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Update On Linux For PowerPC
Smitty825 writes: "On Tuesday, LinuxPPC released a beta of their next product, while SuSE has announced that they will be shipping SuSE 7.0 for PowerPC on November 20! Both distros come with XFree 4.01 and KDE2, as well as the MacOnLinux emulator product."
Most OSS audio applications on Linux use an ioctl SNDCTL_DSP_GETOSPACE to control audio timing (it tells how much data is free in the sound driver's output buffer). This isn't implemented in PPCLinux's "dmasound" driver, so applications must detect the breakage and work around it (XMMS does, and a small sound player I wrote myself does as well after someone loaned me an iMac to play with).
They have the complete 7.5.3 available at ftp://ftp.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Softw are_Updates/English-North_American/ Macintosh/System/Older_System/System_7.5_Version_7 .5.3/ and have the update to 7.5.5 at ftp://ftp.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Softw are_Updates/English-North_American/ Macintosh/System/System_7.5.5_Update/ (/. forced line breaks are a pain) updates for other versions of MacOS are available too. I have upgraded my SE/30 and my emulated mac on x86 linux (using Basilisk II) to 7.5.3 and then 7.5.5 [the SE/30 also runs Debian 2.2 w/ X]
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I know IBM was working on the POP boards, and I don't know when they'll be done. Their website says that there has been a few parts-related delays. Hopefully they'll figure it out.
p rint=1#POP
http://www.chips.ibm.com/products/powerpc/linux/?
On a side note, has anyone been able to get a journaling filesystem to work on a PowerPC linux?
Doh!
Ooh, sorry but you eventually will!
You'll be amazed at Mac-On-Linux. I did'nt say you'll have to use it all the time.
It's just I love it when I can instantly boot my emulator in its saved state, get my encyclopedia/dictionary working, play the stupid quicktime/flash movie, save state again, and switch back to beloved sawfish.
Get the best of both worlds :-)
Cheers
If I were to purchase an iBook, it would most likely be the 466mhz Graphite with 128meg of RAM and a 10gig hdd (unless I can scrape up the ~ $AU500 to afford the 20, with our dollar so low the iBook prices have risen lately). And the one thing that worries me - do any of these Linux distros run on these iBooks?
After looking around for info on Yellow Dog, LinuxPCC, and SuSE, I have not been able to find a definate answer. Are there any docs or faqs around? What the the best resources for Linux on Macs? Are the iBooks really any good with Linux at all?
I'm sorry to all you Mac people that see these as stupid questions, but I am new to your world, and hope to be joining it soon with my own iBook. I just need a few things cleared up...
With recent 2.2.18pre's, all that support has been merged in the main tree. You can either pick Alan latest 2.2.18pre or use Paul Mackerras usual rsync repository.
No one seems to have noted that you can install the public beta over _any_ existing (installed) RPM-based Linux/PPC distribution. It doesn't have to be LinuxPPC, either. It can be SuSE or some other distro, and the beta will happily install on top of it.
Enjoy!
Haaz: Co-founder, LinuxPPC Inc., making Linux for PowerPC since 1996.
-- haaz.
according to this interview of Mandrakesoft people, they're on the works for a ppc release too.
And of course, don't forget potato was released for ppc too. Very nice turn of events. Hum, relief...
If only Macromedia could also please release their fscking Flash plugin for ppc ! (now that RealPlayer for ppc is there;)
It's [was] a x86 world. *gasp* I guess alpha people is going to complain right ahead.
Sigh... if only it didn't suit Apple's business interests to have MacOS run exclusively on their hardware...
:P
Of course, for now, you can always get one of Motorola's ATX boards, the ones aimed for the industrial machine-control market. Only $1000+ a pop. ("These things are built like a tank," sayeth the company rep at LWCE2000)
Man, the G4 kicks ass. If only the market economy didn't get in the way
iSKUNK!
What I'm wondering: has anybody tried to install Linux on the Cube? I mean, it looks very cool and I've heard they're pretty fast too....
:-)
Anyway, I see it runs on the G4. Has anyone tried how fast and stable they 'feel' compared to Intel-based computers? I'm wondering this, because I like the design of both G4 and Cube very much but don't like MacOS
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
I installed the linuxppc beta update on Nov. 16. It worked like a charm. The update script ran perfectly, and it was all finished in a few hours.
Anyway, major props to the LinuxPPC crowd. It really is sweet. I'm also grateful to slashdot, for not immediately releasing the news. It is sooo nice to let us devoted fans get a chance for a clear download.
Anyway, the updater checks to see what packages you have installed before upgrading... and for some reason it gave me the new Helix Gnome release, but not XFree86 4.0.1. Anyone else experience this? I didn't report it as a bug since I was probably due to my funky hand install of X. Anyway, to make a long story short, I just grabbed the XFree86-4.0.1 rpms off the ftp server (in a subdirectory called 'beta') and they installed flawlessly.
I was curious as to what the original version of the rpm being updated was (and what surrounding versions were), so I added this small patch to upgrade, the script that updates all the rpms on your system (which is at ftp://ftp.linuxppc.com/linuxppc-halloween/install/ updates/upgrade):
--- upgrade_orig Sat Nov 18 01:42:55 2000
+++ upgrade Sat Nov 18 01:43:18 2000
@@ -275,6 +275,7 @@
# First check to see if duplicate rpm types are already installed
my_print "Upgrading new $type: $path\n";
+ system "rpm -qa|grep $type";
@files = split "\n", `rpm -q --root $path_to_root $type --queryformat=\"%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}\n\" `;
if( $#files ne 0 ) {
### This means that duplicate RPMS are already installed
first of all, there is no mac OS 7.9, and if you have a 100mhz PowerPC box, you should be able to run OS 9, which is the currently shipping - and thus only available - OS for that mac. if you let me know the model number, and thus whether it's a Nubus (x100) or a PCI box (x500, x600, etc), that will determine how well it runs linuxPPC, if at all.
if you're not able to run OS 9 (check the apple site to see what they recommend for that model, ram, etc) you might be able to get an older 8.x version on ebay or at Sun Remarketing. that's where i got system 6 for one of my old toaster macs.
in any event, 100 mhz PPC should run linux like a champ, and, if the video is decent, should make an excellent X box.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
I have used and worked on x86 Linux for quite some time. I had been offered to work on linux for an embedded system but it used a ppc processor. I started to check out MAC's just to see what they have to offer(never used one) much of the reading I did made them look to far surpass the x86 world. This includes studies by NASA for example. So I purchased a Dual Processor G4 500 with a DVD/RAM drive and Apple Studio Display monitor. Everything is USB. Within a week I had LinuxPPC up and running fully. SMP, usb keyboard/mouse/sound and a beautiful X 4.01 display running at 1280x1024 32bit color Helix Gnome 1.2
Now, this is not for the novice Linux user, but for the power user, this has been the best setup I have ever seen. x86 never ran or looked so good as it does on this MAC hands down.
iBook, LinuxPPC sure runs great there too.
Check out lists.linuxppc.org for answers to everything.
Here is the slap to x86 Linux users. You know those annoying linux newbies who have all those stupid questions about things you have done and they just don't get it and the reply they all get from better linux users, RTMF, read this HOWTO or read the man page. But hardly ever give the correct answer. Now I hate to repeat myself also, but to my surprise, in LinuxPPC land the most advanced users and kernel contributers take a moment to help where they can.
Linux in the PPC word is way way more friendly than x86 land.