A Live Linux ISO for the Mac?

An anonymous reader asks: "My iBook is the strongest of my laptops, but it's not running my favorite OS. Knoppix and the various other live ISOs are nice for x86 machines, but (though OS X is nice, and I'm not disparaging it) it would be nice to have all the apps that come with KDE and GNOME, and to have them all available through a nice fluxbox or windowmaker desktop). I've seen smart people nearly cry trying to install Debian on their Macs, but then I've seen smart people nearly cry trying to install Debian in the first place. Knoppix has certainly made it easier to put Debian on x86 machines, but does such a thing exist for Macs? Mac OS X is a very pretty thing, and Apple has supported some great free software projects through it, it's just that on an older iBook (and older iMacs, even more so), a low-key GNU/Linux desktop moves more responsively, and has everything I need. If I could easily run a nice GNU system on them, old iMacs would be worth a lot more to me.".

Comments

Is installing really that hard?

[jeramybsmith]

Nowadays if you want to turn any older USB mac into a single booting Linux machine I would suggest that no hair pulling is necessary.

Most of the problems I see people still having has to do with repartitioning a dual-boot sytem.

Yellow Dog Linux.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yellow Dog Linux home page, here's a review on OS News.

There really are no problems running Linux on Mac hardware. :)

It's possible- there used to be one!

[RevAaron]

I don't know if there are any Live distros for the Mac anymore... There used to be a version for LinuxPPC though, a release or two their most current release (which isn't all that current anyway). I am not sure if it was on a bootable CD- I think it was a 100-200 MB file you downloaded and double clicked "Boot LinuxPPC Live" and bam, you were in. No need for a CD, although that was prolly doable too.

If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps,

[Mordant]

and you even want to run WindowMaker or Fluxbox, you don't need Linux.

All you need is Fink.

Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps,

[Otter]

...and doing it that way, you have those apps available in your normal MacOS environment. I haven't seen Knoppix, but I believe it works the way the old LinuxPPC LiveCD worked -- you rebooted from it into a normal Linux environment, minus your Windows/Mac apps. Especially given the hassles of HFS+ in Linux, simply running those X11 apps in OS X seems a lot closer to what the questioner wants.

Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps,

[coolgeek]

there are still some programs, like ImageMagick, that are total hair-pullers under OS X and fink doesn't make it easy either, cuz fink unstable is earlier than current distro of xyz app...

Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps,

[SStrungis]

Fink is hellish for anyone not a Linux pro. I struggled mightily with it to get Windowmaker compiled using Xdarwin. It took FOREVER, and I cannot see anyone getting KDE working under OSX. Not worth the effort. It takes 20 minutes to compile Lynx on a G3 800 MHz iBook, forget KDE or something large like gimp.

Scott

Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps,

[Mordant]

KDE binaries are available via Fink.

Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps,

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you probably shouldn't try compiling KDE, but rather use the KDE binary that comes from Fink:

sudo apt-get install koffice

will install all necessary KDE components and then you are up and running. Takes about 25 minutes. :-)

Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps,

[JimRay]

Or, you could just use the precompiled Imagemagick binary, found here: http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/welcome.html #imagemagick

Works beautifully. I use it on my development box for web based image manipulation, using PHP. The PHP code is totally portable to the production Solaris box, too.

Enjoy

Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps,

[jbolden]

1) Your numbers sound kind of long. Try running the compiles at night. BTW are you counting the download time as the compile time?

2) Make sure to do the compiles piecemeal. If a program is going to require 40 dependendts then break the whole thing down into steps.

3) As for hellish I've seen very few of their compiles fail and those that do usually work by the next update.

4) Why aren't you just using the binary fink?

Re:This isn't too intelligent

[yomegaman]

Your subject line describes the contents of your post perfectly. He's asking for a LIVE CD distribution, like Knoppix, except for PPC. Is that so hard to understand?

Debian has come a long way.

[sonicsft]

Debian isn't really as hard as the poster says. While it may take a little trial and error, and you might have to rtfm Debian has in fact come a long way. I got my iBook online with debian, everything working, in the space of one weekend. The trick is researching what drivers you need and compiling a kernel (like the benh fork) before you try futzing with things. While there are a few random quirks with getting linux up in general, like how do you right/middle click, etc...They can be easily solved by doing a 30second google. But I have to say Apple has a history of not liking people doing strange things to their macs, if a live CD came out that made installing linux as easy as installing MacOS X then it would draw some negative attention from Apple I think. On the otherhand when my ibook suffered a logicboard melt down (semi-common occurence on my model) I sent in my ibook with debian still on the drive, and it came back fixed, good as new, with the boot loader still functioning and debian still on the drive.

-sonic

Re:Debian has come a long way.

[MarkCollette]

I agree that Debian was hard for me to install, as well, but that was only becuse of two bugs, which if fixed, would have made Debian trivial to install.

Bug 1: The installer used a 2.2 kernel, whereas the system I installed used a 2.4 kernel, which meant that software IDE RAID was interpreting the drive names differently (hda versus hdc). This mean a lot of (dis/en)abling drives in the bios and screwing with some grub file to make it all work. The trivial solution was to use a current 2.4 kernel in the install.

Bug 2: I use a realtek ethernet card, which was enabled via a kernel module, which required me to change some text file so that the system would load the module on boot. In fact, every single time I upgrade the kernel, that file needs to be edited. I don't know if that's Debian's fault of Linux's fault, though.

Think this would do the trick?

[Anonymous Coward]

I Googled for... livecd ppc linux http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/ gentoo/experimental/ppc/livecd/nostages/gentoo-ppc -1.4_rc6-120403.iso

Re:Think this would do the trick?

[kerneljacabo]

No, it wouldn't. Gentoo uses livecd's to get you into the "install environment". The gentoo install process is alot more interactive then any other distro's installer. We chose this method of installing because you need a minimal GNU environment to compile and install everything. You could boot it on an imac and in theory set up a ramdisk and everything else, but I think the asker was clear in what his intentions/needs were.

KDE and GNOME

[Akito]

use fink if you want to install these, combine it with the apple X11 distro and you have one smoothe integration of GNOME (my favorite) and 10.2

Re:OS X on a G3

[MrTangent]

OS X generally needs at bare minimum 128 megs of RAM. I'd go at least 256 megs if I were you.

According to Everymac.com your Powerbook is an original Powerbook G3 (see bolded quote below) and therefore isn't supported in OS 10.2. However, you might try checking with XLR8yourmac.com because there are "hacks" available that enable "unsupported" Macs (old clones/beige, etc.) to run OS 10.2.

From Apple's OS X Requirements Page Quoted here:

Mac OS X Version 10.2 requires a Power Mac G3, G4, G4 Cube; iMac; PowerBook G3, G4; iBook; or eMac computer; at least 128MB of physical RAM and a built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card. Mac OS X does not support the original PowerBook G3 or processor upgrade cards. Verify your hardware is supported from the list below

As with processor upgrades cards, this particular Powerbook, while officially unsupported, can probably be made to run OS 10.2 with a little ingeniunity and research. This page (cached, since the site seems to be down right now) might help you out.

Also you might want to upgrade the processor to a G4 in that Powerbook and gain OS 10.2 support, not to mention an extreme increase in speed (+Altivec support!) by buying one of these Crescendo G3 or G4 upgrade cards. I've personally bought stuff from Sonnet and can very much recommend them. I buy all my Mac stuff generally from the fantastic (and fast/cheap/honest) Macsales.com but you can find Sonnet Mac upgrade peripherals at just about any Mac reseller. If you do upgrade the Powerbook, be sure to pick up some RAM (I'd max it out to 512 megs if I were you) while you're at it. OWC/Macsales have very reliable and extremely cheap RAM. Just make sure to get the right kind by checking with one of the sites I provided.

Good luck.

Gentoo?

[justMichael]

I'm not sure if this has everything you are looking for but, Gentoo has live CD's for PPC.

Here is some info

Here are the ISO's

Re:Gentoo?

[zojas]

I second that! I run gentoo on my 700MHz ibook, it's way faster than OS X (even with 640mb ram!)

I documented my install

Re:Gentoo?

[deque_alpha]

Gentoo currently has the closest to what you are looking for ATM, though it really isn't all that close. It is a "live" system, but minimal at best. Just enough to get an install going pretty much.
I ditched OSX on my iBook in favor of Gentoo about 6 months ago and haven't looked back. Gentoo does a lot of stuff with the Live CD's on x86, and I really don't know why, but the interest just doesn't seem to be there. Hit the various #gentoo (especially #gentoo-ppc)forums on Freenode and try to rustle up some people. I'm sure they will have good answers as to why it hasn't really been done, but I expect most of them will be along the lines of "Nobody wants to".

Re:Gentoo?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll have a new kde/gnome enabled ppc livecd up in a few weeks :-)

Pieter, PPC gentoo team lead

Wallstreet is 2nd PBG3

[Anonymous Coward]

The original powerbook g3 was a derivative of the 603 based powerbook 3400 and is not supported under Mac OS X. The Wallstreet powerbook is supported.

Re:Wallstreet is 2nd PBG3

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be done on that original PB G3 using Xpostfacto

But certainly you would need to upgrade the RAM from 64 MB for OS X...

Re:This isn't too intelligent

[JJahn]

Yeah I'd say the poster doesn't know many smart people. First time I ever installed Debian it went perfectly, no problems whatsoever. And learning how to use apt took maybe another 5 minutes at the most.

Not hard at all

[Anonymous Coward]

Debian is really a lot easier to install on an ibook than it is on x86 hardware. There's no fuss setting up XF86 or finding out about device drivers; all hardware is well known.
Install Debian, grab the latest benh kernel if your ibook is less than a year old (I don't know whether older ones need it too), compile with the .config which comes with BenH's patch, and on you go.

If you fail to get it right, a question on the debian-powerpc list is bound to get an answer within a few hours; the ibook is one of the most used ppc computers it seems.