Two Shots In The Arm For PPC Linux

pinqkandi writes: "SuSE Linux 7.3 PowerPC Edition has now gone into distribution. New for this version are more USB drivers, and improved memory management, among other things. It is now based on Kernel 2.4.12 and glibc 2.2.4. For $79.95 you get it and 2000+ apps on 8 CDs, 550 pages of documentation, and 60 days of tech support." Read on for another nice turn for PPC users with an itch for Free software.

If updated PPC distributions interest you, this might too: DocTomoe writes: "The staff at iMacLinux have put together one of the largest PowerPC specific Linux resources. The new site called TuxPPC covers all PowerPC hardware. The site is aimed at not just people with Macs who want to try Linux, but at Linux users who might be interested in getting into the PowerPC platform."guides and web forums, too.

So when will Mandrake release 8.1 for PPC?

Comments

Re:Excellent news.

[Anonymous Coward]

MOL is more like VMWare, but is very similar to classic, yes.

Try Yellowdog

[Improv]

I recently installed YDL 2.1 on my iBook. I've been overall pretty happy with the distribution. It has its high points (nice software included) and its low points (installer didn't install yaboot properly, I had to fix it myself). I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to run Linux on their Mac...

Re:Other Distros

[Carrot007]

is this a figment of my imagination then?

http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/

Carrot007.

AS/400 (iSeries) Support Too !

[DigitalDreg]

Remember folks, this just isn't for Macs - it runs on big iron too!

For those of you who are utterly confused - this Suse distribution also runs on IBM's AS/400 (new name is iSeries). Yes, you too can have good old RPG (not "role playing game"!) and COBOL apps running side by side with Linux.

Re:Other Distros

[macinslak]

Debian for PPC has been around for a while. Installation is not pleasant of course, but it does work quite nicely on my old 603/200.

Re:Other Distros

[GiMP]

I have debian running on my G3 Pismo (firewire) powerbook. It is great! I also have a 7100/80 I just aquired and plan to install mkLinux on.

I wouldn't suggest anything but debian for any platform, except maybe slack.. but that doesn't run on PowerPC out of the box :)

And no, installation of debian onto a PowerPC machine wasn't any harder then installing onto an X86 box. I did have a little learning curve when I had to learn the differences between how bootloaders work on newer Macs and X86..

Newer Macs use OpenFirmware, x86 has a bios and boot records, other PowerPC machines use Prep or Chrp, etc.. But that is an expected pitfall when moving to any new platform.

Tech support of SuSE

[phreakinb]

I recently bought SuSE 7.3.. I tried to get tech support one night and i got a recording "Tech support is only open from 7-11 PST" or something like that.. Really early for most folks, or people that goto school. But theyt do have different hours on weekends, wich is a plus.

Re:OSX versus Linux

[NDPTAL85]

Mac OS X has come a long way since it was NextSTEP. You can install the Unix parts on its own (that would be just Darwin) and at http://fink.sourceforge.net there's a package manager for OS X/Darwin called Fink. It incorporates some Debian tools such as apt-get and dpkg to help you compile or install binaries, but in the oh so easy it downloads and automates the stuff for you. And since I log into my OS X box all the time I don't really know whats so much harder to manage about it that you seem to mention.

Nope, You're Incorrect

[cjsnell]

Your assertion that there is no CL interface to OS X is incorrect. You can easily boot to console mode without loading Aqua. From there, you can start the X server.

As for remote administration, it's trivial. I run OpenSSH on my Mac. I can login to my box and do anything that I could do on my FreeBSD box--add/remove users, change networking settings, security settings, etc.
If that's not enough for ya, there are several VNC servers for OS X, as well as some commercial apps that provide remote control similar to PC Anywhere.

Chris

PS- Loose the stupid narrow formatting. It won't get you any more karma.

Re:PPC

[SuzanneA]

As others have suggested, there is apple :), but you also have a choice of a few Single Board Computer (SBC) vendors that sell PPC boards designed to run linux.

While a SBC doesn't seem a logical choice for a desktop, it does have some nice advantages. Most SBCs contain a fairly reasonable set of desktop-like components, such as 100baseT, 3d video, AC97 audio, etc.

An interesting thought is whether you could get a ETX/EBX format SBC card into the old shoebox size Sun cases. Though they would also fit into an external 5.25" SCSI enclosure with a little work, that would be fun too.

Re:Why Linux PPC? (A: The GIMP)

[SiMac]

The GIMP runs rootlessly on Mac OS X. (Install using fink or gnu-darwin.) I bet getting xchat to work wouldn't be too much of a chore.

BTW, I agree that on older machines Linux is much, much faster (I have a server running LinuxPPC)

Its a new day

[NDPTAL85]

Netinfo and UserManager (now called Users) are still on OS X. But thats only for Mac OS X. Darwin on the other hand since it does not include Aqua allows you to edit things by hand using: niload(8), nidump(8), nigrep(1), nifind(1), nireport(1)....etc. Actually Mac OS X lets you do this too. You can install Darwin by itself and since there's no Aqua, there's no chance you'd run into anything like you did on NextStep. XFree86 also works fine on both Darwin and Mac OS X. In any case check out: http://publicsource.apple.com/ and look around. Read the "Ask the Darwin team" pieces they are fun. And if you get confused, for some strange reason Apple jumped the version number of Darwin from 1.4 to 5.1. Weird. Here's what my Mac OS X 10.1.1 gives me back for a uname -a:

Darwin Alexander 5.1 Darwin Kernel Version 5.1: Tue Oct 30 00:06:34 PST 2001; root:xnu/xnu-201.5.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc