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First Beta Of Mandrake Linux 8.2 For PPC
belbo writes "On Friday, an article on MandrakeForum announced the immediate availability of the first beta of Mandrake Linux 8.2 for PPC.
Apart from the features of the upcoming 8.2 release for i586, this beta offers network installation via AirPort, an AppleScript wrapper for passing parameters to BootX, a patched 2.4.17 kernel, support for 1394, support for Radeon/Riva cards (via XFree 4.2) and more." Great news. I run Yellow Dog Linux for PPC boxes, but am still waiting for a good Linux for PPC release that does everything well, and out of the box. Maybe this is the one?
My only experience with linux on the ppc was.. linuxppc, a few years ago. That distro, howeever, is very much a redhat for ppc rather than a distro unto itself. Has anyone out there in slashdot land installed and used debain-ppc? How does it compare to ydl and linuxppc?
It sounds like the new Mandrake is intended to be TiBook-ready. If anyone tries it on a laptop soon enough to post, I'd be very interested to hear how the installation went and what kind of multimedia support you got.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I downloaded it last night and burned this morning. I have a 333 iMAC and a 867 G4 w/ Gf2 mx to try this out on. I've had some problems with MD8.0 and have played a bit with the cooker. I've been working on some integration with OSX at work so I've spent most of my time in OSX lately.
I don't get it...
I am going to hell and I am going to take all of you with me.
when i installed ydl on my g4 400 it crashed on the first attempt. The second worked however. once up and running in dual boot i found that i was using it just for the fact of trying linux out. The cd audio still dosent work, gnome cannot upgrade for some reason, yup has never worked ,its a big mess. I am currently building a peecee to run linux and BeOS r5 on.
i see no point to seriously running linux on ppc hardware, its more trouble than its worth, not to mention expensive.
Btw where can i find that hack for my cd drive for audio.
I want 2D games back.
usability and speed, multiple workspaces.
i really don't see how OS X offers anything useful at all, from my experiences running it. I'm pretty happy with how my linux environment works out, but find the mac UI to be very unusable.
What does any breed of PPC linux offer now that OS X doesn't?
Of the two, only Linux PPC will run decently well on a non-G4 Macintosh. Wasn't OS X optimized for G4 machines? When I was looking to install an OS in addition to OS 9.1 on my G3/350rev1, I looked at Apple's "OS X supported on" page, and saw my machine at the bottom of the list. Given the (then) performance problems that OS X was having, it made the decision to install Linux PPC easy.
Oh, yeah, the YDL CDs were $30. Mac OS X is >$100?
I have to say that I'm impressed with what Mandrake has done. I've always believed that they're the best "desktop" Linux distro I've used - plenty of software, simple to use (like setting up a NAT - takes 5 minutes under Mandrake, took me 2 weeks under Redhat).
But after having had my Mac for 2 weeks, and basically unplugged my Linux box after I threw samba, imap, postfix, DarwinX, Gimp, etc on the Mac box, I have to ask if I'm all that interested in the Mandrake Linux now.
Well...not really. Perhaps if I was going to run G4 box as a pure server, then I'd consider that idea, but otherwise, I have everything I need. (And even then, I'd have to consider just what kind of server I was running that I'd want to switch from OS X).
But I think it's great that Mandrake is doing this anyway - there's always people who simply want to run Linux on whatever platforms they want, and if nothing else, it keeps Mac (and everybody else) on their toes to keep innovating.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
No one on this forum has yet mentioned SuSE PPC as an alternative Linux for mac hardware. I was very disappointed with LinuxPPC when I first tried it, (and mkLinux, but that was way back).
I installed the first SuSE beta and have been using their distros ever since. The best things about it are the detailed printed documentation, the professional quality of the distro, great installation tech support and the bundled software (6 CD's worth).
It's also nice using a distro that is used on PC's. I don't feel like I'm using a stepchild OS. I'm sure this new mandrake will help reduce the stigma of running linux on PPC as well.
That said, however, with OS X 10.1, I very rarely find myself booting off of my linux partition. I miss the multiple workspaces, but I really like being able to use BBEdit and Office without starting up MOL.
<?php while ($self != "asleep") { $sheep_count++; } ?>
Sure, Linux is just another "free" option, but so is Darwin.
When I was running an old PowerBook 3400, I loaded LinuxPPC onto a Jaz 2GB disk and booted from that a few times just to say "Yeah, I had a UNIX-like OS running on it." Aside from that, it was just a toy.
Right now, there isn't a whole lot that Linux for PowerPC can do that OS X cannot do. Maybe these Linuxes can run on a wider variety of machines (read: non-G3 new-world ROM boxen), but aside from that, I really don't see any benefits.
Still, it is nice to see that companies still believe in and support the PowerPC archetecture as a whole and don't mind devoting resources to it.
look at all the options you have for desktops/windowmanagers... sure OSX has a nice one but it's a "one size fits all" deal,... Linux gives you choice.
beyond that just look at the thousands of apps available for Linux, how many Mac apps still need to run in classic mode?
AND there's MacOnLinux, letting you bring up "classic mode" on your Linux desktop, I don't know if MacOnLinux lets you run OSX inside it but I wouldn't doubt it.
in summary, Linux has all linux has PLUS all the apps Mac has, running under the Linux OS. sounds like a winner to me.
keep the os9 partition around for watching Quicktime video's and running mac apps but you don't dual boot, it just runs inside Linux.
I'm getting a mac soon, and will put this Mandrake 8.2 on it.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
I recently bought myself a Pismo G3/400, and coming from serveral years running Linux, I want to install at least one distro and dual boot. ;-)
... ) out of the box, and I have decided I'm going for YellowDog because the support for the features I mentioned above seems there. I have no need to play beta tester on my powerbook ;-)
/home a HFS partition to enable Data Sharing with MacosX ?
I really do not know if I'm ever gonna use it enough to justify the disk space (wastage) on my 18Gb HD, but I just want to check it out.( I'm really impressed with MacosX , but that's another topic altogether
I've thought of running the Mandrake Beta (I've been using Mandrake on every x86 I installed ) but when I bought the Powerbook, I bought it with the purpose of wanting to use every feature a laptop has to offer ( DVD - Sleep - Airport - Dualhead
Also a big issue is the fact that Ximian supports YDL 2.1 through their RedCarpet, and because I'm not going to waste diskspace on installing every Desktop Option , and I love Gnome over KDE.
To conclude I would like to see if someone has installed Linux and made his
And did you notice performance issues , or is it ( or not ) wise to to this ?
blaah !
Yes but unfortunately they're choices that aren't as convenient and they're generally lacking for people who aren't using it on a server and who aren't command line oriented. I've spent some hours over the past week looking for a Linux to install on my old beige mac and maybe as a second partition on one of my current machines. I looked into mkLinux, PowerPPC Linux, a bit on Yellow Dog and tried to look at Debian but didn't find much Debian PPC-specific help.
I'd love to put a distro on my 603e but can't really find anything that sounds good. mkLinux sounds weak as Apple dumped it and it seemed to have a scientific focus (rather than a user-oriented focus) as well as a minimalist slant, PPC Linux has been mediocre IME - even though they present themselves as a business I suspect it's a few guys doing stuff in their off time. Yellow Dog might be okay, I don't know, but like the others there's no easy install process. I don't want to have to buy a burner to install - how many beige macs came with CD-burners? And I shouldn't have to pay $40 to try out an OS, especially when that's half the worth of the machine I'm putting it on. If there's a way to install over ethernet I couldn't find it and the possibility of installing off another partition on the same machine wasn't elucidated, if it is an option. Even after getting a disc the install is much more complicated than with OS X from my experience with PPC Linux. Then the desktop enviroments, ew! Admittedly, I'm used to ones from a couple years ago but I just brought my iBook into work and you should see the Linux kids and how amazed they were with the whole package. Despite my complaints over specific items in OS X it certainly is easier to use and as featureful as Linux. It misses X10 apps but gains many, many more professional applications. Does any PPC linux offer Altivec acceleration and are there software packages that takes advantage of it? And on OS X, I used Samba to connect to other computers at work and at home through the finder's "Go" command and I can't tell you the first thing about what Samba is. That's a layer of convenience that is definitely missing from Linux.
If someone can show me a PPC compatible Linux that doesn't require an hour to install or lots of futzing about with drivers and settings and has a good, stable, even if barebones desktop environment and has ALSA built-in - terrific, I'm sold. [Please post relevant addresses] Personally, I think Linux would be much better if it had less to offer and instead what it offered was much better. Imagine how much better, how much more of a serious option Linux on PPC systems would be if everyone who worked on the various PPC-oriented packages became focused and worked on just one or two different PPC distributions. Hardware support with no trouble spots! Installation with a single click! Altivec support! God - wouldn't that be a terrific OS? An OS I would pay money to use. Linux' lack of focus and direction has always been it's trouble spot and what has kept many, many people from adopting it.
Which, if any of the PPC distributions will pickup and configure the internal Airport card in an iBook at install time. How about sound. Anyone?
Funny, I use OS X on two different G3s computers and I have no complaints about performance, whether for development or using OmniWeb. I'll consider buying a G4 when it's in a portable running at 800MHz or a tower at 1.8GHz and they cost under $1300 new (perhaps a rev. old but still new). Maybe I'm just so dull-witted I can't notice the system being slow.
and you're all set.
http://www.suse.com
Reagrds,
Nick
I just read every post in this thread and I have to say it is refreshing to read so many literate/considerate/thoughtful/insightful posts, pretty much free of elitist 'tudes that are so prevalent in the other sections of /.
It proves to me that Mac users have more class and intelligence. They can spell too. Nice.
Thats pretty cool, actually.
;)
Having had not-so-pleasant experiences with SUSE 7.1 and DebianPPC on my Old-World Mac - which is collecting dust right now because my G4 and the iBook aperform way better, this seems like the perfect excuse to reactivate my "first mac".
AND its one of the few possibilities to get an up-to-date distro for PPC for free (beer-wise), as SUSE is not offering current versions of their distro for download.
And this goes out to the "why-linux-when-you've-got os-x-running-dept.":
Right. But OS X will *not* run on this old machine.
(Actually a Tanzania-Board based Mac which had a 160 MHz 603e CPU - now running with a 240 MHz G3 Processor Card).
I today think I`m leaving work pretty early
Er...I have been running OS X on G3s (iBook SE and iMac 350) since 3/24/2001 when the OS hit the stores.
It may be slow compared to a G4 but it's quite useable.
I have used Linux on PCs before and OS X leaves Linux in its dust in the useablity department.
That's interesting: how does OS X speed compare to OS 9.2 on either of those machines that you mentioned? The early reviews on OS X painted it as quite a slow beast, especially wrt the new Finder.
And point taken on the usability department. Even with KDE, Linux has a lot of room for improvement there. Peripheral support, too. I haven't found any LinuxPPC drivers for my Imation Superdisk.
The last OS 9 I used full time was 9.1. 10.0 was quite slow -- no argument there. But 10.1 is quite fast enough for me. And relative slowness compared to 9 is more than compensated by its far superior stability.
And I don't think I could ever again use a computer without the Unix functionality.