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Mandrake 9.1 (Bamboo) Out For PPC
sonatinas writes "Well, Mandrake 9.1 is out for PPC processors and a nifty utility included is the Mac-on-Linux feature where you can run mac os 9/x in a window at native speed." MoL is one thing that has impressed me for years about YellowDog Linux, too.
Is there a Linux-On-Mac program that would allow me to run linux-ppc in a virtual machine at near-full speed on my mac?
-andrew
Linux has its origins on IA32, Intel's 32-bit architecture. Every platform Linux has migrated to since then has been beset with porting problems-- Linux runs 32% more efficiently on Intel than PowerPC. This is very telling as PowerPC is in general much faster per clock than Intel. Somewhere in the translation from PowerPC to IA32 something got lost.
Mac OS is 100% native for PowerPC. The Mach kernel has been optimized for the G3, G4, and 970 since Apple began writing the operating system back in 1996. Why choose a hacked and kludged OS from another platform when you can have an environment tailor-made for the system you'll be running it on? Mac OS certainly isn't plagued by same driver problems Linux is (in)famous for.
In Linux, the development model is highly irrational: anyone is allowed to submit patches, and one man (Linus Torvalds) sorts through gigabyte after gigabyte of amateurish code, attempting to integrate it into the kernel. Apple's model is much more modern and decisive: the code for the low levels of Mac OS is available for anyone to download and modify, while the more complex parts of the system (QuickTime and OpenGL) are kept closed-source so those that know better-- the Apple programmers-- are the only ones allowed to tinker.
The results because of these differing development models are clear. Apple released a major update to the OS once a year, and releases about five minor updates to the OS, as well as several dozen security patches and driver updates, in the interim. Since March of 2001 we've gone from 10.0 to 10.2.5! Linux is still stuck at some sort of bizarre "in-between" 2.5 kernel patch and won't move on to 2.6 until well after Apple has released Mac OS 10.3.
It's not hard to see the difference here is a bunch of kids playing with source code instead of doing their homework vs. highly qualified professionals pushing their skills to the limits. The Mac OS user benefits.
I don't even think I have to touch on this. While Linux offers several GUIs from GNOME, KDE, and Enlightenment, Apple offers only one. But here we have a case of quality vs. quantity. Apple controls the GUI for its operating system while anyone can hack and modify the various Linux GUIs as they please. This has led to a lack of desktop standards and a whole lot of bickering and flame wars over human interface guidelines. Most of the GUIs for Linux are simply poor knock-offs of the Windows 95 interface.
Apple's Aqua and QuickTime graphical interfaces are faster, more elegant, and very consistent. A Mac user can sit down at any Mac and (assuming someone hasn't installed Linux) get right to work. With Linux, it's hit or miss as to whether the user will know what to do when he logs in! Getting work done is the most important aspect of a computer. After all, it is just a tool. Linux fails in this area miserably-- you're forced to edit and tinker and kludge and hack to make things perfect. A Mac allowes you to just sit down and roll up your sleeves and get some work done. I don't have time to play at my job.
I've used Linux before and the headache of downloading drivers and libraries and making sure the versions all sync up are too mucvh to handle, especiallly considering one has to compile these applications. On a Mac, I mount a disk image and drag the .app file to /Applications, and I'm done. Hell, most software for Mac even installs it there for you. To put this in perspective, let's look at a recent task I performed under both Linux 2.4 and Mac OS 10.2.
Sendmail and sshd were both cracked recently and needed updated. The guys who code these programs were on
Well, since some Anonymous Jackass Coward already gave a bunch of reasons here why not to run Linux on PowerPC hardware, I thought it would be appropriate to give some solid reasons why it makes sense to do so. Mind you that I'm not advocating this for every person in every circumstance, but the point needs to be made that there are circumstances in which Linux on PPC can make a lot of sense.
>Somewhere in the translation from PowerPC to IA32 something got lost.
Absolutely not. About a year ago, performance for desktop applications under Yellow Dog linux on my 400mghz TiBook had the same "feel" as 1Ghz Athlon. I'm referring to the speed of calling up windows in apps like Evolution and Mozilla. Unfortunately, I don't have anything quantitative, but I preferred working on my tibook because things were snappier. (Also, the TiBook had 8MB of video RAM and the Athlon had around 32MB of vRAM in a nVidia graphics card: both were using appropriate XFree86 builds.)
>MacOS kernel has been optimized for the G3, G4, and 970 since Apple began writing the operating system back in 1996. Yada Yada Yada.
Well, as much as the kernel has been all optimized, the overhead of the double-buffered and heavily anti-aliased aqua-goodness takes it all away. Seriously. You can easily turn off XFree86 in Linux. Turning off the MacOSX GUI is poorly documented. Why Apple doesn't do this for tuning MacOSX servers is beyond me.
>Control over the source code
OK Linux users have source code to everything. On the other hand, Apple lets you have at the Darwin source but apparently has no plans to open source pretty much anything GUI, including the quartzwm that they ship with X11. Think about it. Even if you want to run X apps on MacOSX, you're stuck with an apple-only window manager layer. The mailing lists are full of complaints about quartzwm which only Apple can now fix. If you want to be able to customize your machine, there is remains no better choice than Linux.
As far as updates go, once set up, apt-get works great even for PPC builds! Also, the config, make, make install worked for everything I tried, with the exception of drivers and other hardware-focused code.
The biggest reason in my mind is security. While security through obscurity isn't the best option from an absolute standpoint, it is practically very useful. The number of script-kiddie hacks exploting PPC buffer overflows is effectively zero. MandrakePPC and Yellow Dog aren't for everyone, but I'm glad they exist and hope that they can attract enough of a following to justify sticking around.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
I don't know what this flashy thing wiggling in the water is, but it certainly looks tastier than work...
E: Invalid operation fucked
Once you have both partitions set up, holding down option when booting will bring up OpenFirmware and will let you boot into Linux or OSX. Check the Yellow Dog site for details.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
I see that whoever made that screenshot is downloading a "Fifth Element" DIVX.
The MPAA will be properly notified.
Terrorist.