously watch how an AIX 4.x server boots and the first thing they see is a cute penguin in the top left part of the screen. And then comes the really sweet stuff: having to choose to login under KDE or Gnome! Ah! No more CDE! What a pleasure! And how great it is to use a couple of CPU cycles of the beast just to [g]rip some CDs or run a Napster clone. YellowDog was also very attentive to small details and while the LCD screen doesn't show anything after AIX has finished booting, under YellowDogLinux you can read this little tag:
Ain't that cool? Well, I can tell you that in a rack of undescriptive boxes, that small inscription does not pass unnoticed.
That being said, did anyone succeed in installing YellowDog on the new IBM babe, the F80? We might get one soon here and I was wondering if I could run YDL Champion Server 1.2 on it. Any success stories?
I certainly don't want to start any kind of NetBSD vs. Linux war, nor do I want to minimize the great work done by NetBSD coders for which I have great respect. ;) but I don't think they are more "mature" in their support of the PowerMac hardware. Most low-level hacking and reverse engineering needed to adapt "free" OSes on those platforms was done on Linux/PPC (except for the bits that filtered out of Apple via the original MkLinux and now with Darwin). Linux/PPC, afaik, is still unique to support sleep and power management features on PowerBooks (not all of them yet), and a variety of other hardware features I won't enumerate now.
NetBSD may have a lot of strengths over Linux (or may not, I don't know and I don't want to know now
Ben.
Still, if you're looking for the same sort of support you get on Linux or FreeBSD on x86, you'll find both NetBSD and Linux are a bit lacking, both in application and driver support. GCC doesn't have good PowerPC optimization (or it didn't; this may have changed recently with Apple's work on Darwin/MacOS X). A lot of programs are only tested on x86 and so have annoying portability snags. Of course, commercial applications haven't even heard of platforms beyond x86. But give it a shot; you can find old PowerMacs easy as shops try to get rid of them to make way for "more modern" Micro$oft (or Linux ;-) setups, and they make much nicer small servers than junky old 486s if you get them going.
- Joe
-Joe
I dared to suggest that a better solution is to keep running MacOS on the Mac, and pick up an x86 box to run Linux separately, and oh how the flames have poured in (not to mention getting spanked down to -1 by the zealots). If you think people on /. have short fuses, you should check it out and see what I mean. :)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I have a NetBSD/68k box right next to me. It's an LC III that is running far from factory standards. I replaced that 80 meg harddrive and threw in a ton more RAM. I have 1.4.2 on it right now and am anxious for 1.5 to be released. It runs great as a firewall/NAT box. Haven't had any problems with it. My choice to use NetBSD over Linux were numerous. Greater HW support and the port is much more mature. I wouldn't be able to run Linux on the hardware it currently has. NetBSD easily beats Linux in this area, hate to break it to you.
It doesn't have the features that the official Adobe Acrobat Reader has.
So xpdf is not enough.
Onet
Since apple is doing it development of OS X with gcc and they're working on optimizing it, shouldn't all linux distros benifit when these optimizations are distributed?
true. Okay, I admit I didn't think back to the all-in-wonder 68000-ers. However, I am vaugely sure that you can run obsd on an LC. I have an LC, LCIII and LC630 and had those guys in mind when I picked up obsd. I remember taking solace in the fact that the LC's could run it even if the 630 couldn't... but I didn't install it on any of those machines anyway due to disk limitations....
(Mac Plus, Classic, SE) can not run *nix
welll... if you don't mind death-by-slowness you can run the ever-emulated Minix for the Mac. But, really, you gotta have a lot of patience
2 1337 4 u!
The Apple implementation of OpenFirmware does not support loading of ELF executables (like the boot-blocks for this port). This needs a workaround.
2 1337 4 u!
I wonder if it would be possible to make a port of this utility that runs straight from Mach; boot up the computer, computer loads Mach and starts the emulator, which then boots MacOS. Third-part Mac clone. Sweeeet.
pure water is not conductive. only the contaminates and minerals in water are.
I wonder if it would be possible to make a port of this utility that runs straight from Mach; boot up the computer, computer loads Mach and starts the emulator, which then boots MacOS. Third-party Mac clone. Sweeeet.
I hardly consider it the best way to run Linux on a Mac. Virtual PC is emulating Intel hardware via software. I can only imagine how hideously slow this must be. The time spent formatting a Linux partition has to be trivial compared to the day to day time spent waiting on Gnome to come up on an emulated Intel linux distro.
Well, I've been using PPC Linux off and on for a while now, and do have the following benchmark (a largish TeX document provided by Christopher Eyrich)
>My results on a G4/400MHz ``Yikes!'' B&W G3 type motherboard
>machine with a 10MB ATA HD using YellowDogLinux CS 1.1
>real 7.669s
>user 6.220s
>sys 0.300s
Here're some numbers for comparison:
>- Celeron 333, RedHat 5.2 (calis, Herbert) 7.6
>- Celeron 450 (overclocked Celeron-300A), 100MHz, PC100 SDRAM 5.5
>- AMD K6-3 450, 512K L3-Cach, 100MHz-Bus, Redhat 6.1 (expi) 4.7
Basically, the G4 was 10% or so faster than the similar speed x86 chips---and this with a (relatively) unoptimized kernel on the slowest motherboard (Yikes!==b/w G3)
Not sure how many people're using TeX, but it's a real world benchmark I happened to still have in my mail box....
William
--
Lettering Art in Modern Use
http://members.aol.com/willadams
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
- Joe
-Joe
I'm more anxious about Linux on the daul G4!
...
Yeah, but I like dual Gauls in my boxen. Asterix et Obelix, the twin processors, both revved to the max - just watch out when you overclock those suckers!
Has anyone painted their cubes yet? Zebra stripes, polka dots, flowers, and PowerPuff Girl motifs spring to mind
Design Force One - Engage!
Will in Seattle
Every time I try to read an article posted, it is in the midst of being /.'ed. Although it makes me feel like I am part of something really on the fringe, I wish every post could somehow be forwarded to my pager just 10 minutes before it is actually posted to the site.
Revenue guys, I would pay for it!
Real men don't need signitures!!!
Is in VirtualPC.
Create a Hard Drive image as big as you want, install the latest Red Hat, and presto... Linux without formatting your drive! (and you can move VirtualPC disk images around like files, which makes many things much easier... be creative).
Tweak all you want... and if something goes wrong, just restore the one file on your mac that is your PC hard drive, and everything is cool again!
(I'm really a clueless newbie blathering on about this, could someone please reply and fill in the details?)
Secondly, now that MacOSX is almost here, wouldn't it be possible to engineer a peice of PPC hardware so that it boots Darwin, and then shouldn't MacOSX work fine from there? What's to stop a new clone manufacturer?
Colors help easily identify the model being used. For example, "Beige G3/300 tower", and you know this machine is 3 years old, have ATI rage II video, no Firewire, etc...
I wasn't sure about the first LC. I couldn't remember if it had a MMU or not.
- Apple Computer......proudly going out of business for over twenty years.
Apache, php3 and mysql are all available for the various PowerPC distributions. With the exception of the newcomer SuSE, and of course Debian, they're all heavily based on Redhat. You have to build from the source in most cases, of course, but it works like you'd expect.
John
Linux on the absolutely newest PPC hardware is rough at first, granted, but proper support for the iMac DV has come along steadily now that the box has been released. The vast majority of Macs in circulation are supported extremely well; the temporary exceptions are the newest boxes, because Apple isn't always 100% open, in advance, with their docs and specs. To put it mildly.
You might find comp.os.linux.powerpc helpful in fixing iMac DV problems.
John
Yeah, I was aware of that, but thanks for the info. The other thing is, the hardware is different from flavor to flavor, right? Well, what if someone just happens to like grape, but wants the hardware that is in the cherry one?
Eh...
Try printing MacSlash on Professional Resume paper - ow!
... I have a very bad feeling about this ...
Most of the images wouldn't load, either!
Note the poll refers to Steve preferring the color beige
The only thing I liked was the advertising - it's not a banner ad, placed on the left, and clearly labelled as advertising. That's way better than these obnoxious animated GIFs (not counting Tux doing Redmond, a classic) here.
Will in Seattle
We went over this with the fluorinert immersion. Pure water does in fact have some ions that would allow for current to be carried across the water. Those ions are H+ and OH-, and the level of them is the function p(H+), better known as pH. I don't know how much current that would be, but probably enough to hose you. Not to mention that having a potential between two points would result in electrical splitting of the water into H2 and O2, a popular combustible and a popular accelerant, respectively.
Walt
This is a convection cooled device. Unless you're hoping it'll work like a water pipe, covering the intake holes at the bottome might not be such a great move.
Hmmm. OK, How about we get a nice 4'x2'x2' fish tank, get some glass sleeve about the same cross section of the Mac Cube, put transparent plastic mount brackets in the corners, seal it, drop the Cube in, pop a fish tank cam or two below it (Scott was trying to see if this was feasible, looks like it might be a go), cut a hole for the cable drops and air circ below.
Then you've got fish swimming around a web server.
Would look way cool!
Will in Seattle
LinuxPPC, though a valiant effort, has always been problematic both in installation and overall package/system quality.
OTOH, Yellow Dog is markedly better at both aforementioned attributes, but suffers from the excessively "pro-Apple, pro-Mac" slant (which, unfortunately, LinuxPPC is also emulating), which is probably why YDL was the only PPC Linux distro acknowledged by the fruit company (apart from MkLinux) for such a long time...
Which is why the prospective PPC Linux user may want to wait for the stable release of Debian 2.2. I've installed 2.2 'frozen' on an IBM 'Longtrail' and a Moto MTX-PCI (I refuse to use *any* Apple hardware) with success; both installation and overall system quality earns very high marks, which one should come to expect from the Debian team.
In addition to high quality, the package management system (dpkg/apt) is yet another motivation for trying Debian/PPC - it is the only Linux package management system that even comes close to those on *BSD (and in some respects, even surpasses *BSD package management).
For PPC users ready to give Linux a try, definitely consider the frozen branch of Debian/PPC!
AC
or to go with the overpriced style of the cube use flourinert
This would be LinuxPPC, Inc. you are referring to? I have noticed they have a tendency to go with cool, easy to use, over stable and tested, but that's their choice. Other distros (like YDL, Debian and SuSE) are more stable and reliable.
I pay for my LinuxPPC updates because I know it's a ton of work supporting a platform on their own. (They're the ones who create a lot of the necessary advances that the other distros pick up, and provide hardware to kernel developers trying to support new systems.) But they really need better quality control and bug fix procedures. How could anyone ship a distro where the installer fails to run the X configuration utility, like LinuxPPC 1999? And then there's the bug where if you enable both telnetd and wu-ftpd in inetd.conf, telnetd doesn't work. That's a pretty major bug for a server OS, and not only have they not fixed it after well over a year, they haven't even mentioned it in their support pages.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Since major software vendors are looking after 'the masses' (read: x86) the lack of 3rd party software for a Linux on the PPC is sometimes disappointing.
I once asked Adobe on one of their forums why there was no port for their Acrobat PDF reader to Linux for the Macintosh PPC. The answer from the Adobe-man on the forum was: There isn't (a port).
This lack of support for Linux from companies who go to great lengths to make money on the x86 and MacOS platform just turns you down.
If it compiles on an x86, it may very well compile on a PPC version, and make a lot of users happy [Adobe (Acrobat), Sun (SO), are you listening? ;-) )
Onet.
Onet
One developer has started a port of the standard monolithic kernel to first-generation (NuBus) PowerMacs. There is documentation on his web page, and penguinppc.org has a US mirror of the files.
yes, most of the ppc dists are redhat based.
debian runs on several archs, including alpha, mips, sparc, ppc, and m68k.
The G4 cube comes with gigabit ethernet and if you take the casing off them and lay two down side by side, they fit into a rack with just enough room to spare for some fans.
...
They already have fans.
Why not just immerse them in a tub of water - liquid cooled G4 cubes - ice cubes! Think about it
Will in Seattle
I used MKLinux for a while when it first came out. It was a bit pokey but it was nice to use a _nix-ish OS on my old Mac 6100-66 (nb: the old link to www.mklinux.apple.com is dead) On an older Quadra I have NetBSD 68K running. (see Recently, I tried LinuxPPC2000 on my G3 at home and it just flat out failed. A search of dejanews and various archives were of no help. I'll just wait for OpenBSD PPC. There is a NetBSD port to the PowerPC Mac already, but OpenBSD's developers seem to be more paranoid than I am. I find that very reassuring. :)
Trolling is a art,
Also, for the security-conscious, OpenBSD has a PowerPC port in progress as well.
- Joe
-Joe
I run LinuxPPc on a IAMC DV I've worked as a software engineer since '85. In short Linux on PPC sucks. The root problem I think is so much differing hardware. Intel is usually pretty standard. PPC stuff ain't. There seems to be no central place to report bugs, I've tried but it seems they just want to ship CDs not record problems. I'm quite happy to test stuff and see if I can isolate problems, but not if noone is interested in fixing these problems. Documentation is worse than non-existent in that it's inaccurate. Getting hold of the latest source for a specific platform is next to impossible. In short it sounds like the Intel Linux of two or three years ago :-)
No, I have seen Mac's and I love them, because you really get the feeling that it is a work of true love to the user
Hm. When I use an open source application that one or more people put thousands of hours into and then gave away for the benefit of the world at large, that's love. When I have to pay some smarmy vendor in Cupertino for a pretty-but-vacuous operating system running on overpriced, underpowered, closed-standard hardware, that's soliciting prostitution.
They'll all say they love you if you pay 'em enough. But it's only the ones that don't require money who mean it.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I will be interested to see what effect the change in the motherboard for the dual processors, and the built-in gigabit ethernet will have on the Linux for PPC versions that currently run well on single processor G4s. I suppose it will be couple of weeks before anything trickles out/down on that.
This message is also being posted to MacSlash.com... this is the problem with one /. linking to another :v) .
With Linux supported on IBM "Big Iron" AS/400 and RS/6000 64-bit computers with Power3 processors (and support for the Power4 when it comes out), and POP computers on the way, what's the future for third-party high-end PPC RISC workstations? If IBM could be convinced to make a lower-end variant of their 64-bit workstation/supercomputer processor line, rather than a high-end variant of their 32-bit embedded processor line as they do now, PPC would have a much easier time competing on the desktop market.
IBM doesn't sell these chips, but does anyone have any idea what they might cost if they decided to?
Fsck this hard drive! Although it probably won't work...
foo = bar/*myPtr;
Check out Project Upper/Mute, an all-around awesome compiler fra
as this is simply another message board, this one with far fewer people than slashdot.
Slashdot may have gotten too large to have coherent converstations... With all the troll and such, I mean. It was refreshing leafing through there and not finding anything too far off topic. As I'm being right now...
I don't care about the distribution any more as I usally customize anything past recognition and nearly always compile from source (often from CVS). The only times I use packages are for commerical programs that don't come in source! and if they are not my distribution I use alien.
So I would like too see a comprision of all the platforms that Linux runs on I along with most other people use i386 but how fast or more stable are the other platforms?