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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?
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...
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
is this a figment of my imagination then?
http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/
Carrot007.
+----------------- | What is the question!
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.
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.
Debian is available, i m running it right now on a TiBook and i must say i'm impressed.
... )
All the hardware is supported, and i mean all!
USB mouse with wheel...
sound hardware..
DRI support..
(well cant try firewire but
hey
YDL worked pretty well the others(SUSE Mandrake ) didnt even boot on my brand spanking new iMac
the problem ?
they did not know what to do with a blank disk
(dumb but shows how much REAL testing they did)
my only complaint with YDL was the fact that libm was not actually where it should be
I was running specCPU2000 and it would not compile !
so I recomend that YDL at least put the link in (-;
cheers
john jones
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.
Yeah, so where do I buy a PPC motherboard and CPU?
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.
Wow! Thanks. I saw no mention of this anywhere on the net.
:)
Mod parent up
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.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
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.
Why in the world would someone want to go to the trouble of installing Linux on a weird architecture when they have the awesome UNIX power of OSX available to them? I mean, if I had any nice PPC hardware, I would be running OSX. Oh well, I guess there are just masochists in every group...
Is your company running tools written by ma
At least, that's a sufficient answer to me, and the biggest easily-identifiable reason I'm waiting impatiently for mdk8.1 :) I have photoshop LE (came with a Wacom tablet), and it's OK, but after using both I prefer GIMP's interface in general for my personal photo manipulation and drawing. Both have good and bad points, and Sure, I'm just more used to GIMP after not touching PS for a few years, but hey. YMMV, etc.
;)
For people who a) like or need IRC and b) prefer free software to shareware / guiltware / payware, xchat is also quite nice to have, though Mozilla's IRC capabilities are getting quite nice. (private msg's are handled much better by xchat, though.)
OS X is nice looking, though, now that I bumped up the RAM in my iBook
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
MkLinux was actually developed by Apple (in conjunction with some European academic group, don't remember who), back in the Amelio era. Itself, it was never very popular, but the code release allowed people to start building monolithic linux kernels on PPC Macs, and the assorted Mac Linux distros followed on shortly after.
Right now, the only reason to use MkLinux is if you want to run linux on one of the original powermacs: the 6100, 7100 and 8100. MkLinux is the only linux which supports booting on NuBus (non-PCI) based Macs, and is maintained for that reason only.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Anyone know if this distro will boot on the white 867MHz G4? Couldn't get LinuxPPC 2kQ4 to boot on this damn thing. :)
Umm...I don't think the GIMP is a reason to use LinuxPPC instead of OS X.
If it runs on *BSD/ppc, either it runs on OS X now, or it will soon.
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)
Mandrake is currently working on updating their PPC tree. I believe they are going to skip an 8.1 release and focus on an 8.2 release that will (hopefully) coincide with their i586 8.2 release. Testing is open to the public (like all Mandrake releases), you can download the tree from most Mandrake development FTP mirrors. They also have a mailing list that you can subscribe to for those interested in running the PPC port. Check out http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/fdevlists.php3 for the mailing list and http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/cookerdevel.php3 for information on downloading the development tree.
Don Head
UNIX/Linux Administrator
Anyway, I think this (SuSE 7.3 on PPC) is another small advancement for Linux that, among all the other small advancements, will slowly but surely take Linux to the top of the OS food chain. Now if only we could get major vendors to ship dual-boot systems...
A solution to the problem with music today
re: bitchX -- though a lot of people swear by bitchX, to me it's at best a distant 3rd behind xchat and mozilla's IRC mode. So it's no argument for me, really, on that count. Using the nicely cross-platform Mozilla (on borrowed Windows machines, my Linux-running desktops or my iBook running Mac OS) isn't exactly a terrible hardship, and that module seems to improve faster even than the rest of Mozilla, but it's just not my favorite.
... if the source was open, I might be using a modern descendent of that program today.)
:) Most software sucks. Mozilla crashes sometimes, and that's my most-days, most-hours window on the world. No Free *nix desktop handles fonts with anything like the panache of Mac OS. More generally, most user interfaces (not just software, or computers -- think of the user interface of everything from buying an airline ticket to car radios) are horrible. Sometimes software has problems that come from being proprietary (security problems that don't get fixed for a long time because of a ponderous review and fix cycle, say), but software problems come in all varieties, and any non-trivial program probably has bugs worth crying about.
re: Paying for software -- never said I was opposed to paying for software, only that I prefer Free software to the other kinds. Paying for (or just using) Free software seems a better long-term investment to me than paying for (or just using) the other kinds. I prefer not to spend more money than I have to (doesn't everyone?), and I like software with available source, in part because that means there's no reason it has to disappear if / when its vendor disappears.
(Did you ever use the word processor called "WriteNow"? Clean, fast, fit on 2 floppies
I can diss any software I want
With Photoshop vs GIMP specifically, like I said before, I prefer GIMP, and it runs under Linux, my preferred OS for right now. PS runs on my laptop, and I have a paid-for (limited version) copy on there. If you don't prefer GIMP, and want to shell out the money for a full version of PS, well, great, no problem! I'm sure the PS coders are bright guys and earn the salaries they're paid. In certain applications, PS is currently a better choice; those just aren't the ones I have. (No 4-color printing, for instance.) I do wish for better text-handling in GIMP, it's true, but we choose different bundles all the time, and my font complaints don't overshadow my general preferences.
Cheers,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I rarely add software to an installation of Mandrake or Red Hat, and were I a SuSE user I could probably add an "extremely" before the "rarely." Even the smaller, downloadable all-GPL version of mandrake has most of the software that I want / need on a daily basis. (Except for upgrading certain things, grabbing a new Mozilla once in a while, etc.)
...) is a larger pain than installing a simple Linux system, and does me no good when using OS 9, anyhow. (For speed reasons, even with 10.1 and 384 megs of memory, I find myself usually booting that machine into OS 9.)
To get gimp to run on OS X (it runs, Yes
But you're right, I wasn't thinking about macgimp when I wrote that.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I remember playing with OSX beta2 a lot, and
release versions a bit less. It certainly has
changed a lot, but I don't think it'd really be
suitable for someone like me who has no interest
in Aqua. Fink does sound nice, and I'll take a
look at it (hopefully it's like the BSD ports tree).
The thing that I remember about NeXTStep that I
didn't like was that much of its configuration data
was in formats that were unfriendly to hand-editing,
making you use their tools (UserManager.app,
NetInfoManager.app, and so on) for basic systems
tasks. That irritated me in that it made the
system both harder to script and difficult to
remotely administer. There's also the issue that
the DPS-based remote NeXTStep display was not
compatible with X11 remote display (something
not unlike Aqua). I consider remote display
to be very important, and having a box that
I need to walk over to in order to change
something is a pain.
Anyhow, I'm sure OSX is great for regular Mac
users, as well as people who would like to run
both Mac and Unix software. It's not for me --
I'm purely a Unixhead, and so I'm more likely to
run *BSD or Linux on whatever systems I have that
happen to be Macs.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
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
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
perhaps, or then again, games, multimedia and graphics apps... you can get a look at the packages if you interested. but yeah, lots of dev stuff and proticals that are more archane then usefull.
then again SuSE does start you with everything switched off and requires you to flip them on. yeah, there is the obligitory firewall app, but they have made it a bit more comprehensive then red hat's and mandrakes (i.e: "what level of security do you desire, small, medium or large")
actually quite a bit of it is also window managers and GUIs, very slick the lot of them and though i am not completely sure they are all there. every last rat bastard one of them.though i did dig how easy it was getting KDE 2.2.2 off the SuSE website and gnome looks as good as Ximian's, though i have not found a way to jack the latest release of Evolution (99.whatever) into 7.3.
though as far as OS's go, they still haven't reached the stage where "Remote Assistance" is a prebundled "feature"... so thanks MS.
And you'll see exactly why Linux is useful for the Mac.
MacOS X is more-or-less unusable on this machine.
I know RAM is cheap these days, but my Rev. A iMac uses some god-awful half-size RAM SIMMs, which are expensive and hard to find.
I run Mandrake 8.0 on the iMac, and with KDE it seems pretty sluggish (starting apps, general performance), but WindowMaker is very usable and GNOME is faster too.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long