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Linux on the iMac G4
Brent Foster writes: "The staff at iMacLinux.net have Linux running on the new flat panel iMac G4s. They have an initial installation guide available here(1). It has several photos of the iMac G4 during the installation as well as cat /proc/cpuinfo. They also have some photos of the unpacking available here(2). The iMac was sponsored by PowerMax, it is nice to see companies sponsoring Linux efforts, especially in the Apple world."
John Buswell adds: "It currently works in novideo mode, but we plan on testing newer kernels and XFree 4.2 with nvidia patches later this week."
I know why I install linux on sparc boxes - for starters they are here. But for the most part its because you get amazing multi-user performance in a machine that is in some cases uses like 1/10th the energy as your average desktop pc.
maybe its the same way with the mac?
While you are correct about the absence of apache/mod_perl for Fink, you might like to know that the mod_perl DSO for apache is included with the standard OS X install. Simply edit your apache.conf file to load it (actually, just un-comment the line that calls it).
I spent hours trying to get apache/mod_perl/mod_ssl compiled and installed before I realised it was alread done for me... and Software Update keeps it fresh, even!
Culture is more than commerce
Okay, your first mistake is that anything free is automaticly better than something that isn't free. Man hours cost alot, and OSX comes with many free program as it is, iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, iPhoto.
IMHO $129 is not too expesive for software that merges two worlds (BSD and Mac) and allows you to run both without rebooting. The Mac side actually makes it more marketable to buisnesses because of Microsoft Office.
And, Gaming performance, video card support, hardware support. Blah..I'm tired of doing this.
Apache and mod_perl already run on the iMac with the factory installation of OS X.
It's called The Slash Hole, and has been done before. Though I can currently reach imaclinux.net. They either used something different, or they've already changed their settings back to normal.
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Remember that Darwin is open-source. It's already been ported to pre-G3 Macs, and with more work could probably be ported to any PowerPC platform.
Well...lets see..comercial games, better hardware support for graphics cards at least, iPod, when was the last time you saw profesional level video editing on Linux? Sorenson, Microsoft Office, Adobe products, The majority of games.
Oh, also, when you install OSX, it just works, no worries about your hardware not being supported, and recompiling drivers and the like. To answer a previouse question, OSX does support three button mice, and how many computers ship with a three button mouse anyway? What a bad excuse.
And last but not Least, remember that OSX is not a finished OS yet. It's only at what is the equivilent of version 1.1.2. OSX 10.2 is suposed to introduce alot of new features and return some of the features that were missing from OSX that were in OS9, such as spring loaded folders.
Since Apple have a propensity to obsolete their hardware, and OSes rather quickly.
"Quickly" is relative -- it depends on if you're trying to compare with other proprietary systems or open source.
If you're talking Linux, well, any OSS software beats the hell out of anything else for longevity on HW, of course. Anyone who wants to can port to any HW and maintain it
But at the moment, I'm typing this on a five+ year old PowerMac 9500. Running Mac OS 9.2 on 48 MB ram rather smoothly. Some pages render badly in Netscape, but it's a very serviceable machine that would be MORE serviceable if I threw gobs o' ram in. Try running Windows ME or 2000 on a Pentium II 200 with 48 MB RAM.
(The 9500 will run OS X with some tweaking if I put a G3/G4 upgrade in it, BTW).
Look at 68k macs - no longer supported by any current version of the MacOS.
68030 Macs (last off the line sometime around 93/94) lost OS support in OS 8 (Fall 1998). Again, that's 4-5 years of support. 68040 Macs (dropped about 1995) lost support in OS 9 (2000) -- again about 5 years. And this is only time from when they CEASE manufacturing the old models... if you go from the time they start, it's phenomenal. Take the venerable SE/30... off the line in '89, finally dropped from support in 1998. That's 9 years of support. Not too shabby.
The other angles is that if you use the contemporary software, most Macs run quite well. I have an SE/30 that's still knockout for Word Processing, basic spreadsheet, music sequencing/notation, and checking email. You can argue the same for any hardware, but in terms of utility, beats the hell out of any 1989 intel hardware I've seen.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
DVI is supported by the "nv" driver in XFree86 CVS, at least it is on PCs. See recent CVS checkins.
Just a few clarifications: OS 7.5.5 was the last to support 68000 series macs, OS 7.6 was the last to support 68030 series, even then you needed a 32-bit clean machine. OS 8.1 was the last to support 68040 machines, and even some 68k that were upgraded to PPC (it was possible to hack 8.5 on them though, but it ran extremely slow on my 540c w/ upgrade.) All the systems since then require at least a PPC.
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Not that this is exactly OT, but just compile a new version of vim. I admit that the vi shipped with OS X is rather nasty.
Easy download, from www.vim.org. Easy compile, too -- I didn't even have to edit the source to get it to work. YMMV.
TANSTAAFI: There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free iPod.
First MkLinux and Darwin are not based on the same version of Mach. Still, while it would be possible to have linux run over Mach, it would not be very usefull.