Gentoo Offers PPC LiveCDs

drunkentiger writes "Ripped right off their homepage: In a recent Slashdot article, someone asked if it were possible to create a fully-featured bootable Linux LiveCD for the Macintosh. We thought this was a great idea. So today, we are releasing two full-featured LiveCDs for the PowerPC: one with KDE 3, and another with GNOME 2. Take a look at the KDE LiveCD running MacOS X in a window via Mac on Linux. LiveCDs can be downloaded here or from these mirrors."

Comments

This has been postet a lot of times, but still...

[Anonymous Coward]

Official Gentoo-Linux-Zealot translator-o-matic

Gentoo Linux is an interesting new distribution with some great features. Unfortunately, it has attracted a large number of clueless wannabes and leprotards who absolutely MUST advocate Gentoo at every opportunity. Let's look at the language of these zealots, and find out what it really means...

"Gentoo makes me so much more productive."
"Although I can't use the box at the moment because it's compiling something, as it will be for the next five days, it gives me more time to check out the latest USE flags and potentially unstable optimisation settings."

"Gentoo is more in the spirit of open source!"
"Apart from Hello World in Pascal at school, I've never written a single program in my life or contributed to an open source project, yet staring at endless streams of GCC output whizzing by somehow helps me contribute to international freedom."

"I use Gentoo because it's more like the BSDs."
"Last month I tried to install FreeBSD on a well-supported machine, but the text-based installer scared me off. I've never used a BSD, but the guys on Slashdot say that it's l33t though, so surely I must be for using Gentoo."

"Heh, my system is soooo much faster after installing Gentoo."
"I've spent hours recompiling Fetchmail, X-Chat, gEdit and thousands of other programs which spend 99% of their time waiting for user input. Even though only the kernel and glibc make a significant difference with optimisations, and RPMs and .debs can be rebuilt with a handful of commands (AND Red Hat supplies i686 kernel and glibc packages), my box MUST be faster. It's nothing to do with the fact that I've disabled all startup services and I'm running BlackBox instead of GNOME or KDE."

"...my Gentoo Linux workstation..."
"...my overclocked AMD eMachines box from PC World, and apart from the third-grade made-to-break components and dodgy fan..."

"You Red Hat guys must get sick of dependency hell..."
"I'm too stupid to understand that circular dependencies can be resolved by specifying BOTH .rpms together on the command line, and that problems hardly ever occur if one uses proper Red Hat packages instead of mixing SuSE, Mandrake and Joe's Linux packages together (which the system wasn't designed for)."

"All the other distros are soooo out of date."
"Constantly upgrading to the latest bleeding-edge untested software makes me more productive. Never mind the extensive testing and patching that Debian and Red Hat perform on their packages; I've just emerged the latest GNOME beta snapshot and compiled with -O9 -fomit-instructions, and it only crashes once every few hours."

"Let's face it, Gentoo is the future."
"OK, so no serious business is going to even consider Gentoo in the near future, and even with proper support and QA in place, it'll still eat up far too much of a company's valuable time. But this guy I met on #animepr0n is now using it, so it must be growing!"

-

Requirements?

[mrseigen]

I'm assuming I can boot this on my older PCI Mac (PowerWave 604/120, old mac clone). Does anyone know differently?

Re:Requirements?

[pcp_ip]

it will only boot on a "new world" mac.

Re:Requirements?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know much about the clones, but I know that unless they included a MacOS based bootloader in there then for actual Macs from the same period that the answer is "No."

I'm assuming it's somewhat similar, but as I said, I don't know too much about the clones.

Re:Requirements?

[Blademan007]

I don't know about the LiveCD, but OldWorld Macs can boot using BootX. http://penguinppc.org/projects/bootx/

Re:Requirements?

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be done, i have an old pmac 7500 (pci 604e/200 running debian/os9) and i have linuxppc cd that i can boot directly from cd, i dont know how this is done but i remember vaguely something about it having a mac filesystem and a system folder with a linux kernel making the mac firmware belive it's a mac system. They are still available on the net, don't know if every version released where able to do this but i have at least one here on my desk.

Re:Requirements?

[Anonymous Coward]

like you i have an old world mac. i gave up and moved on to x86.

Finally I can use the Lab MACs

[rkz]

This is great! When the Lab runs out of normal PC's theres always a few Macs left and now with my shiny Linux PPC cd I can use these heaten machines without cringing at MacOS 9 and actually have some decent apps.

Re:Finally I can use the Lab MACs

[krog]

NetBSD's run on macppc for a long, long, long time.

Re:Finally I can use the Lab MACs

[garcia]

make sure that there are no rules against doing something like that. Many lab machines are locked down to only allow a certain range of applications and storage points.

This could be considered circumventing those security features and could get you in quite a bit of hot water.

Re:Finally I can use the Lab MACs

[rkz]

There is a clause about tampering with software but as soon as I take the CD out everything should be as it should be! Those pasty students who work on the helpdesk don't say anything to me because I give them porn DIVX's.

Re:Finally I can use the Lab MACs

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ, when you need to boot Linux to use the ethernet devices then I think it's time to consider a new school.

(Translation: MAC is an acronym for Media Access Controller, Mac is short for Macintosh. It's not an acronym, so there's only one upper-case letter. Unless of course you really were talking about the ethernet device...)

Re:Finally I can use the Lab MACs

[Anonymous Coward]

Addendum:

(Although I do notice that you used the correct capitalisation in the message body.)

Re:Finally I can use the Lab MACs

[imadork]

Dude, if you're going to be spending any time at all at the Mac labs at your school, you should learn now that the computers are Macs, and not MACs!

Calling Macs "MACs" is the surest way to get a wedgie from the Mac faithful...

Re:Finally I can use the Lab MACs

[PhoenixK7]

I didn't know you could run anything on a MAC. I thought they were just alphanumeric strings used as hardware addresses.

(note: It's a joke, I'm using an iBook and am currently downloading one of these images from a less slashdotted mirror. Though they are doing pretty well considering the oregon state server just had some hardware issues.)

Re:Finally I can use the Lab MACs

[Anonymous Coward]

The Macheads are perhaps the biggest geeks in the world. And there's nothing worse than disrespecting a geek's platform of choice! They might fight like girls, but they still know how to kick, and won't be above kicking a "PeeCee" user in the balls!

Re:Finally I can use the Lab MACs

[Anonymous Coward]

Pussyass? Do you imagine that people have pussies in their asses in order to justify your guilt-ridden homosexual endeavors?

Re:Finally I can use the Lab MACs

[DickBreath]

But with "live" CD's?

Re:Finally I can use the Lab MACs

[Anonymous Coward]

actually, you shouldn't be able to...any decent mac administrator will have set an open firmware pasword and won't let anyone boot off of the cd drive

Re:Finally I can use the Lab MACs

[Game Genie]

I work at a unversity computer lab help desk you insensitive clod! Honestly, I wouldn't care if you booted the computers with your own boot disk, and I doubt any of my fellow lab attendants would either. My view on such issues is that it's not my problem if you screw somthing up, it's the admin's problem, and since I spend most of my time warring with those morons for making lousy images and other atrocities, good ridance.

Re:Finally I can use the Lab MACs

[Game Genie]

If you are familliar with the way university labs are run, you would know there is no such thing as a decent mac admin. The jerks running the show are all windows biggots and hire mindless flunkies to admin the macs.

Re:Finally I can use the Lab MACs

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidently you aren't familar with the way all mac labs are run on campuses...this is exactly how mine is setup. Although, I will conceed that the vast majority of "jerks running the show" are windows biggots.

Because OSX boot disks can be a pain.

[japhmi]

This is great, because making an OSX boot disk can be a pain in the arse. I could use this to run a program like Radmind to image a mac from a CD. With Unix(tm) tools able to run cross-platform, I can use Linux as a repair cd.

Very happy.

Re:Because OSX boot disks can be a pain.

[qwertme]

Have you ever tried creating and booting from an OS X CD??? It IS a pain, the creation is easy, but the CD takes a very long time to boot... This Gentoo LiveCD is a great idea

Re:Because OSX boot disks can be a pain.

[Anonymous Coward]

I do it everyday, it takes like 5 minutes. Again, if you can't use the os x boot disk to do this, you are an idiot.

I thought that was a troll...

[siskbc]

...but then I realized there wasn't anything in it that wasn't pretty much true. If anything it's flamebait...but correct flamebait. Sorry.

Re:I thought that was a troll...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but then I realized there wasn't anything in it that wasn't pretty much true.

Christ man.. will you lay off the double negatives? It took me a while just to figure out what the hell you were saying.

Re:I thought that was a troll...

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ man.. will you lay off the double negatives? It took me a while just to figure out what the hell you were saying.

Well, my copy editor for my slashdot posts is on vacation this week. Sorry to tax your circuits.

Gentoo LiveCD?

[Ed Avis]

I'm confused. Does this mean you stick the CD into your computer, it makes a huge RAM disk, copies in the source code, compiles it all, and two weeks later you have a system ready to use right away?

Re:Gentoo LiveCD?

[Blademan007]

A Gentoo LiveCD is a bootable demonstration of what Gentoo linux would look like on your machine. However, it is not a source compiled installation. But once the LiveCD is booted, you can install a source compiled Gentoo installation.

Re:Gentoo LiveCD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, can you clarify a bit?

You mean, ala' BeOS in a former life, you can do a "target" install to a whole 'nother partition(s) with the booted bootable CD?

Re:Gentoo LiveCD?

[Anonymous Coward]

The word 'another' is a comtraction of 'an' and 'other'. You can't split the an.

Re:Gentoo LiveCD?

[krrt]

Of course you can split 'an'; in fact, it's quite convenient to split it right down the middle. Given your penchant for non-standard spelling ('comtraction'), I'd think you'd be appreciative of non-standard orthography.

Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[Davak]

I have heard the Apple vs PC discussion a lot; however, recently a *nix friend of mine was asking me if the apple or PC hardware was better for a new *nix installation.

I don't know... so now I ask you...

Which hardware would you rather buy for a new home linux system?

Thanks in advance...

Davak

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[plastik55]

Which hardware would you rather buy for a new home linux system?

x86 hardware for a desktop, Apple for a laptop.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say...

Whichever is the cheapest.

Guess that narrows that one down.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhm, well I'm going to answer this in two ways:

First, if your friend is just into *nix, then OSX is an option, without any Linux whatsoever.

Second, there is no reason whatsoever to pay the prices on Apple's hardware unless you plan on using Apple's software. Which isn't to say it's not worth paying for Apple's hardware, it just seems to be a strange choice, paying extra for a software/hardware bundle and not using the software.

So, in summary:

Get a clone if you want a cheap Linux box (do hardware research FIRST mind you).

Get a Mac if you want the best consumer Unix currently available and installing Linux is just an added bonus.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[DShard]

I really don't see any benefit to an Apple Laptop... Though I could be wrong. One HUGE advantage may be out of the gate hardware support. I would love to get my Inspiron 8100 to have all the battery monitoring and such working. I have got it working (with no work) on Redhat 7.1. But I need to look into it for Gentoo.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[jellomizer]

Well I would more strongly urge you to use a P3 other then a 486. A 486 will work fine with Command Line but once you get into X-Windows prepair to snooze.
But the bet choice for linux is Some sort of X86 Platform. Because most of the precompiled application work for x86.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[reiggin]

because 99% of it's capability is unusable under lunix.

if someone in here buys a $1500 mac and puts linux on it, I'm gonna find you and beat you to death with a clue stick.

How about somebody beat you to death with a preview stick or a spell-check stick?

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[Arker]

Someone else already said x86 for desktop, ppc for laptop, and I basically agree.

The downside to the ppc on desktop is price/performance. It's not a huge gap. But you definately get more flops per buck on the x86 market.

PPC is really a much better designed architecture, however. One of the main practical benefits is a cooler running system using less power. Very important points on a laptop. Not insignificant on a desktop either, but not nearly as important there.

Apple laptops are really nice. Whether running OSX or Linux. For a portable workstation I wouldn't go any other way.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[valisk]

Just dont think your clever and will install Linux on your brother-in-laws NuBus PowerPC assuming that it would be as simple as slip in the Debian boot floppy and move on from there, like *cough* my friend did :.(

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[plastik55]

All in all the Apple laptops are very well supported for linux--builtin Airport, power management, sleep and wake, video and sound chipsets, and USB/Firewire. The only thing I don't have working on my old iBook is the NTSC video output which I don't really have a use for. The build quality is superior to most Dells and the battery life is typically much better. Most of the people working with Linux on PowerPC are running Apple laptops, so the hardware tends to be very well supported by the community.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[be-fan]

Heh. A guy with an Inspiron should be the first person to understand the benifets of an Apple laptop:

1) Small
2) Light
3) Power efficient
4) Cool (as in not burning hot)
5) Well built.

All things that the Inspiron most definately isn't. Of course, I love my I8200 dearly, because of its capabilities as a portable workstation, but if I didn't need the power (and Apple would get with the '00s and finally start bundling those gorgeous UXGA screens :), I would definately get a machine that didn't need dual 8000 RPM fans just to keep the temperature at "mildy scalding."

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so true. I've a 550 TiBook & I'm full-time Linux(Gentoo). I understand that this combo isn't the most workable for everyone, but it kicks as for me.

A few points as to why:

I dig Linux and I dig learning about Linux, OSS, & friends. Linux on PPC is often more work, but you learn a great deal more than if you had simply point-click-installed Red Hat on your Intel. If you'd like to be a professional Red Hat reinstaller or an end user, don't go near PPC/Linux and stay well clear of PPC/Gentoo.

Sure, Gentoo's software build/installer is slower than grabbing the nearest RPM, but it near always just works! This is a bonus when I'd like to kick off a utility install while continuing to manage other work. The initial Gentoo install can be extremely time consuming, however later, when installing relatively small utils (tcpdump,ntop,etc.), not having to worry about the deps is... nice. .02 -

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[Anonymous Coward]

How about somebody beat you to death with a preview stick or a spell-check stick?
Sounds like you could pull that stick out of your ass, migt do you some good.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[endikos]

MkLinux, however, will. Okay, so it's not maintained anymore, but it's the only distro I could find that would actually install and run on NuBus. (I would have linked to the main mklinux site (http://www.mklinux.org), but it seems to be having issues at the moment.)

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[DrPascal]

If you are solely going to run Linux, I can't see a really valid reason to not go with an x86 based chip, for price and performance's sake. They're going to run the same linux apps.

The only reason I could see going with a Mac is for either a dual-boot situation for OSX, or if you plan to run MoL. To me, the only reason to do any of this is if there's some "killer app" that only runs in OS9 / OSX. Otherwise, don't bother.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[Simon Brooke]

Which hardware would you rather buy for a new home linux system?

OK, lets start by saying I don't honestly know the answer to this because the last Mac I actually did anything serious with came with 128Kb (yes, that's a 'K') of memory (although it was later upgraded to 512Kb and that's still a 'K').

However it's my perception that apple hardware is on the whole substantially better build quality than equivalent generic PC boxes. Also, of course, architecturally they're much nicer. But you pay a very high premium for the better quality. I tend to home build my personal boxes using the best quality components I can get, so my current twin Athlon 1800 cost about 1100 UK pounds. To get equivalent performance on a Mac it looks like I'd have to pay 2099 UK pounds or nearly twice as much, and for that I'd get a single IDE disk instead of a SCSI RAID array.

So, beautiful machines but if you're going to throw MacOS into the bit bucket (as I would) at a scarey price. If you want really beautiful high quality hardware slightly behind the modern performance curve, buy a second-hand SGI box off ebay.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[digital_franciscan]

This view has generally been true. I'm really curious what experience people are having with the new Intel Pentium M chips (aka Centrino when decked out with the wireless stuff) in laptops. Are they really cooler and do they use less power? In other words, do they now finally trump Apple's PPC laptops? I can imagine that the Vaio Z series would be a stylish competitor to a PowerBook -- but only if the CPU lived up to the hype. What's the word out there?

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[jcenters]

*Ahem*

I hate to burst everyone's bubble here, but I currently own a Powerbook G3 (Lombard). While I love my Mac, the thing is too damn broke to be of much use anymore.

Here's a list of problems:

1. Crappy power connector that breaks easily, leading to several repairs.
2. It runs so hot the plastic feet melted off within a month of purchase.
3. Plastic IR cover broke off.
4. And to top it all off, the damn hinge is broke, and the screen won't stay up. (A commonly suffered Apple defect that they refuse to acknowledge.)

   From my understanding, the durability of the Powerbook has only gone downhill since the move to Titanium and now Aluminum, and the crippling broken hinge defect is still there.

   I'd love to get a new Powerbook, or at least use my current one, but until Apple issues a recall, or at least improves the design of current models, I'll be damned if I own another Apple or laptop.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's a 'Ki' (kibi), because it's 1024 of them, not 1000. Check the IEC bulletin on it.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[jschottm]

As the owner of an Inspiron 8500 and the user of a 12" Powerbook (and sometimes using a 15"), I have this to say:

1. Well yeah, the Inspiron isn't small. That's why I bought a unit with a wide 15" screen. On the other hand, I have little details like pageup and pagedown keys (and others that are missing on the Apple), full size arrow keys, dedicated audio controls, four mouse bottons, a touch pad, and an eraser mouse (AKA a 2 dimensional scroll wheel). I can understand why some of these things are missing on the 12" because of size issues, but there's no excuse for the larger Mac notebooks not having a usable keybaord. Fn-tiny-arrow-key-up is NOT the same as hitting pageup.

2. My 8500 isn't much heavier than the Powerbook, despite having a much larger screen.

3. Both get about three hours battery life with 802.11 on.

4. Cool? Have you touched a 12" after it's run for an hour? The entire case gets hot. Uncomfortably hot. Give me a fan that runs every now and then any time over that.

5. Neither's failed yet. They both cost about the same, have simular specs other than the screen difference, but my Dell has a three year, no fault warantee at that price.

P.S. To anyone considering getting a Powerbook to run Linux on, make sure you check that it's video card and wireless nyetworking are supported under Linux.

Joe Schottman

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[OS24Ever]

P.S. To anyone considering getting a Powerbook to run Linux on, make sure you check that it's video card and wireless nyetworking are supported under Linux.

Does that include the Airport Extreme that is in my 12" Powerbook?

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[PapaZit]

I have a 12" Powerbook that gets warm enough in the left front corner to cause extreme discomfort. I'm too much of a wuss to leave my hand there long enough to see if it'll actually cause physical burns, but I suspect that it would.

As far as "well built" goes, I have one of the wobbly ones, too.

This is a two week old laptop, BTW.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[gearheadsmp]

Get a job if you feel the need to "justify your existance".

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[Knife_Edge]

Oh, right. You found MkLinux, that little piece of Apple abandonware that has not been maintained in years and moreover never reached beyond developer releases when it was being worked on. Let me just warn anybody who thinks this is the solution to installing Linux on a nubus mac - This distro simply is not functional. Not even close. This is one case where results from google do not come close to reflecting the reality I came to discover through unfortunate experience. Conclusion for nubus powermacs: give up now, do not even try. I desperately wanted to believe that Linux, with its stellar reputation for running on all sorts of hardware, would work on nubus macs. This is one case where, reputation notwithstanding, it will not. Sorry.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[valisk]

Yeah, I've been taking a look at mklinux and it seems to be ok, particularly that you can 'upgrade' it to Debian, but it's the messing around with unusual 'fdisk' type tools, like Apple's own OS8 disktools, which won't let you rename drives, or for that matter the curious failure to spin up a drive from a cold reboot thats made me^^^^^^my friend wish he hadn't bothered ;)

Still Im sure it will be worth it in the end

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[be-fan]

I have a very hard time believing that your I8500 gets anywhere near 3 hours of battery life. My I8200 is lucky to make it to 2, and that's with 802.11b off! Anyway, I wasn't talking about the Powerbook so much as the new iBooks. Those are most definately lighter, cooler, etc than the Inspirons.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[ebooher]

Hello friends and planetpeople (A globally PC term akin to countrymen?) It's time once again for Uncle Eclipse's Bullshit Theory of the Day!

At 13:22 June 03, 2003 Mr. Davak asked "Which hardware would you rather buy for a new home linux system?" Which was apparently asked by a *NIX loving friend of his. As a *NIX loving systems admin myself I think now is the time to throw in my 2 cent rant.

But before I can even begin, a question needs to be asked. What is this *NIX loving friend going to be using the machine to do? Because .... I'm using a SUN SPARCstation 5 .... and it's pretty *NIXy

But on to the BTD!! IBM is currently working like mad to get the PowerPC 970 ready for mass production. Apple has a conference slated for this month (oh the giddiness!) Intel and AMD are still trying to figure who can do 64 bits better, and VIA continues to make one heck of a *cold* x86 compatible chip.

What does this all mean for our *NIX loving friends? What can't you run Linux on today?

Linux, as everyone is well aware, was originally designed, coded, fed, raised, and potty trained on an x86 devised system. Put into the Internet central core by some Finnish guy that no one can remember the name of, Linux on x86 is like butter on bread. It just feels *so* good!

For a "Build it Yourself" kind of guy, Linux on an x86 can do no wrong. I personally have a dual Pentium II 300 Mhz system with 128 MB of RAM running Linux as an internal file server for my house ..... which would be pretty huge to all of you if you knew the infinite amounts of Pr0n the thing supplies each of the bedrooms with on a daily basis. It was designed and bred for this very purpose. *NIX serving on an x86 platform.

However, Linux was also built to be fairly portable. The fact that it's very code is available to anyone with the mind to read it guarantees this fact. If an engineer can design a processor to do something, *anything*, there is a geek somewhere that can figure out how to get Linux on it.

Which brings me to my Blue and White G3 (I believe it's a "Yosemite" to the Macifites) and my beloved PowerMac 8500. Ah the love ...... My 8500 has two non Apple NIC's in it along with YellowDog Linux for Mac's. It is *SO* happy to run as a Firewall I can't even begin to explain it. (Trust me, if you use Linux on an 8500 .... get a NIC for it. The Apple NIC is really weird, and I'm not so sure it isn't using something odd on the motherboard. The thing never seems to flow quite right.) So the PowerPC processor also takes to Linux like a duck on water.

And this is what IBM is hoping for. Going back to the IBM PowerPC 970, it is the new "desktop" chip from IBM based off of the Power4 (none of this is new to long time Slashdot patrons.) It is 64 bit and from what little has been heard about it, will be a fairly screaming little chip ..... for Linux.

IBM is going to attempt to enter the *NIX Workstation market. A market long dominated by the likes of my (also) beloved SUN and (to a degree) by SGI. What makes this so interestingly important? Intel builds a processor, and places this processor on the market for the widest possible penetration. Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, BeOS, even OS2 .... all designed *toward* or *around* the processor. IBM has (kind of) reversed this and is designing their processor around the Linux kernel. They are placing huge amounts of R&D money on this chip, why? To give it to Apple and let them run it as a G5?

No! To give it to themselves and use it as an x86 equalizer. Titanicium or whatever Intel's 64 bit chip is called and the Hammer are all new implementations of code by companies that have like 400 years of 32 bit experience. IBM has been using the Power4 for a generation now. They have some of the bugs worked out of it. And now they are working their little butts off to get Linux

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[alitaa]

i rather pay $200 to apple for software then $10 to micro$oft you can build your own PCs, but you can build your own macs too. so you dont have to pay either of them. on laptops it looks a bit diffrent. im planing to buy a lappy this summer. ill buy a mac because i refuse to buy a m$ license

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[bsharitt]

A cheap G3 iBook isn't to bad of a deal even with out Mac OS X. Since Linux isn't Altivec optimized, theres really no reason to go with the PowerBook for Linux.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[baur]

Sure MkLinux can be functional... although it certainly was only in development releases. I set up a PowerMac 6100/66 with DR3 for a high school I was working at to help track student attendance and run specialized reports. To my knowledge, they are still using it three years later (don't know, I've lost contact after about a year and a half).
Anyway, that was running Apache (most recent at the time, I think) and PostgreSQL (a version back, I couldn't get the current to compile properly). It was a great way for me to learn linux - being a mac-only guy up until then.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[reiggin]

I know it's now OT, BUT:

"existence"

Have I made my point yet?

Maybe my job is copy editting. Every think of that? It pays well, you know.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[Anonymous Coward]

GCC 3.2 spun Linux IS Altivec optimized.

And as for the 'no reason to switch' bit ...
(1) display,
(2) form factor,
(3) display,
(4) omg display,

I like to think I'm in the substance before image camp, but after this book... well, if I can't have
her, nobody can!

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe my job is copy editting. Every think of that?

You should make that your sig.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[Anonymous Coward]

The airport extreme is not supported by linux (yet), but the original airport card works great. If you have an airport-extreme-only mac, like a 12inch g4, you need to get a usb wireless interface. There are a few available that work in both OS X and linux (check apple.slashdot.org archives for a story about hacking one driver to work for most of the usb802.11b devices in os x).

Basically, the g4 12'' has 802.11g, not b, and linux doesn't support that _anywhere_ yet. One PC linux users can do 802.11g, your mac will be able to too.

Re:Apple vs PC - Without the Flame War

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, you're paid too much.

I'm glad to see this happen!

[carl67lp]

When my girlfriend bought an iBook, I begged her to let me put Gentoo on it. She wasn't keen on that at all, enjoying the Mac OS X interface just fine, thank you.

Now I'm finally able to run Gentoo on her system without screwing anything up. This should prove to be a lot of fun:

"Look, babe, I put Gentoo on your computer!"

"WHAT?!? Where are my Sims?!?"

"Um...woops?"

I'm evil.

Honestly, though, this is going to be great for a lot of developers. Now we can take a couple of Gentoo LiveCDs around with us and boot nearly any personal computer up with our favorite distribution.

I work for Gentoo, but I'm also honestly hooked on it. And I'm no zealot either--I know its limitations and I know its strengths. But the release of a PPC LiveCD can do nothing but help the overall Linux effort, including Gentoo, and will undoubtedly be a boon for all of OSS.

Seriously!

Re:I'm glad to see this happen!

[Requiem]

"Look, babe, I put Gentoo on your computer!"

"WHAT?!? Where are my Sims?!?"

"Um...woops?"

I'm evil.

Not to mention dead.

Re:I'm glad to see this happen!

[carl67lp]

Not really. I'm the one who bought her the laptop, and all of her Sims titles. Well, all but one, I think.

Re:I'm glad to see this happen!

[JargonScott]

Later that evening....

"Hey babe, wanna go do it?"

"Um...no?"

Re:I'm glad to see this happen!

[pen]

This post could have been much shorter:

"Dude! I have a girlfriend!"

Re:I'm glad to see this happen!

[Anonymous Coward]

So how is that different from any other of his evenings? Girls don't like doing it with pear-shaped fatsos with bad acne and back hair.

Re:I'm glad to see this happen!

[MmmmAqua]

I gave my girlfriend my iBook when the 12" PowerBook came out. The first thing she did was order and install the Sims for OS X, along with all of the expansion packs.

Thank you for this wonderful, wonderful, wonderful idea. Now maybe I can hold this over her head, and force her to stop telling me every detail of her Sims' virtual lives...

Her: "Ooh, Sim-Kyle took Sim-Natalie out on a date, and some Sim-hoochie walked by and Sim-Kyle whistled at her! Sim-Natalie got so Sim-mad she stormed out and now she won't talk to him!"

Me: ::flashes Gentoo CD:: "Don't make me banish your Sims..."

Her: ::makes me a sandwich to appease me, and finally shuts up about her damn Sims::

Re:I'm glad to see this happen!

[Anonymous Coward]

>>I'm evil.

And now single

Re:I'm glad to see this happen!

[Anonymous Coward]

You stupid idiotic gheek frhreek, you don't have a girlfriend and you know it. You've never touched a woman in your entire pathetic life.

Re:I'm glad to see this happen!

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's what happened when I decided to let my woman wear shoes. The End.

Re:I'm glad to see this happen!

[American AC in Paris]

"Look, babe, I put Gentoo on your computer!"

"WHAT?!? Where are my Sims?!?"

"Um...woops?"

I'm evil.

Not to mention dead.

Heh. Evil and dead, for running a Gentoo LiveCD on a GF's Mac.

Something about an Army of Dorkness seems appropriate here...

Re:I'm glad to see this happen!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think that after she brutally slaughters you that she will care that the laptop and Sims "technically" belong to you?

Good luck with that...

Re:I'm glad to see this happen!

[Anonymous Coward]

Replace that last line with "violent bloodbath ensues".

Re:I'm glad to see this happen!

[clifyt]

Nah -- its more "Dude! I Had A Girlfriend".

Anyone wanting to screw up a perfectly good unix to make way for a geek religion version of unix doesn't need a chick -- and probably won't have one for long.

Re:I'm glad to see this happen!

[jimmyharris]

Maybe it should be - Dude, where's my girlfriend?

Anyone have a .torrent link?

[jdawg]

sure would make me happy.

Re:Anyone have a .torrent link?

[BrookHarty]

Wonder why Gentoo doesnt put up a torrent link and save them some bandwidth. I'd put up a bittorrent link, but the catch, you have to have the files first! ;)

Re:Anyone have a .torrent link?

[Blademan007]

Taken from MentlFlos's link below:
Gnome
KDE

Re:Anyone have a .torrent link?

[MentlFlos]

scroll down then....

Re:Anyone have a .torrent link?

[Verence]

gnome
kde

Re:Anyone have a .torrent link?

[Verence]

Having issues with the KDE iso. Don't download.
Gnome worked fine.

Re:Anyone have a .torrent link?

[VAXGeek]

Having issues with the Gnome iso. Don't download.
KDE worked fine.

Re:Anyone have a .torrent link?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having issues with both isos. Don't download.

Re:Anyone have a .torrent link?

[Blademan007]

There have been a couple of reports of *.iso corruption. So verify your iso using the md5s from the download link

So much for Yellow Dog

[corebreech]

SuSE had a decent PPC distribution too. This seems like such a no-brainer... probably the only way you could expect widespread adoption from the Mac crowd.

Re:So much for Yellow Dog

[mbourgon]

Widespread adoption of what, exactly? Unix? Too late...

Re:So much for Yellow Dog

[BigBir3d]

Only about 25% of all Macs actually run OS X today. Most are still on OS 9.

Re:So much for Yellow Dog

[Anonymous Coward]

probably the only way you could expect widespread adoption from the Mac crowd.

No, I think you'd have to make a Unix-based OS that ran commercial software and then make sure it was tightly integrated with the hardware, then distribute a few killer applications which are also integrated...thus providing a seamless, highly polished experience...all with the power of Unix underneath.

But as you've already guessed where I'm going with this I'm not going to finish it.

Why Gentoo?

[Ost99]

LiveCDs are cool. I'm use Knoppix all the time (Linux bliss in the computer lab, finally).
But what is the logic behind using a source-based distribution for a LiveCD?

I don't have anything against Gentoo, but fail to see *why* Gentoo...
Is PPC support better with Gentoo? Or are the Gentoo guys just the first ones to do this for PPCs?

- Ost

Re:Why Gentoo?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the same thing as Knoppix, X, GNOME, etc is already compiled and ready to go, cept these cds are based on Gentoo, instead of Debian.

Yes, they are the first ones to do this for PPC, afaik.

Re:Why Gentoo?

[FreeUser]

LiveCDs are cool. I'm use Knoppix all the time (Linux bliss in the computer lab, finally).
But what is the logic behind using a source-based distribution for a LiveCD?

I don't have anything against Gentoo, but fail to see *why* Gentoo...
Is PPC support better with Gentoo? Or are the Gentoo guys just the first ones to do this for PPCs?

First, Gentoo is much more than a source based distro.

1) portage is arguably the best package manager known to man. It exceeds IMHO apt-get, which is perhaps the second (or maybe third, depending on one's POV) finest package manager. Having easy access to portage from a live CD is fantastic for those who want to go the next step and actually install Gentoo, or rescue an existing Gentoo system.

2) Being a source based distro means one can optimize one's build to their own hardware. Taken a step further, one could optimize a Gentoo LiveCD for their hardware (PPC, Athlon v. Intel, etc.)

3) Source based v. Binary based is, for purposes of RUNNING the LiveCD, completely orthogonal, as the LiveCD itself contains all binaries. So, the best answer to your question as to why is "why not?"

While the tools available to Gentooers allow for more optimization out of the box than, say, Debian by default (yes, you can build debian from source with apt-get, but as one who as done so I can say it is quite painful), to those running the LiveCD the only affect will be a faster, snappier LiveCD, assuming they have downloaded an ISO optimized for their architecture.

For those of us running Gentoo it is a godsend ... we get all the benefits of being able to give away live CDs to our less computer-literate friends with our favorite distro, but most importantly, we can use the disks ourselves to install Gentoo, upgrade, or rescue it, and all the utilities present are familiar and located in familiar places (something not always true with a liveCd from another distro). Of course, this works both ways if one prefers Debian, Mandrake, or what have you.

Re:Why Gentoo?

[GauteL]

I just seriously hope you are not promoting Gentoo as someones first distribution, something which quite frankly will scare off most people forever.

Yes, Gentoo is probably great for some, but most people just really want to run a system that is not as painful to install and upgrade. They do not want to compile all their apps, and just want a clean 10 seconds binary install.

Gentoo is probably one of the least generally acceptable distributions, and people should accept it as a niche product, albeit a fine niche product.

When it comes to apt-get vs. portage. I can install a full GNOME install, Mozilla and Open Office in less than 5 minutes with apt-get. How long does it take with Gentoo? 5 hours?

Re:Why Gentoo?

[paranode]

I can install a full GNOME install, Mozilla and Open Office in less than 5 minutes with apt-get. How long does it take with Gentoo? 5 hours?

WMs like Gnome load very fast though. And Mozilla and Open Office open up in about 1 second (or less). How long does it take with Debian? 1 minute?

Just a comical retort here, move along.

Re:Why Gentoo?

[i am lose cannon!!]

Comical indeed.

Re:Why Gentoo?

[GauteL]

This is just comical. I've compiled things myself with full optimization, and apart from glibc and the kernel you just don't see these kinds of results. At most you get a 10% performance increase. More often you wouldn't notice it unless you've compiled the system yourself and look for speedups.

Besides compiling on with big optimizations breaks things very often. Gentoo-users are notorious for reporting bugs that only show up in Gentoo.

Get a hold of these guys

[ferratus]

We finally found people who ACTUALLY do RTFA -- *and* the comments.

They should be considered role model for this place or something.

Fear them.

Re:Get a hold of these guys

[carl67lp]

I'm a documentation editor for Gentoo, and I know first-hand that many, if not all, of the developers scour the Web (well, their favorite sites, like Slashdot, anyhow) and report back any news about Gentoo in the press. They gladly take the bad news with the good--using the bad, as in this case (the former lack of a PPC LiveCD) to retool things, add new features, and generally make people happier.

A lot of people scoff at the Gentoo fanatacism--including the developers--but at least, in this case, I think a lot of that is warranted. Perhaps not all of it, mind you, but definitely a lot. I think we're a good bunch of guys and gals.

Re:Get a hold of these guys

[DShard]

I don't push any distro... but certainly by far my favorite is gentoo. Not really for major optimized performance, but more for it's package management and great community information distribution. I have stopped using goggle and moved to gentoo forums for almost any linux related query.

Currently any system that I use regularly runs gentoo.

Re:Get a hold of these guys

[Rinikusu]

So.. um.. you guys have chicks there? I might have to change distros if Gentoo gets chicks.

Re:Get a hold of these guys

[mmol_6453]

Found one for ya. Here you go.

Re:Get a hold of these guys

[Darby]

I'm a documentation editor for Gentoo, and I know first-hand that many, if not all, of the developers scour the Web (well, their favorite sites, like Slashdot, anyhow) and report back any news about Gentoo in the press. They gladly take the bad news with the good--using the bad, as in this case (the former lack of a PPC LiveCD) to retool things, add new features, and generally make people happier.

A lot of people scoff at the Gentoo fanatacism--including the developers--but at least, in this case, I think a lot of that is warranted. Perhaps not all of it, mind you, but definitely a lot. I think we're a good bunch of guys and gals.

Hmmmm...
perhaps you can help me out with something then.
I recently installed Gentoo on my wife's computer after she borked her RedHat install.
She is quite happy with it and we've had no problems.

Did I do something wrong? This isn't normal behavior for a computer.

Re:Get a hold of these guys

[Mr.Ned]

I'd like to add to this - there's been a recent thread on gentoo-dev on the subject of portage (the Gentoo package manager) under OS X. Currently, it doesn't work. It's about to. Summary of events:

8:02 P.M.: E-mail from user with details on how he tried to compile portage and was hung up on a few issues.

9:25 P.M.: Head developer replies and says he'll do the port.

5:07 P.M. the next day: Head developer updates his status to "should be done today."

That kind of response, interest, and feedback really makes the community great, no matter how many compile-time-fomit-everything jokes there are floating about.

Re:Get a hold of these guys

[Anonymous Coward]

"intelligence" gets chicks. chicks want offspring that have both oars in the water, etc., and can make a living for themselves in an increasingly complex technical world. Install gentoo = demonstated intelligence = attracts chicks. So simple, even the birds do it. Ever see a brightly decorated bird of some sort "showing off" for a female bird?
Now you get it. Too bad no one will tell you where it all ends.

Re:Get a hold of these guys

[Anonymous Coward]

how about being able to boot into an external firewire drive?

Correction: You can run 4 OS's on one computer

[jinglecat]

Instead of one OS, you can run four:
1. Linux
2. Mac OS X
3. Classic (OS 9)
4. Windows (via VPC)
Impressive.

Re:Correction: You can run 4 OS's on one computer

[ZZ-Type]

Instead of one OS, you can run four: 1. Linux 2. Mac OS X 3. Classic (OS 9) 4. Windows (via VPC) Impressive. In addition to your list, I have also run concurrently a copy of Virtual Gamestation in the Classic mode! Make it FIVE!

Re:Correction: You can run 4 OS's on one computer

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, NetBSD? OpenBSD? FreeBSD? Darwin? COS? QueOS? Patmos? OASES?

More than that on 68k machines.

Re:Correction: You can run 4 OS's on one computer

[Anonymous Coward]

Plan 9.

Did you know that slashdot has 20-second minimum wait period from the time you click reply to the time you click submit...i mean that's just stupid. You end up having to type stupid shit like this just to fill time.

Re:Correction: You can run 4 OS's on one computer

[Anonymous Coward]

- More than that on 68k machines. Try A/UX.

Re:Correction: You can run 4 OS's on one computer

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't be so quick to count OS9 or windoze as operating systems.

Gentoo on PPC is really snappy!

[MarcQuadra]

I've been running Gentoo-1.4 release candidates on my G3 server for almost a year now, I can tell you, Gentoo and PPC are an awesome combination.

The PowerPC architecture is amazingly snappy and responsive, even though my box only has a 450MHz CPU. I get the feeling that the PPC arch is a lot less 'laggy' than the x86, just a vague feeling, but it's quite nice. Compiling my whole distro with "-mcpu=750" and a few other options has made my old box into quite a workhorse. Anyone else want to share PPC/Linux experiences?

Re:Gentoo on PPC is really snappy!

[Reblet]

Well, I took the time to install Gentoo (it being one of the few OSes actually recognizing the HD) on my G4 MDD just to have a second OS, and it works pretty good, although I'll admit that you better emerge the big things when you're not going to use the computer... XFree and KDE will take *hours*, even with 2 867Mhz G4 processors and everything optimized. Unfortunately, there are no geForce drivers for the PPC version, which pretty much limits the system, because you're stuck with the 256 color fbdev.

Re:Gentoo on PPC is really snappy!

[deque_alpha]

I have been using gentoo 1.4rcX on my iBook for nearly a year now as well. It has been far and away my best experience in using Linux on the desktop, and I am slowly but surely turning into one of those freaky Gentoo zealots... Every machine that I run linux on (at home or work) are *slowly* getting Gentoo installed on them, but distcc is helping... ;)

Re:Gentoo on PPC is really snappy!

[MarcQuadra]

I find the same thing happening to myself. I started with Gentoo on the G3 as a server, then I decided to ditch W2K on my workstation (for gentoo) and just run win98se on a Via EPIA when I needed MS Office (for work). Now I've got gentoo running on server, workstation, my laptop, the EPIA (got citrix ICA to do windoze stuff directly on the server at work). Next week I'm installing Gentoo on the girlfriend's machine (she's running Mandrake 9.0 now, and it's starting to turn into a twisted mess of RPM hell).

I actually get silently offended when I tell people I use Linux and they ask "Redhat or Mandrake?" I've got friends calling me asking to set them up with gentoo boxen almost every weekend now.

Re:Gentoo on PPC is really snappy!

[mmol_6453]

I think you're confusing your (or my) dream with reality.

First, a girlfriend running Linux? A girlfriend?!

Second, local friends interested in Linux?

I think I'm going to cry...

Re:Gentoo on PPC is really snappy!

[MarcQuadra]

It's true! She's pretty too!

My Myssie

Re:Gentoo on PPC is really snappy!

[Anonymous Coward]

I do all my big emerges overnight.
All these people mocking gentoo compile times must be in more of a hurry.

Re:Gentoo on PPC is really snappy!

[ocelotbob]

Unfortunately, there are no geForce drivers for the PPC version, which pretty much limits the system, because you're stuck with the 256 color fbdev.

Out of curiosity, have you tried just the stock nv drivers? Yeah, they're not accellerated, but I don't see any reason why they wouldn't work.

Mozilla ?

[mirko]

Take a look at the KDE LiveCD running MacOS X in a window via Mac on Linux.

what's the point of having Linux running KDE, running OSX running Mozilla (see task bar) ???
I thought there already was Mozilla for Linux ?

Re:Mozilla ?

[po_boy]

That instance of mozilla is not running. It doesn't have a triangle beneath it on the taskbar. That just means that it's an icon that you can use to start up mozilla.
Such is my understanding.

Re:Mozilla ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Notice, in OS X the open applications have a small black arrow underneath of them... That is only a shortcut to Mozilla...
Whether it's practical or not... who knows.
Perhaps for some reason the person wanted to identify as Mozilla/Mac OS at some website...

Either way, just pointing out that Moz isn't running.

Re:Mozilla ?

[mir@ge]

Flash and Quicktime are some of my favorite uses for MOL. I'd also suggest if you desire the latest Moz build you might just be out of luck with Linux PPC -- unless you roll your own, of course.

-Alec

Re:Mozilla ?

[mirko]

Well, I know it wasn't running, I am typing this from a Mac.
I was just wondering about the need for this program in an emulated environment.

Re:Mozilla ?

[Strog]

You mean virtualized environment.

Mac-On-Linux uses your existing OS9/OS X partition so whatever is installed on that install will be in MOL. If you have mozilla in OS X then you will have it with MOL. It's up to you if you want to use it. Maybe you want to download something directly in your OS X evironment. It's nice to have the option

Watch out for certain mirrors

[carl67lp]

As I look for a fast mirror to download from, I see that many of the mirrors have not been updated yet. In addition, some of them do not seem to have complete files (4.7M for an ISO is a bit small, don't you think?).

Look around and see what you can find. Also, you'll want to look in /releases/ppc/livecd/1.4_rc7 for the files.

Re:Watch out for certain mirrors

[Bimble]

There are links for the PPC live CDs up on LinuxISO.org (at the bottom of the page). Clicking the icon of a disc superimposed on a folder will yield a list of mirrors (only three or four so far), clicking the download link will select one of the mirrors at random. One of the mirrors for Gentoo is iBiblio, which isn't always the speediest mirror to download from but is certainly one of the more reliable mirrors around.

Re:Watch out for certain mirrors

[zerocool^]

4.7M for an ISO is a bit small, don't you think?

This is a feature, not a bug. At gentoo, they are trying to make a smaller, leaner OS that you download and build as you go. =)

See Also: Red Hat 9.0 - 5 650MB ISO's. Talk about windows having a huge install footprint! 5CD's??

~Will

Re:Watch out for certain mirrors

[1010011010]

Let's see. Windows + Office + Photoshop + Visual Studio + Exchange + SQL Server would come to about nine CDs.

Re:Watch out for certain mirrors

[Darby]

See Also: Red Hat 9.0 - 5 650MB ISO's. Talk about windows having a huge install footprint! 5CD's??

Not quite an accurate comparison.
Try Windows plus Exchange plus MSSQL Server plus MSDN plus Visual Studio plus every other program they've ever made plus many they haven't.

Not commenting on the relative quality of the products, just the basic functionality.

Re:Watch out for certain mirrors

[zerocool^]

it was a joke, mostly. I mean, sort of.

Like, I know that the 5 disc set from RH includes sources and docs, as well as the kitchen sink.

But, on a serious note, i was kinda shocked when it came out and i saw how many CD's it was. I cooled down when I realized that you only needed the 1st 3.

But, for what I use it for, I need not 3 CD's. More like, a kernel, compiler and libraries, apache+modules, Mysql, postgres, and then mc and zsh. I don't use much else... So, in a way, a minimalistic redhat system with auto dep resolution that was easy and free would be nice. I don't need X, or gnome, or gimp, or anything like that. I appreciate it (especially on RH9 - ahh, pretty!), but I kinda wish I didn't have to download it, especially on RH release day - whew, what a bottlenek!

~Will

Re:Watch out for certain mirrors

[burns210]

" As I look for a fast mirror to download from, I see that many of the mirrors have not been updated yet. In addition, some of them do not seem to have complete files (4.7M for an ISO is a bit small, don't you think?)."

Torrent files for your enjoyment: Gnomeness & KDEness

Re:Watch out for certain mirrors

[drfreak]

Don't forget those Service Pack CDs they send out once in awhile to the TechNet subscribers, and that frickin' "Plus!" CD.

DOS on Pentium 3 is really snappy!

[TrollBridge]

I've been running MS-DOS 6.2 on my Pentium 3 server for almost a year now, I can tell you, DOS and P3 are an awesome combination.

Not only do my DOS games run so fast that I sometimes drop into seizures, but loading Windows 3.1 only takes a few minutes! Running Works while defragging my hard drive has made my old box into quite a workhorse. Anyone else want to share P3/DOS experiences?

Re:DOS on Pentium 3 is really snappy!

[Jerrry]

I've been running MS-DOS 6.2 on my Pentium 3 server for almost a year now, I can tell you, DOS and P3 are an awesome combination.

Hey, that's nothing! I've got a binary patch to MS-DOS 3.2 to enable hyperthreading on P4 Xeons that's just awesome.

Re:DOS on Pentium 3 is really snappy!

[MarcQuadra]

Actually, I have a running dos6.22/win3.11 combo on my PIII 'just for fun' it is pretty snappy. I can't seem to get it to run SAMBA, NFSD, routed, or mount anything bigger than a 2GB partition. Maybe I should call M$ tech support.

Re:DOS on Pentium 3 is really snappy!

[Anonymous Coward]

FAT16 (DOS/Win3.1) doesn't support partitions larger than 2GB. FAT32 (included with Windows 95 and Windows 98) will... however, good luck getting Win95 to recognize your hardware...

Re:DOS on Pentium 3 is really snappy!

[Hes Nikke]

the best part is that when you start windows, the splash screen goes so fast that you think you just saw a sublimicrosoftsucksminal message

Apple is probably working on this too...

[jabbadabbadoo]

...but they were too late.

So... whatever variant they come out with now, it's doomed to be a "bootleg".

Gentoo icon

[sdibb]

When are we gonna see a Gentoo icon for Slashdot, like the other Linux distros have?

Re:Gentoo icon

[Anonymous Coward]

When are we gonna see a Gentoo icon for Slashdot, like the other Linux distros have?

When 1.4 is released. :P

Re:Gentoo icon

[Cro Magnon]

When it's finished compiling.

Re:Gentoo icon

[Drakonian]

Good point. Why is this even under the Apple section. It has very little to do with Apple.

Re:Gentoo icon

[gearheadsmp]

..which really doesn't take that long when you've got 2-3 i686's linked together via distcc. OpenOffice is, of course, the gluntenous exception. Heck, there's even a distcc build for my Zaurus.

Re:Gentoo icon

[chrispy666]

Then WHO wrote the ebuild for that ? it's always crashing at the same damn line :

include /usr/src/linux/drivers/slashdot.o

any quick fix ?

That's the ticket!

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoo! About time! Now we can get those *pple people off that dying *BSD crack and onto a good, socialistic, OS!

Oh, wait, A*le users are the defintion of "if it's not overpriced, it's of no worth"!

Old powerpc's

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone know if these will boot on a P40 (aka IBM 7020 (i think))? I just got one from my friend's dad's work and it has aix 4.3.3 but i really wanted to experiment with linux on it (seeing as i only have one other machine that i have had too many problems setting up (raid issues, and stubborness to only install sorcerer, lunar, sourcemage, and/or gentoo on it))

Re:Old powerpc's

[Anonymous Coward]

no, they probably wont support this. Those Prep boxen are a little different architecture wise. in fact I'll go out on a limb and say they definately won;'t

They will boot newworld mac's only

Re:Old powerpc's

[mmol_6453]

On PCs, booting from CD is a BIOS function. I don't know if Macs are the same way.

Re:Old powerpc's

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely these won't boot, but checkout debian.org they can get linux to work on almost anything, and if you run into serious booting trouble, checkout netbsd.org they have great documentation on getting a free os (not nessisarily *bsd) going on the most obscure hardware (oldworld macusers take note)

Re:Old powerpc's

[rutledjw]

I'd look at SuSE and RH 7.3. I'm pretty sure those two have support for the older IBM machines. SuSE more than RH. And don't worry about RH being an older version, you can easily upgrade the kernel later if you want.

You have to go to Linux ISO to get the RH version.

Unsolicited advice
I'd play with AIX for a while. It's a great *nix that has some fantastic Disk Management tools that are way above and beyond most other *nixes. IBM has donated a lot of that to Linux, but it's still a little primitive. The AIX LVM is superb as well as tools to move a live partition and resize while mounted, etc.

Many people bash AIX (as I did at first), but some of those tools are really very elegant...

Re:Old powerpc's

[ocelotbob]

I have my doubts that it will. The older POWER-based IBMs were MCA machines, which, doesn't work yet, and NetBSD efforts aren't much better. Your best bet is to keep AIX on that box for a bit longer until the porting effort bears fruit.

I'm sure she'll logically look at these factors

[burgburgburg]

just before killing you.

Loop-aes crypto included ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Gentoo PPC Live-CD support crypto ? I mean : can I read with it my USB memory key in which I have my Knoppix-MiB encrypted /home ?

Distribution....

[fade]

This is a great idea. I was thinking of porting knoppix to the ppc for some time while my life dispatched the regular inerrupt requestors... and in the meantime somebody delivered pretty much exactly what I wanted. =)

those mirrors are getting slaughtered... would somebody (gentoo? gatech?) put up a bittorrent tracker for those iso's?

Figures...

[jbardell]

my beige G3 desktop is JUUUST too old to run this. Fsck you, apple, and your oldworld/newworld bullshit. If only i could figure out how to get my debianPPC install to boot on it...

Re:Figures...

[fade]

Use bootx to boot oldworld macs. The details of this proceedure are well documented in a few different places. google it.

Re:Figures...

[jbardell]

It doesn't have a macos partition or 8.0+ install cd, and noone makes an 8.0+ book disk.

Re:Figures...

[punkass]

http://penguinppc.org/projects/bootx/

Re:Figures...

[Anonymous Coward]

You used to be able to get bootdisks from apple, check around. A longer shot migt be to try to get your hands on an old linuxppc2000 they are still around on old mirrors and is actually a live cd for oldworld macs, the state of linux on ppc in y2k was however somewhat less than it is today.

Re:Figures...

[Anonymous Coward]

netbsd.org has great instructions on diffrent oldworld macs and how to getting them to run somethingother than macos http://netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/models.html#g3v1
s ystem disk (os8 on floppy) http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/ Apple_Software_Updates/English-North_American/Maci ntosh/System/Mac_OS_8.1_Update/Disk_Tools_PPC.img. bin
and how to get it going http://netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/SystemDisk-tutorial /

Re:Figures...

[Anonymous Coward]

make one yourself http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/ Apple_Software_Updates/English-North_American/Maci ntosh/System/Mac_OS_8.1_Update/Disk_Tools_PPC.img. bin

There's a mental picture I could do without!

[Anonymous Coward]

I begged her to let me put Gentoo on it.

'nuff said.

ROFL, really.

Linux boot problems on Macs.

[BrookHarty]

I tried playing around with yellow dog, but sometimes it would mess with my boot sequence, and I couldnt boot into OSX native mode.

This would be great, you dont have to touch the mac's boot sectors.

Re:Linux boot problems on Macs.

[fade]

One of the lovely things about a mac is that it uses a real (openboot) firmware to manage bootstrapping, pretty much like a sparc. if your alias to the boot partition of your OSX install is munged, just give the hardware address to that partition in openboot, and you're good to go.

Re:Linux boot problems on Macs.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what he wanted was for it to NOT MUNGE IT in the first place. Sure you can fix it, if you know what you are doing, but what a nasty little suprise for the average mac user...

Re:Linux boot problems on Macs.

[BrookHarty]

On a PC, theres great howto's and utils to fix these problems. Even with grub/loadlin/lilo I can fix it on x86. On MAC HFS+ and the whole multi partition, boot sequence, bootroom, etc is a little confusing and no documentation is a deal breaker. This gentoo boot cd sounds perfect.

Me too!

[plj]

Using my new 12" AluBook at 4th day now - first Mac I've ever own - and I just got my first kernel panic under OS X, after which the box refused to boot properly at first attempt.

And if I had ordered this thing not 3 weeks ago but now, I'd have spared about 300 - great feeling indeed.

Feels like a great day to try out an alternative OSes...

OK, I admit: some positive things too. My friend visited with his iBook, and Rendezvous worked as expected - and the M$ bluetooth mouse of mine also works perfectly (except the thumb buttons).

BitTorrent Anyone?

[Salamanders]

Damn thats slow. Anyone git a bittorrent up for this?

Re:Theft

[Machine9]

/me points and laughs.
/me downloads ISO.
/me is now happier then you are.

For those with oldworld macs

[jbardell]

I dunno if this will work for the LiveCD, but if you have an oldworld mac, and don't have a macos install/hfs partition, check this out: http://www.mfdh.ca/~mfdh/apple/debian_on_oldworld_ mac.html please don't /. it to death :) Perhaps someone has mirroring abilities?

The perfect way to seduce my fiance....

[Rude Turnip]

into trying Linux, of course! She uses a blue/white Mac G3 400 with 256 megs of RAM and OS X 10.1. Doing anything on that computer feels incredibly slow, even after switching to the peppy (Mozilla based) Camino browser.

Has anyone tried this Gentoo liveCD on a similar Mac yet?

Re:The perfect way to seduce my fiance....

[Anonymous Coward]

Something is wrong here, upgrade to Jaguar. I can run 10.2.6 (Jaguar + all current updates) on a stock Rev. B iMac (G3 233 MHZ + 4GB HDD) with just 160 MB of RAM. Not the fastest thing on earth, but far more than enough for Safari, Mail, iTunes, Proteus and simple text editing.

Re:The perfect way to seduce my fiance....

[Anonymous Coward]

SLOOOOOOOOOw. I just tried the gnome2 cd on my g3/400 imac and osx was MUCH MUCH faster..

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[Anonymous Coward]

"OK, so no serious business is going to even consider Gentoo in the near future"

The United States Air Force and a Major Air Force contractor are preparing to use Gentoo, even without the "proper support and QA in place."

12" Powerbook here I come

[Zork the Almighty]

This just made Apple's 12" Powerbook one hell of a lot more tempting. I want one, but I don't have money to buy a bunch of software for it - at least, not after buying the Powerbook :) I run Gentoo Linux on my desktop at home. This would be totally awesome.

Re:12" Powerbook here I come

[Anonymous Coward]

don't forget, if you want to buy apple products you also need to set aside food, housing costs, clothing, and general purchases before you can buy a powerbook.

Re:12" Powerbook here I come

[Anonymous Coward]

Use fink and you can use the linux software you are acustomed to under macosx. You will get alot of software with your powerbook though. (projectbuilder, interface builder, appleworks, itunes, iphoto, imovie, idvd if you have superdrive, omnigraffle i think,...) You might not even need to buy extra software.

Re:12" Powerbook here I come

[deque_alpha]

Beware the 12" (or 17") powerbooks! They use Nvidia for the video which has absolutely _shitty_ support on PPC. You get fine 2D, but virtually _no_ 3D acceleration. IMHO, the current sweetspot for PPC laptop + Linux nirvana is the 15" powerbook which uses the much more well-supported ATI chipset. The iBooks (I own one running Gentoo...) are also nice and ATI based, but just a tiny bit underpowered if it is going to be your primary machine.

Re:12" Powerbook here I come

[Zane Edwards]

I ran out and got YDL as soon as it was available, but ended up trashing it and keeping os x. Everything just works for me in it. But if you have the time: a couple gotchas with the 12":

• Airport Extreme is unsuported (if not, experimental)
• 3D sucks on it. (even though this is redudant, I am just emphasizing this)
• Sleep

Re:12" Powerbook here I come

[axxackall]

Use fink and you can use the linux software you are acustomed to under macosx.

Been there, don that. Fink is a very slow way to run Linux applications on OSX - comparing to MOL running OSX applications on Gentoo Linux/PPC.

Well, no need to mention that OSX apps in native OSX boot are much slower than Linux apps in native Linux boot on the same PPC. Especially, of course, if Linux is Gentoo.

Re:12" Powerbook here I come

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey now -- don't go out an buy a 12 incher until the end of the month. We need to find out what apple has been up to with this piece of hardware.

While I'm not exactly a big believer in the rumor sights, it is obvious that something must be up with this particular machine. Its doubtfull that a 970 base processor will be in them but on the other hand apple is going to need a massive improvement to the current G4 implementations to make up for the delays seen in this rev.

Thanks
Dave

Torrent files

[MentlFlos]

Ok... yeah its karma whoring but here are the torrent files.

Gnome Flavor
KDE Flavor

Re:Torrent files

[Anonymous Coward]

huh? what about cock flavor?

Re:Torrent files

[mblase]

Nearly useless, since BitTorrent doesn't have a functional OS X client. But thanks. ;-)

Re:Torrent files

[MentlFlos]

Well get coding then! :)

or you could just use this one... (not sure how well it works, if at all. I'm too poor to buy a nice Mac to run OS X on)

Re:Torrent files

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm downloading the gnome version using bittorrent on OSX right now. Please know what you're talking about if you're gonna post.

Re:Torrent files

[Jerm]

Uhh... you mean besides these? Currently getting 0.5M/sec using the 3.1a client

Re:Torrent files

[Neophytus]

tell the people who run bender to set their mime types

Re:Torrent files

[MentlFlos]

fixed (I think). This is just hosted off my desktop here at work. I use it for just random things like slackware isos and torrent files :)

Frick'n dell sucks donkey wang.

Re:Torrent files

[Neophytus]

nope. did you restart your webserver? see here :)

Re:Torrent files

[MentlFlos]

I tried the mime.types change and restarted apache and it just didn't take.

I put it in the httpd.conf file now so it better work :) (does it?)

Re:Torrent files

[Neophytus]

yup. my second time of complaining could have been because i didnt do a refresh on the page so my cache caught it

Re:Torrent files

[PapaZit]

You can download the source, untar, change to the directory, and "./btdownloadheadless.py --url http://foo.bar.blah/goatse.cx.torrent" This requires Python, which is either built-in or comes with the (free) developer tools.

If you argue "that's too complicated!", you probably don't want an iso image of a compile-from-source linux distro in the first place.

Re:Torrent files

[base3]

The guy's a dick--if /. is the referrer, he links to tubgirl. So paste http://torrentse.cx into your browser, and click reload a few times. Run wget in a loop against it if it does anything for you. Dickcheeses that do stuff like this deserve a bigassed bandwidth bill.

Remember, that's http://torrentse.cx

Re:Torrent files

[mblase]

If you argue "that's too complicated!", you probably don't want an iso image of a compile-from-source linux distro in the first place.

I thought the whole point of a LiveCD was to simplify the process in the first place? I can burn an ISO to CD using Toast 5 just fine, and don't even need a command line to do it.

Dependency?

[Anonymous Coward]

Real men use rpm -i --force, you insensitive clod.

Re:Dependency?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just use --nodeps.

Re:Dependency?

[I Have No Moose]

And then you use a repair disk.

Re:Dependency?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or ... --nodeps

not a p40 but some p140 info Re:Old powerpc's

[Anonymous Coward]

tried to boot gentoo cd off of a p140 recently but it didnt work, found this page and have yet to try it. http://www.solinno.co.uk/7043-140/getstarted.php

Re:Hurry up

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo has got to be the best Distro I have used. It does not install 10,000 piles of crap apps that you will never use.

truth

[First_In_Hell]

Running games on Linux is exactly like one thing. Living in 97'. Looking at the blog boards and the rest of slashdot you would think that Linux ruled the universe of the OS. I think not. There are two things that drive a platform. Sex and Games.

Now the sex part is covered as web browsers, newsgroup readers, FTP services are pretty standard across the board now and provided the basic pud pulling requirement of any proper geek.

The one thing that's missing is games. Like, COME ON! Nobody don't gives a shit about MUDDING, or MOOing, or playing that linux port of Quake 3. When all the "new" full price linux titles are basically in the bargain bin at Kmart, being traded for a cold pint or used as coasters for sayd cold pint.

It's mind boggling. I watch these MORON's talk about running their GeForce 4 under linux, as do I (Dual boot Win2k and SUSE 8.0 beside the Xserve running right next to the Ultra Sparc 10). But you know what?

What the hell does it matter if your x Environment is refreshed with a GeForce 4. Realistically all that's needed is a crappy Rage Pro to do what needs to be done under x (KDE or GNOME). Even then the drivers they are running are voodoo3 drivers that have been tweaked a bit you're not squeezing a drop more out of the hardware except by the physical processor. It's like putting a porche engine into a Toyota Echo fer fuck'sake.

No wonder almost every linux bigot I know owns AT LEAST one console (N64, PS2), really now, if their OS had any balls it would be able to use the hardware properly and at least have more than the modern day equivalent of "pong" for something to do.

Because really now, who the hell really needs to play with Apache or Samba that much:

"OOOO , look...another webpage...OOOO ...look! I mapped a drive to the Sun server."

YaWN! You know why there are no games for linux, it's because their owners have no skill and much like the Acedemia that produced it, it continues to live in an unseen ivory tower.

Re:truth

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Porsche in a Echo sounds cool to me. Probably to wide to fit though :(
2. I helped put a Chevy 454 Big Block into a Ford Pinto (just because it would fit).
3. GameCube for me, not N64 or PS2.
4. Linux gaming stopped with Q3A. Anything after that is yet another first person shooter (YAFPS).

Re:truth

[rutledjw]

OK, I'll bite.

Then don't use Linux. Given the tone and content of your post, I don't think you should. I also think you shouldn't breed. But that's another topic.

If you're basing your conclusion WRT Linux on sex and games, then your opinion has no value. As a workstation for programming / tech work Linux is great. As a server it's very good and getting better in the enterprise space.

Even as an office workstation, Linux is making progress.

You know why there are no games for linux, it's because their owners have no skill and much like the Acedemia that produced it, it continues to live in an unseen ivory tower.

If it's possible for this to be any more stupid, I can't think of how off the top of my head. There are few games since there isn't a demand for games on Linux. If there was demand, there would be games. Example; there was a need for a good ubiquitous office quite and look at how far OpenOffice has come! Especially when you consider OpenOffice 5.2 - yeeeech! Even someone totally focused on games and pr0n can use it!

DOH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not much of a surprise. You can't even boot an "old world" mac without Mac OS installed unless you use Qik (shudder). Can't Gentoo use one of the free versions of Mac OS to start the boot? I'm positive at least 7.5.3 was released freeware, I've got a copy of the full version on Mac Addict CD somewhere.

Re:DOH!

[Anonymous Coward]

linuxppc2000 can boot directly from cd on old world macs i've got one here and they are still available on the net, so obviously it could be done.

Re:DOH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah quik...
A firmware bootloader so evil that I still keep a small MacOS partition (copied from a boot disk) on my PowerMac.
That way if quik messes up I can still type 'bye' at the OpenFirmware prompt and get into at least one OS.

(I don't know why I don't just use BootX, after all the entire point of me installing quik was so I could get rid of my MacOS partition.)

And yes, System 7.5.3 has been released for free to the general public.
(System 7? OS 7? I can never keep track of when it stopped being 'System' and started being 'OS')

Six

[Anonymous Coward]

NetBSD.

Any takers for seven?

welp...

[sdibb]

Now I've finally got a reason to buy a Mac! I wonder if I this will work on those Apple IIe's from the thrift store..

Re:welp...

[paradesign]

bet youd make it onto the frontpage if you were successful... and ran a http server from it.

Mod this BitTorrent link please :D

[2nd Post!]

And/Or MetlFlos's link!

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[Dalcius]

I completely understand that this is a joke, but in fair defense directed towards the folks who don't know any different:

1) Many new Gentoo users take up to a week to install it for the first time. That said, many of the kernel sources Gentoo offers (such as Red Hat sources) are patched to the point that ramming your CPU to 100% doesn't slow your box down. The only thing that can make my system lag is heavy disk/swap access.

2) In regards to testing packages, Red Hat, Debian, etc. have been proven to be quite stable. However, in fairness, I'm on the "unstable" tree on Gentoo and I can't remember the last time I had an app crash.

In short, if you're a geek, don't mind a few days downtime for installation and can deal with hand configuring your box, you might give Gentoo a try. The installation process is very well documented, but can be difficult if you run into problems. Once installed, though, Gentoo is the easiest distro I've seen in regards to maintenance and administration.

It's not for everyone, but some will love it.

Ignore the zealots, most of them are just excited, they'll grow out of it in time (I'm speaking from personal experience here ;) ).

Live CDs on CD-RW

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it possible to store a live CD (Knoppix/Gnoppix/Gentoo) on a CD-RW instead of a CD-R, and modify the distribution so that the CD-RW is mounted in R/W mode, allowing you to have some files that are persistent between sessions?

Re:Live CDs on CD-RW

[damiam]

There is no such thing as a RW mode for CD-RWs. They can be written and blanked only. They cannot be used like a regular hard disk, unless you want to delve into proprietary systems like DirectCD, InCD, etc., none of which work under Linux.

Re:Live CDs on CD-RW

[Trolling4Dollars]

If you run Linux you can use 'cdrecord' to burn an ISO9660 image to a CD-RW to use it as a regular CD-R. Later on you can blank it with 'cdrecord' to reuse as something else. Once the cd devices are updated in the kernel to handle read/write, then you will be able to use packet writing with the UDF filesystem. But for now, ISO9660 works just fine. I *think* Nero Burning ROM for Windows can burn ISO9660 to CD-RW as well...

Re:Live CDs on CD-RW

[damiam]

I'm aware that you can write files to a CD-RW. As I said, the current Linux kernel doesn't support packet writing, and even if it did, the reduction in capacity would not be acceptable on an already crammed LiveCD.

Re:Live CDs on CD-RW

[Trolling4Dollars]

You don't need packet writing to use a CD-RW if you are using ISO9660. It just acts like a plain CD-R with the only difference being that you can erase and reuse it.

Re:Live CDs on CD-RW

[Anonymous Coward]

A couple possible alternatives:
- Use Morphix; it's customizable Knoppix, and I think you can burn a second custom track.

- Use Knoppix etc with a USB key drive; Knoppix comes with a tool to make a persistant home dir and store your configuration as well.

Re:Live CDs on CD-RW

[damiam]

I know that. A CD-RW acting like a CD-R doesn't work for storing persistant files between LiveCD sessions. For that, you need to be able to write to the files individually, without blanking the disk.

Re:Live CDs on CD-RW

[Trolling4Dollars]

OK. I see what you mean now. I don't think there are any bootable CD distros out there that do that with CD-RW. Most of the ones I've seen use the HD in the system for persistent storage. It would be damn cool if someone did do it, but it would require that the kernel supports writing to the CD-RW in UDF format. It's on the way, but not here yet. Maybe I misread what you said earlier...

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[Joe Enduser]

I'm too stupid to understand that circular dependencies can be resolved by specifying BOTH .rpms together on the command line

Yes, that's me. But at least I know how to find useful Linux tips by including stupid as a search term!

Needed: Knoppix PPC

[MsGeek]

This would be such a boon...way more important than Gentoo PPC Live.

Re:Needed: Knoppix PPC

[Anonymous Coward]

knoppix sucks

Re:Needed: Knoppix PPC

[burns210]

"This would be such a boon...way more important than Gentoo PPC Live."

They are both Linux, they are both GPLed... the only 'more important'ness Knoppix has would be the hardware detection, and i am sure it can be ported...

Re:Needed: Knoppix PPC

[drfreak]

I disagree. The real original thing about Knoppix is it's automatic hardware configuration, which is a hell of a lot more of an issue on the x86 platform than the ppc one. It's what makes it ideal for gaming. Far as I know, gentoo only supports ATI and NVidia cards.

There already is a Debian for PPC. Knoppix is really just Debian if you aren't using it as a live CD.

I think the gentoo guys are raising the bar by adding live CDs for a new architecture, while allowing access to the native OS at the same time.

Re:Needed: Knoppix PPC

[MsGeek]

There already is a Debian for PPC. Knoppix is really just Debian if you aren't using it as a live CD.

Knoppix HD install is way easier than the typical Debian install. That's the other reason why I'd want a Knoppix for PPC...to get Debian PPC on my PowerBook the easy way.

Then again, I'll prolly just get Mandrake 9.1 PPC and be happy.

Here's nice one

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo Icon

can it sleep well?

[soellman]

I started running debian on alphas back in 97 or so, but have gone fully osx since dp3 (I bought a dual 450 to run it, a far cry from my quadra 840av).. but my 12" powerbook is awesome, and I don't want to give up any convenience by trying out gentoo (which I've run on my firewall for a short stint, and in various other places).

so.
1. can it sleep well? is it gonna freak out?
2. how's the battery life? I get 2-3.5 hours on a battery for my 12" depending on what I'm doing.
3. is there any significant feature disparity between osx and osx in mol?

I could sure get used to running xmms so I can finally listen to mpc's for real, yo.

Re:can it sleep well?

[diamondc]

Don't know too much about Debian PPC (just too much hassle to setup on PPC..), but I did try out YDL 3.0 on my iBook 700mhz and it went to sleep when I closed the lid after 3 seconds and it resumed alright (even with X loaded).

The battery life was around 3hours, Mac OS X I get 3:50 minutes max. Also got about 900fps using glxgears by enabling DRI.

Re:can it sleep well?

[soellman]

okay, I'm sold. I haven't used kde or gnome in years, any recommendations on which one to try?

Re:can it sleep well?

[diamondc]

Might wanna watch out if you have an Nvidia video chipset though..kind of flaky. I forgot which PowerBook models have Nvidia or ATI.

Anyways, use KDE if you want lots of features, or GNOME is you want to keep things simple but without as many features (some would say bloat) as KDE.

Very funny, not very fair.

[MarcQuadra]

Really, I think that's true for most people on Slashdot in general. I myself always WANTED a 'cleaner' source-based distro without the hangups of Debian, and Gentoo provides it. It's very possible to achieve a stable and fast system with Gentoo, you just have to be moderate with your make.conf settings.

I think the BEST thing about gentoo is the installation process. I finally learned how daemons get started, how to set up networking and NFS. All these things were either hidden from me behind GUI utilities or prevented from working properly by services that I didn't know about on more 'turnkey' distros.

Mandrake is cool because a newbie can get it to work. Gentoo is cool because a newbie can become a knowledgeable user after a few installs.

Thanks to Gentoo I finally understand HOW all this *NIX stuff works under the hood and I am MUCH more competent on any *NIX box. I no longer cower in fear of the bash prompt, instead I command my boxen like a pro.

Also, I never liked the 'full-featured' desktops for linux that ship with RedHat or Mandrake. GNOME and KDE always felt slow and unfocused to me. With Gentoo it was amazingly simple to build a system with WindowMaker and the apps I needed without having the overhead of KDE/GNOME running behind it. When I boot up gentoo my RAM usage is 14MB, my 'barebones' mandrake box uses 72MB to get to "login:"

Re:Very funny, not very fair.

[xtrucial]

I don't have much to add, but... right on! I agree. While my Gentoo install was difficult, and I still have trouble (trying to get NTP running), I end up learning *a lot* about Linux/UNIX. And that's part of the process, isn't it? I mean, if I wanted something that "just works", I'd run OS X or whatever. But the thing is, I'm a geek, so I enjoy tinkering and understanding *how* computer stuff works; I'm not satisfied just knowing that it *does* work. Of course, all of this has practical application too: getting compensated in the work world for one's expert knowledge.

Re:Very funny, not very fair.

[Simulant]

Wish I had moderator points today...

As a windows sys admin who is frequently frustrated by not know how to do what should (and probably are) very simple and basic things in Linux, this post makes me want to give Gentoo a try. I need a good education and I don't have the time or patience to decipher man pages.

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Although I can't use the box at the moment because it's compiling something, as it will be for the next five days, it gives me more time to check out the latest USE flags and potentially unstable optimisation settings."

LOL! While reading that I constantly had to glance over to my other computer to see if the Gentoo kernel recompile was already finished (it was not).

Hrshgn

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[Billly Gates]

""Last month I tried to install FreeBSD on a well-supported machine, but the text-based installer scared me off. I've never used a BSD, but the guys on Slashdot say that it's l33t though, so surely I must be for using Gentoo."


Sysintall is weird if you come from a gui oriented world. Also its strange to keep hitting esc to go thru all the different stages no matter which stage you already completed.

That said, its a wonderfull tool that is not hard to use at all. It just has a different way of doing things compared to more text installers. Shifting through the different stages by the esc key is quite usefull and powerfull. You can do everything from seting up your network to enabling default daemons to start at boot time.

I recommend you get the FreeBSD book. FreeBSD is not hard at all. Its alot easier then debian or slackware. It just takes time to get used to.

The ports rock! Its leaps and bounds ahead of gentoo's buggy portage.

The ports are actually stable for one. Second you can go to /etc/defaults/make.conf and do all the settings you use to use in gentoo. This is great for the ports.

Freebsd is just so much more stabler then anything linux has to offer and especially gentoo. I tried it and it was very alpha. Too bleeding edge and the documentation is not as good as Freebsd's.

It's still against the rules.

[mmol_6453]

I happen to work as a tutor in a place like this. I know and love Linux, and I understand you're not messing with the software, but it's still against the rules. That means anyone caught letting you do your thing gets in more trouble than you do. You'd lose your computer access, but I'd lose my job.

Besides, if you're passing me pr0n under the table (which someone undoubtedly has copyrighted), how can I trust you not to tweak the machines, just for fun? I have enough problems with buggy, corrupted, or just plane crash-happy software on PCs, as is. I don't need to risk it happening on a machine type I don't know how to fix.

Re:It's still against the rules.

[rkz]

The reason why the trust me is maybe they like the human interaction with someone of similar intelligence, they are totally geeky while I am a geek too I know non-geeks... What normal people talk about on Monday mornings is how drunk they got on Saturday night and how many girls told them to piss off.

The lab helpdesk guys talk about LAN parties they went to or the new Doom III alpha demo they downloaded (sad really).

Also I occasionally help them fix problems with computers so they have good reason to trust that I wont fuck anything up for them.

For all you know I could be giving them porn from my own dormcam! (haha I wish)
Seriously P2P users/pirates are not bad people! We wont kill your babies or r00t your servers.

Re:It's still against the rules.

[mmol_6453]

I've got a friend who comes in and helps with the Macs, so I see your point on trust. As for geekiness, well, I'm afraid I'm the one of maybe three Unix-adepts among us student tutors. Most of the rest hang around to tutor MS Office and MS Windows.

Sigh...off to help another clueless C++ student.

Re:It's still against the rules.

[Anonymous Coward]

- Seriously P2P users/pirates are not bad people! - A lot of people install XDCC bots or the like on our computers and then install software to move the mouse around randomly/ disable the keyboard (don't the know to send ED to 0x60 ?) so that the labdesk folk can't shut them down. They are not making a good case for you.

An OS that's open source, of course, of course

[corebreech]

You think OS X is going to be cheap forever?

Now I know I'm a geek

[niom]

Because the bit that made me laugh hardest was the invented -fomit-instructions gcc flag. I mean, -fomit-instructions, get it? Now, don't look at me funny.

Torrent here

[PapaZit]

I have a .torrent set up for the KDE version of the Gentoo Live CD here (host is fnord.andrew.cmu.edu. Used IP to avoid DNS slashdotting).

The md5 checks out, but I haven't yet burned it or tested it.

Re:Torrent here

[PapaZit]

Ah, screw it. Don't use mine. Use the one at rit.edu that's already been modded to 5.

Hardware!

[mmol_6453]

There's something nice about a girlfriend whose maintenance includes hardware. Erm...that's computer hardware.

Usage report

[Anixamander]

I downloaded the Gnome iso, burned it and booted. Here are my results on a dual 800 G4 (Quicksilver):

First boot I selected the "live" option, but unfortunately it did something screwy with my video. Nothing was readable, though I could tell it was loading.

Second boot I did the live-safe option. This gave me a usable command line, to which I logged in, tried the xeasyconf option, and tried to startx, but got an error. Went through a few more times with different video options (it was giving some sort of video error) all to no avail.

Anyone have better luck than me? Ragardless, I plan on keeping this disc around to show off the awesome powers of the command line.

Re:Usage report

[Blademan007]

I think the Gentoo guys would love it if you submitted a bug.

One Minor Correction

[FreeUser]

In short, if you're a geek, don't mind a few days downtime for installation and can deal with hand configuring your box, you might give Gentoo a try.

Just a minor point. No downtime is required whatsoever if you have a second set of partitions handy (and with the size of today's hard drives, there really isn't any excuse for not creating a second set of / and /boot partitions to allow multiple, independent installs and provide easy failback if an upgrade goes awry).

Simply install your filesystem(s) of choice on your spare / and /boot partiton, mount them under /mnt/gentoo (or whever), untar the stage 1 tarball into /mnt/gentoo (or wherever), mount -o bind /proc /mnt/gentoo/pric (or wherever/proc) per the install docs, and install in a chrooted environment.

No need to shutdown and boot off of CD (Live or otherwise), no need to do without the services of your existing GNU/Linux installation. The entire process of installing, be it a day (on a fast dual Athlon) or a week (on a slower P2) won't prevent you from using your computer one iota, modulo the CPU and network usage itself (which a ctrl-z will fix if you need the cycles for another task).

It isn't for everyone, but for those capable of going through the install, it is delightful, and as you correctly point out, of all the GNU/Linux distributions far and wide it is hands down the easiest to maintain, administer, and keep up to date.

Of course, it is fashionable to characterize enthusiasts of every ilk 'zealots' these days, and the guise of humor is often used for disseminating such ad homonem labels. However, one can easilly differentiate between a zealot who lives in denial of the shortcomings of his source of zealotry while insisting it is the only true way (Microsoft astroturfers and marketers are a prime example of this, though by no means the only example), while enthusiasts will generally recognize and try to better the shortcomings of their source of enthusiasm, and will generally acknowledge that other solutions work and, while not the enthusiast's favorite, are nevertheless viable.

Most GNU/Linux, Free Software, and open source enthusiasts are not zealots. Many Microsoft enthusiasts (astroturfers excepted) are not zealots. It is past time people stopped misusing the word.

Re:One Minor Correction

[Trurl's Machine]

Simply install your filesystem(s) of choice on your spare / and /boot partiton, mount them under /mnt/gentoo (or whever), untar the stage 1 tarball into /mnt/gentoo (or wherever), mount -o bind /proc /mnt/gentoo/pric (or wherever/proc) per the install docs, and install in a chrooted environment.

Simply, eh? :-)

Re:One Minor Correction

[timeOday]

The entire process of installing, be it a day (on a fast dual Athlon) or a week (on a slower P2)...

I can report having installed gentoo on a p90 with 48 megs of ram, because I had nothing else to do with it. I built the system with X, though not KDE or Gnome, and it took "only" about 5 days. Of course it depends on what you install, but some of the biggies (libc, X, gcc, the kernel) will take quite a while regardless :)

Linux-on-mac?

[DrXym]

Mac-on-linux looks cool and I'm keen to try it out, but is there anything that does the other way. i.e. Running Linux in a window on my Mac?

I'm an old hand with Linux on x86 architectures and I'm familiar with the likes of Gentoo, Knoppix and user mode Linux, but my Mac has to run OS X first and foremost which is why I thought I'd ask.

If I could fire up UML or Yellowdog in a window it would make it considerably easier to run some esoteric Unix app (even with a performance penalty) rather than struggling through fink or whatever I would take it.

Re:Linux-on-mac?

[Jord]

I run intel distros of Linux in a window on my 12" powerbook. Virtual PC (DOS2000 edition, its cheaper) is the ticket. Its great for development when you have to test your GUI on several operating systems.

Re:Linux-on-mac?

[jpkunst]

Mac-on-linux looks cool and I'm keen to try it out, but is there anything that does the other way. i.e. Running Linux in a window on my Mac?

I don't know if there is a way to natively run a PPC Linux in a window within Mac OS X. I use Virtual PC to run an x86 Linux (Knoppix).

JP

Re:Linux-on-mac?

[DrXym]

I have Virtual PC but I'd be looking for something faster. Something equivalent to user mode linux, or Mac-on-linux which executes PPC code natively with some virtualized drivers for display & I/O so it renders in a window but otherwise has near native performance.

I could then run Linux as a process on the Mac, setting it up as an X/VNC server that I connect to with an OS X native client. The performance wouldn't be too bad and I could use it to supplement services already offered by OS X, or to run software which doesn't build on OS X or whatever.

Re:Linux-on-mac?

[drfreak]

I don't see why not. From my limited understanding of Apple/NeXT, OS X runs on top of BSD, which runs on top of the Mach microkernel. Far as I know, Mach was designed with the idea of running multiple operating systems at the same time in mind. I am pretty sure it's what makes "Classic Mode" OS 9 available at the same time as OS X.

If someone knows more about this, please elucidate. A "kernel for kernels" was always a cooler idea to me in comparison to virtualization of resources for an OS which already runs on the same hardware.

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[fudgefactor7]

Why is it that when a Microsoftie says something like this it's "Offtopic," "Troll" and "Overrated" but this gets "Funny"?

But in other news, Gentoo can't help it that it's just the superior Linux distro. Really. So stop picking on it and pick it up!

Gentoo and Slack--it's all you need.

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its leaps and bounds ahead of gentoo's buggy portage. The ports are actually stable for one.

I've been running Gentoo on almost every platform that exists for several months now and I have no idea what you're talking about.

I'm even using the 'unstable' ebuilds on several machines and I haven't had a single problem.

CD boot == unrootable?

[sacrilicious]

Question: does a bootable cd, like this one or knoppix, mean it's either more difficult or impossible for remote hackers to get a root kit into the system?

Re:CD boot == unrootable?

[drfreak]

Not really. But it does mean that if they foobar your system, you just have to reboot to fix it :)

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[Anonymous Coward]

Slightly offtopic, but Debian unstable *is* unstable. This latest bug has broken Evolution.

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen this joke far too many times. Yes, it was funny for the first time, but enough is enough.It's the same thing why I threw my TV away some time ago. Fucking reruns all the time...

Forgot to mention. Wolfenstien Gentoo CD.

[TheWezzel]

I'm amazed that Gentoo Games was not mentioned they released Wolfenstien and have a bittorent to download it!

Oh please.

[Anonymous Coward]

That last line should read more like this:

Her: "Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out, Mr. No-longer-has-a-girlfriend!"

(sounds of kerosene bing poured on recently ex-boyfriend's belongings...and WOOSH!)

Seriously, though (and I realize I'm talking to a Slashdot crowd here), is some linux distro more important than a commited relationship between consenting adults (e.g., sex on a regular basis)? If the Sims thing is really bugging you, just drone on and on to her about the overwhelming benefits of Linux and OSS - that'll shut her up!(see results above)

Just nod and grin like the rest of us, remember that women like it when guys show interest in things that interest them, and move on. If you show interest in what she likes to do, she may be willing to do some of the things you like to do (And I really hope you didn't think I was talking about linux anymore).

Good luck.

Re:Oh please.

[MmmmAqua]

Of course, no Linux distro is more important than my girlfriend. However, getting her to realize that every once in a while she just needs to shut up and leave me alone for a bit is vitally important to continuing our relationship.

If I were to drone on and on about Linux (well, okay, Mac OS X and OpenBSD), she would simply take it the wrong way. Instead of realizing that I am trying to counter her stream-of-gossip monologue with one of my own, she would take it as a sign that I want to communicate more fully, and begin talking even more. I love my girlfriend, and we've been together for over three years, but you need to realize that nodding and grinning is a short-term fix; if she doesn't know you well enough to realize that occasionally you just need some quiet time (like every guy on the face of the Earth), the relationship won't last.

Disclaimer: No, not everything my girlfriend says is inane gossip, but she just called for an hour on her lunch break to babble inane gossip at me, so at the moment my perspective is skewed.

OMFG UR TEH GHEY

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: carriage return.

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[sg_oneill]

Ah.. hehe.

That reminds me of an old search tip I worked out as a techy.

If you cant find an answer to the problem with a bit of equipment, put the name in and add either "fu*ked" or "hosed". Wierdly it works 99% of the time for me.

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[jo42]

AC, please enter following command:

pkg_add RemoveHeadFromRectum.tgz

Completely Offtopic

[Jord]

I had read on the boards that the MS Bluetooth mouse did not work with Apple's Bluetooth (which did not surprise me considering its MS). How hard was it for you to get it working?

Re:Completely Offtopic

[plj]

I had read on the boards that the MS Bluetooth mouse did not work with Apple's Bluetooth (which did not surprise me considering its MS). How hard was it for you to get it working?

I was afraid of this when I purchased it too, but luckily it seems to be completely FUD. OS >= 10.2.5 is required - see this document by Apple (it says "Bluetooth Setup Assistant now works with certain Microsoft keyboards and mouse devices").

The difficulty is, however, that the manual for the mouse is only available electronically after running setup.exe under Windows - and neither the printed installation guide nor readme.txt tells you, that to make the mouse discoverable you have to press the small "Connect channel" button embedded to the bottom of the mouse (MS's own setup wizard seems to be somehow crippled to get the mouse work without using the standard discovery method at all). After you've pressed the button and launched the "Set up Bluetooth Device" wizard, the rest will be breeze - unlike under Windows, according to readme.txt.

The receiver works too, if you just need it - a friend of mine tested it with his iBook, and I for some reason my box kernel panicked when he turned off the receiver after we had used BT file exchange.

I like Gentoo...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo is a great distro because:

1) The install CD is only 224MB (3stages CD), instead of downloading 3 700MB isos.
2) It allows me to only download the software I intend to use without spending an hour trimming down the install defaults.
3) It forces me to remember how to compile a kernel.
4) Installing/upgrading software is very easy to do and can be done via the command line. (in fact I'm installing Mplayer from work via ssh as I'm typing this post)
5) Gentoo doesn't force a DE down my throat, or even worse, two DEs (thanks Redhat, you suck) just to make the internal system admin stuff work

So I think the plus sides of Gentoo far outweigh the minuses (compiling, compiling, and compiling).

I think you should have prefaced your post

[bogie]

Basically your someone who actually wants to learn everything about how your particular distro works. This isn't applying to more and more linux users and certainly doesn't apply to the vast majority of Windows users.

Distros like Gentoo are a throwback and really are more useful as learning tools as opposed to useful OS's for normal people.

I of course have nothing against something like Gentoo let alone Slackware or Debian, but truthfully their way of doing things isn't the future of modern computing.

The future of computing is thankfully not having to worry about compiling kernels and screwing with drivers. The future is a OS that ANYONE can sit down at and be productive right away. Maybe tweakers will find that boring, but after security ease of use will continue to be the most important aspect to any OS.

Knowing how to build an engine and car from raw materials is a nice novelty for engineers, actually hoping in and driving it without having to have a PHD is the important part.

Like I said I have nothing against Gentoo, but spending all your time learning how an OS works is a fairly useless endevor for anyone but admins. Sure you need to know some things, but not to the extent which Gentoo requires. When OS's are mature enough enough to be secure by default, moron proof, and also efficient by default, there simply won't be any need for something like Gentoo.

Re:I think you should have prefaced your post

[MarcQuadra]

I agree about the future of computing, but I think every neighborhood / office /building /small business will want someone who knows the technology inside-and-out to implement it on a large scale.

Sure, compiling the kernel isn't something Joe User wants to do, but if Joe User want to sit down and work, someone in the company's job is to make sure his PC is getting decent performance. The boss isn't going to want to buy new servers and PCs when there's plenty of life to squeeze out of what's already there, those days are (almost) over.

I don't want everyone to start adminning gentoo boxes, I'll admin boxes for them for some loot. That's my niche. The users will be running Gentoo, but they'll never have to look at GCC output or think about syncing the portage tree.

Also, your idea that Operating Systems are going to get simpler is just not feasable. They'll get easier to USE but the tradeoff is that under-the-hood they'll be that much more complex. All technology is like that, a modern car is a very complex machine; sure, automatic transmission is easy to use, but it's a LOT more complex to design, fix, or diagnose than the old manual trannies. Windows XP is (arguably) easier to USE than w98, but it's really an order of magnitude more complex beneath the presentation.

Re:I think you should have prefaced your post

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not THAT hard to use.

My experience with distros (Redhat and Suse) is that they try very hard to make you not have to resort to editing a file so they provide you with lot's of gui's for this purpose. The problem is if the gui doesn't seem to be working it is VERY difficult to find out what files it is using and modifying and attempt to debug it. After a suse utility did a very clumsy merge into an important system config file, it soured me on Suse. Once you start to use a GUI admin tool you have to stick to it. You can't mix hand editing and GUI admin.

Gentoo administration is for the most part through editing files. But you are not searching for files all over the place. Files are logically named and systematically placed in the file system. Not that this couldn't be the case in a binary distro. If gentoo wasn't a source distro, it's organization would still put it head's and tails over redhat and suse.

The env system is a prime example of that. As is the rc system.

Re:I think you should have prefaced your post

[Realistic_Dragon]

Basically your someone who actually wants to learn everything about how your particular distro works.

Be thankful, if there werent people like this you wouldn't have heating, lighting, medical science or anything else more advanced than charred meat and possibly the wheel.

The future of computing is thankfully not having to worry about compiling kernels and screwing with drivers.

Why not, for the people that want it? Personally I wouldn't trust it if I didn't have at least a basic understanding of how it works. (Yeah, I'm an engineer.) At the very least you should insist that a competent friend with your interests at heart understands it.

Like I said I have nothing against Gentoo

Sure you do, or you wouldn't have posted this.

When OS's are mature enough enough to be [...] moron proof

I'll be sure to give you a call.

Re:I think you should have prefaced your post

[lewp]

but after security ease of use will continue to be the most important aspect to any OS.

Can I have some of what you're smoking?

Re:I think you should have prefaced your post

[jaoswald]

Yeesh.

Basically your someone who actually wants to learn everything about how your particular distro works.

Be thankful, if there werent people like this you wouldn't have heating, lighting, medical science or anything else more advanced than charred meat and possibly the wheel.

This is a bit extreme. Learning about any kind of computer OS is an exercise in the most ephemeral kind of knowledge known to man. Ask me about Apple II monitor commands and how useful my knowledge of them will be to all mankind even after my demise. Yes, they seemed vital and exciting to me in high school, but I now wish I had practiced more piano or learned a foreign language instead.

Some people do indeed know a lot more about Linux distributions than I do. For instance, the people RedHat pays for this to be their job.

In primitive societies, everyone was expected to be able to make their own arrows from scratch. We've progressed quite a bit since then, and one important way is through division of labor and specialization. I specialize in my field, you specialize in yours, but if my field isn't computer operating systems, any time I spend learning them is time taken away from more productive activity.

Don't flatter the slashdot mobs who believe that being a leet Linux hacker will somehow let them contribute in any useful way even to open source projects. Most open source projects progress because a focused core team (which may evolve over time) spend a large amount of time getting the project to a usable state. Lots of wannabees reading the source does not further the cause.

Re:I think you should have prefaced your post

[Trolling4Dollars]

Put that crack pipe down. It's clouding your reasoning.

Re:I think you should have prefaced your post

[Van Halen]

Distros like Gentoo are a throwback and really are more useful as learning tools as opposed to useful OS's for normal people.

Yup. I've never used Gentoo and probably never will*, but that's exactly what I gather from all I've read about it.

<nostalgia>
I started using Linux in the fall of 1993, with SLS 1.01 and kernel 0.99p12 (p13 was the first version that worked with my network card). I remember sitting there and feeding all of those floppies into my 386/16 with 2 (yes, two) MB of ram and a 60 MB hard drive (20 for DOS/Win, 40 for Linux). The first time I actually had vi running on my own computer -- not just over a terminal session to the school's big unix server, but on my computer -- was a momentus event for me. Could it possible get any cooler than that?

Back then, we didn't have these fancy gui installers or configuration tools. vi was my configuration tool. And so that's how I learned Linux, and unix in general. Man pages, source code, and the occasional usenet group.

Over the years, I installed several different versions of Linux. When I got my shiny new Pentium 90 the following summer, this new distro called Slackware came out and had a lot of promise. It was so much easier to install with those curses based menus! Later, as I gained more skill at the command line, I heavily modified my installation of Slackware with lots of new packages and customizations I did myself. I even took it so far as building a complete system where every single binary and library had been compiled on my machine. This was probably at the height of my Linux/unix geekness.

After that I settled down some and moved to RedHat. After having a fairly easy time installing 4.2 on a machine at work, I went with 5.1 at home. That was later upgraded to 6.1 or so. As RedHat got more and more gui-based, I resisted. I always rolled my own kernels with my specific set of options, never trusting the rpm-packaged versions they provided. But somewhere along the line I began to tire of the tedium of the command line administration.

But not completely! Late 2000 ended my use of Linux in frustration as a particular series of kernels (stable, mind you) would crash every couple of weeks. Such instability was unheard of and completely unacceptable! I had heard so many good things about FreeBSD that I decided to give it a try. Not only did the system no longer crash (to be fair, I'm sure current Linux would probably work better than whatever version I was running back then), but it was beautiful from a Unix geek's perspective. Such elegance and forethought in the complete system design! It was like Unix nirvana. It brought the fun back to command line administration, at least for awhile.
</nostalgia>

Then last year I bought my second Mac, a PowerMac 733, and my first one capable of running OS X (the 7600 was strictly for my music hobby). OS X blew me away. Sure, it needed (and still does) work in many corners of its unixy mind, but wow! The FreeBSD machine was promptly relegated to server-in-the-corner status, trading my WindowMaker desktop for the goodness of Aqua.

Now, while I spend 90% of my "working" time at the command line, I use it far less than before for system administration tasks. Whenever possible, I try to use the Apple-supplied gui to do things. If that doesn't cut it, then the command line will do just fine (curiously, my gui Software Update hasn't worked right for some time now, but sudo softwareupdate saves the day every time). I've had to dig deep into the guts of OS X on occasion when wanting to do something very specific, but I'd say I've done so far less than with previous unixes. I even use vi for administration more on the SGIs at work than I do on OS X at home.

I actually haven't upgraded my FreeBSD box from 4.6 because I don't want to bother with the hassle. I know it's easy, but why bother? My firewall rules are very strict so I don't worry about a security problem.

Umm, my point with

Re:I think you should have prefaced your post

[2nd Post!]

It sounds like you're going to be running headfirst into two different trends, then:

The upgrade cycle is gonna plateau, but it'll still be fairly rapid because PCs are going to become commodities, like radios or boom boxes; at some point in the near future, you'll have an integrated PC for $150 that does 90% of what a PC does today at 200% of the performance, and rather than 'squeezing' them at the end of their 4 year lifecycle, they'll just be upgraded because the $150 amortized over four years is less than $40 a year... when a decent admin is gonna be costing something like $30 an hour.

Now, counter this trend is the simplification of software, as evinced by OS X; it will simultaneously make *your* job easier, while also making it easier to get rid of your job altogether; your niche, as it were.

So you have cheap, commodity, integrated hardware that requires little admin because they are so simple and locked down, and you have enormously powerful and easy to use software that requires little administration by design, IE, Apple has decided to live in your niche, while Microsoft has decided to try to 'obsolete' your niche by changing the hardware life cycle (XBox, anyone?).

Re:I think you should have prefaced your post

[MarcQuadra]

If you think admins will still be going for $30/hour in a few years there's something wrong. Joe Sixpac's son just dropped out of high school and he's getting his A+ certs right now, and he'll work for $10/hour. Wait and see.

Re:I think you should have prefaced your post

[2nd Post!]

Well, it sounds like you agree with me that your job is going away :)

A $10 an hour admin is only possible if the software is powerful enough to allow it, else you're just going to be hiring more admins to make up the difference, right?

Re:Live CDs on CD-RW ;(you CAN use a cdrw as hd)

[Anonymous Coward]

BZZZZ!!! wrong answer http://packet-cd.sourceforge.net/ is exactly that this page has stalled but i've seen patches for the more recent 2.4.xx kernels and there certainly are patches against the 2.5 kernel it's not however part of the mainline kernel, google around.

Frustration

[danoaks15]

I love gentoo but some of the reason that you guys have for liking it are just wrong. If you know how to use red hat or mandrake you do not have to have dependency hell or a slow system. If you install apt-get for rpm then you can just type apt-get install blah to install the package and all of its dependencies. How hard is that. Also, just becasue RedHat ships with KDE and GNOME it doesnt mean that you have to use them. It takes almost no thought to type apt-get wmaker and then add a Windowmaker script to /etc/X11/gdm/Sessions. I'm typing this on a RedHat 9 system with windomaker on galeon. You Gentoo people should know espessially, the base installation isn't everything. None of which shipped with redhat. So stop being idiots.

Re:Frustration

[Anonymous Coward]

Who's being an idiot? I used Red Hat for 3 years until I said enough. And Windows before that (who didnt?)

Change is good and that's why I use it. I can still use RPM, apt-get etc. if I want to under Gentoo. But sometimes you just need to jump in head first and swim with the big fish.

Re:Frustration

[sprouty76]

If you know how to use red hat or mandrake you do not have to have dependency hell or a slow system. If you install apt-get for rpm then you can just type apt-get install blah to install the package and all of its dependencies. How hard is that.

Or just use uprmi - It Just Works once it's set up.

Re:Frustration

[Anonymous Coward]

You, 'espessially', should know how to spell, or at least check your post before posting :p

It doesn't take much thought to do 'apt-get aspell', either.

Re:Frustration

[Anonymous Coward]

You Gentoo people should know espessially, the base installation isn't everything. None of which shipped with redhat. So stop being idiots.

I'm not a Gentoo zealot (I didn't know it existed until two days ago), but I have to point out one thing that the anti-Gentoo zealots keep missing: The USE flags.

So, if the "ssl" flag is set, everytime I grab a package that can use SSL, I will get the version that uses SSL. This means that I won't have to specifically grab lynx-ssl, curl-ssl or try to remember if SSL support is built-in for a particular package.

The SSL example is somewhat trivial, but look at a package like emacs -- There are MULE, GTK, aspell, ispell, etc. variants out the whazoo. And other apps have CLI, KDE, Gnome, Qt, GTK UI variants. If I prefer KDE over Gnome, I can specify flags so that the Gnome parts are never compiled into the code. I'm not aware of another package manger that can do that.

CD ? Why not firewire ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used linux for many years and love it. I now have a Mac and do not use linux on it for the sole reason it cannot boot from a Firewire disk.

I don't want to repartition my internal drive, I simply want to boot from an external disk.

bummer.

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[On Lawn]

Also, I've found that for 90% of the time that while updating and compiling my box is perfectly usable. Most of the time its doing stuff like downloading, compiling which don't slow down my UI much at all. The only rough times are the actual merges or other disk-intensive work.

While I'm glad that the sniping done by the grandparent post may scare off people looking for the next cool thing, its really just comedy for the "Daily Show" generation.

Linux emulating Mac emulating Windows?!

[danrees]

I would love to see a screenshot of Linux running Mac On Linux running Virtual PC running Windows XP, maybe with a few VNCs back to a Linux box for the hell of it. :)

Re:Linux emulating Mac emulating Windows?!

[axxackall]

You think it's funny? - I did it before on my Powerbook. Well, I don't have a screenshot and VPC is not on that disk anymore. And it was Win98, not XP. But it worked - Office-97, IE5.0, Together (the version before Control Center), Rational Rose 2000, Oracle JDeveloper 2.0, many other proprietary win32 apps. I needed them on the road, sometimes simultaniously with some Linux and MacOS applications - that's why MOL+VPC worked better than reboot to MacOS.

Re:Linux emulating Mac emulating Windows?!

[repetty]

You forgot about the other emulations that you ought to run at the same time...

http://emulation.net

--Richard

Re:Why is this in the Apple section?

[markomarko]

Because, the story is about a Live CD for Gentoo, and specifically designed for Apple Hardware, dumb-ass. Add to that the fact that the CD came into existence in response to a post in the Apple section a week or more ago. And no, the Apple people don't mind having linux talk in their section, barring having to put up with stupid comments like yours.

That's why Gentoo is great for power users

[MarcQuadra]

That's why I'm so happy with Gentoo. After two years wasted trying to learn how to work services on Linux and being frustrated by GUI config tools mucking up my beautiful config files I found a distro that lets me do what I need to do without having to scratch my head and reconfigure stuff all the time. The gentoo install process teaches you (almost) enough to start using a text editor alone as a config tool, and it doesn't ship with any tools to screw up your work. It even puts new config files aside and informs you of their presence so you have time to digest them before restarting the services they control.

Re:That's why Gentoo is great for power users

[EzInKy]

That's why I'm so happy with Gentoo. After two years wasted trying to learn how to work services on Linux and being frustrated by GUI config tools mucking up my beautiful config files I found a distro that lets me do what I need to do without having to scratch my head and reconfigure stuff all the time.

Until you do a an emerge -u world and have to wade through fifty some odd .cfg files with etc-update. I once overwrote my fstab when I got glassy eyed during the procedure.

Re:That's why Gentoo is great for power users

[MarcQuadra]

But the difference is that YOU did it. I was so sick of having mandrake/redhat totalyy screw up a hand-crafted config file because I opened up the 'latest/greatest GUI config tool'.

There really is NO better way (short of fully-automated artificially intelligent solutions) to handle config files. Maybe the only improvement would be a special text-editor for config files, one that had a library of available options and examples and security warnings.

Re:That's why Gentoo is great for power users

[EzInKy]

There really is NO better way (short of fully-automated artificially intelligent solutions) to handle config files. Maybe the only improvement would be a special text-editor for config files, one that had a library of available options and examples and security warnings.

Simpler would be to have emerge -u upgrade the baselayout instead of treating it as a new install everytime somebody changes a line of code.

BitTorrent package for Gentoo Linux?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, when I try:
emerge bittorrent

I get:
# emerge bittorrent
Calculating dependencies
!!! all ebuilds that could satisfy "bittorrent" have been masked.

!!! Error calculating dependencies. Please correct.

Anyone know why?

Re:BitTorrent package for Gentoo Linux?

[pyr0]

You need to be using ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" in /etc/make.conf or you can export that on the command line before you emerge bittorrent I believe. Substitute another arch for x86 if it applies.

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[paranode]

You Debian zealouts always come out of the closet whenever Gentoo gets posted to Slashdot. Get off your high horse. Debian is a great distro too, but they just have different goals. Gentoo users don't spend all their time talking about how Debian really sucks because they don't feel that they have to. They realize the value of other distributions and will happily tell you in the forums whether Gentoo is for you or not.

Here Gentoo is trying to offer the Linux community something they are lacking and you have to come out and attack them. The same thing happened when they started their initiative to help bring more games to the Linux platform. Why can't you people quit squabbling over how much Debian or whatever kicks everything's ass? Gentoo is trying to do a good thing here, nobody told you to go install Gentoo you fanboy.

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[Dalcius]

Just to set things straight, this is what I was trying to say in point #1; it just has to be taken in direct context with the parent post. That has been my experience exactly.

I'm actually missing the old Gentoo sources that I found to be... well, awesome. Even on my laptop (p2 333, 160mb pc133, 6.4gig 5400rpm [I think), I could not hardly slow it down. The desktop and applications responded quickly and everything was perky, even when doing a full system update. I'm using ck-sources now, and everything works out well, but heavy swap activity can bring things to a crawl for a second. =\

OT: If anyone has any recommendations on another set of kernel sources, I'd appreciate any suggestions. :)

I'd be more excited

[Anonymous Coward]

if there was a fluxbox cd...

Re:I'd be more excited

[Anonymous Coward]

gnome cd contains openbox... I've heard a fluxcd is in the make

Works on my iBook..

[PhoenixK7]

Posting this from konqui, and have mac os x running on another vt. Sweet.

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[Anonymous Coward]

Me thinks that was flamebait and not funny. Maybe someone forgot to build the dep rpm's? It would appear that the hash marks dont fully reach the end with that post.

NUDITY ALERT

[Anonymous Coward]

WARNING: do not click the above link. It contains NUDITY!

Re:NUDITY ALERT

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the AC above me was just trolling, but it's true. If you're at work, beware. Thankfully I'm accessing my own squid proxy at home via a ssh tunnel from work, so it doesn't show up in the company proxy logs. Woohoo!

Re:NUDITY ALERT

[MarcQuadra]

Whoops, I had no idea it was an issue. My apologies! BTW, that was a legit photo shoot for a friend.

gotphotography.com is his (work in progress) online portfolio.

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, how the fuck is this informative? It may or may not be true, I want a fucking link. Anything less is nothing more than hyper fanboy ejaculations.

There is a very good reason for this!

[torpor]

And I forget what it is, exactly, but it has something to do with the fact that the compiler Apple builds releases of OSX with actually isn't using all of the PPC's registers appropriately (that's what the ballyhoo about 'Panther' is all about: properly aligned registers, '64-bit Already'), and anyway somewhere along the line there is a significant performance hit taken on all Apple OS'es ... so far ... its a card many Apple pundits have been eager for them to play, maybe it'll happen with Panther, and we'll see new 'books...

I wish I could find the link with the details, but man google is just not parsing right tonight. Sorry.

Anyway, this would explain the snappiness ... guess I'll check out gentoo PPC right now, and see what sort of compiler options it is using in this regard ...

Re:There is a very good reason for this!

[MarcQuadra]

I recall the gist of what you're talking about. Something about the OSX microkernel still being somewhat optimized for x86, all it would take is a 'flip of the switch' to boost OSX performance quite a bit.

Re:There is a very good reason for this!

[torpor]

Something like that, yeah ... like the old NextStep compiler only used a specific set of registers for all of its operations, because it had to be compatible across Mot68k/i386 platforms.

I remember reading an article about it - and about how OSX developers can correct this with a compiler switch and get a 20% upgrade in speed - but I can't for the life of me find a link to it ...

Other distro on oldworld (incl. beige G3)

[jbardell]

Just felt like I had to post this, as i'm damned glad to get it going... For debian (quick instructions) Use the boot and root image to boot the system, partition your drive, install the system, yada yada...tell it to try to setup autoboot. If that doesnt work, on the Debian site there are scripts ( http://cvs.debian.org/boot-floppies/powerpc-specia ls/miBoot/patch-floppy-image.pl ) to modify the install Boot floppy to target your freshly installed drive. This might be common knowledge, but I had to dig a big to figure it all out, and get it going. Anyway, that box is installing the addons now...phew, no need for a freakin 'livecd'..not that they're bad or anything. I want this to be a dedicated box without the minor hassles of a livecd.

mac classic

[zogger]

I wish apple would throw all the millions of the faithful a bone and release al the classic OSs, plus make them open source. I mean, they aren't selling them now. I really wanted to follow the evolution of classic. I am sure there were dozens of reasons for them to switch, but still, plenty 0 good times.

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF? I'm the original author of that text, and I use Red Hat and RISC OS.

Assumptions, eh? :)

-- M

Sytem vs. Mac OS

[Spyritus]

System 7.5.3

Mac OS 7.6

minimal redhat

[zogger]

can't you pick out what you want to run, then use rpm2html(or whatever that is, rpmfind, maybe both) for the list of what you need, then use just normal ftp download then?

Or am I misunderstanding how that works. Seems like you could pick out all the stuff you want to install and just do it, even with RPMs, or SRPMs.

note: I said you, not me of course, I am a helpless noob still. I got as far as being able to go further than the regular packages and get to apt and using synaptic, that's about as exotic as I've gotten, only a small number of pure source compiles. I only do those when I am really wanting something that isn't available as rpms.

With that said, if you can do it, perhaps make an ISO image of it for others, add in the anaconda installer?

I'm sort of different, I want a regular old joe surfer desktop, one cd image only, redhat based. that should be enough you would think, and still cover a big variety of normal apps.

So I followed your sig link

[ihatewinXP]

-Cool someone hates me :) [slashdot.org]-

and found out that _you_ hate _me_.......... ::sigh::

one of those days i guess...

MOD UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit, funniest thing I've read all day.

MD5 files?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, not too familiar with Linux, so maybe someone would skip the RTFM comments and explain what purpose the .md5 files serve? I know how to create a CD from an ISO, but I've never had to use .md5 files.

Jonathan

Re:MD5 files?

[Anonymous Coward]

It contains the checksum for the file, so you can be sure there was no data lost during transfer, or you can download the md5 file from the main server while downloading the ISO from a mirror, after checking the md5 you can be sure it is the same official version and not a h4x0red one. md5sum should do the trick.

Maybe because...

[Anonymous Coward]

...it has to do with a fully-featured bootable Linux LiveCD for the Macintosh.

...made by Apple Computer...you know...the computer for the rest of us...?)

Posting from the GNOME Live CD

[ike6116]

Not bad, one of my first experiances with Gentoo, couldn't detect sound, and the X setup guessed wrong but that was nothing I haven't come to expect from PPC Linux, or just Linux in general. I'm wondering why though, gentoo in their infinite wisdom didn't included one of the sought after projects on SF, gaim. Out of all the live CDs i've used this is the first not to have it. And why the hell isn't mozilla in the GNOME menu? has a way to go but looks promising, and a good way to get familiar with gentoo before deciding to install. Im going to try it out on my spare iMac but it's only because Im a bored geek, right now If I had to go on what I saw here and I needed a production machine, I'd still stick with tried and true YDL, they PPC Linux experts.
Just being honest.

Re:Posting from the GNOME Live CD

[Anonymous Coward]

ALSA is on the gnomecd, you really should give it a try.

I thing /etc/init.d/alsasound start should do it.

Now where's that YDL livecd again?

safety windows

[tabby]

The OSX in MOL window should have windows running in virtualPC, I think your computer would be safe from it there. ;-)

choose KDE... got TWM???

[paradesign]

wtf! i thought KDE looked like shit for a minute. i even wiped my glasses to make sure i was seeing correctly. and yep after doing the Xeasyconf and startx i was greeted by entering the TWM environment. how the FSCK do i get into KDE from here? please someone help. did i do something wrong? i followed all the directions. and theres not 'ls' so i cant even navagate the filestructure.

dissapointing, i was really hoping this would be nice.

Re:choose KDE... got TWM???

[Anonymous Coward]

export XSESSION=Kde-3.1.2

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[Anonymous Coward]

Isnt that pkg_add -r RemoveHeadFromRectum.tgz

[yawn....] Been there, done that.

[haaz]

Anyone remember LinuxPPC Live?

In 1998, our esteemed kernel hacker jcarr ( ;-> ) created a version of LinuxPPC Release 4 that would boot live from the CD. We gave away a few thousand at Macworld Expo, possibly a few at the first or second ALS. I don't remember if it made Slashdot, but we had enough stuff that did. Like the security contest Microsoft was putting on. At which we beat them.

(Our old Pmac 9500 stayed up despite intensive attacks, and finally fell to one clever person who exploited a vulnerability in the version of proftpd running on the box. Which became his.)

Bravo to Gentoo, but let us not forget, someone's done it before.

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[Tyreth]

As most know, there's a lot of rubbish in this post, but still fun to read :)

But as for the system being unusable while compiling - I'm using it fine right now with a compile in the background, no problems.

If I absolutely need the system running as fast as it should (or can) while compiling, then:
nice -n 19 emerge

Once I loaded a game with an emerge going in the background (without the nice I think), and I played for a while, and it was occasionally laggy, and I wondered what was going on. This was wolfenstein: ET - so a full 3d opengl cpu-intensive game was being played near playable with a compile in the background :)

That being said, I haven't done much to optimise my Gentoo box - I will, one day, I swear! For now I'm just enjoying the ease of updating programs, and not having to worry about obsolete rpm's, etc. Though I've never used urpmi or similar tools, so I don't know how they handle out of date apps? I remember that after manually upgrading my system's rpm's enough times, it would eventually reach a state where it wasn't very clean, and a full upgrade to the new distro in question (usually Mandrake) was required. As I said, I don't know what the current state of this is with RPM's since I haven't used them on my desktop since I switched to Gentoo.

Try Mandrake, Redhat, Suse or Debian first.

[Zork the Almighty]

If you haven't installed Linux before, I strongly suggest you mess around with one of the above distros first. They all have their quirks (as does Gentoo), but they will install MUCH easier. When you're used to Linux, and you have some idea of what programs you like, go back and try Gentoo. I think that Gentoo is probably too frustrating for people who are new to Linux.

Re:Try Mandrake, Redhat, Suse or Debian first.

[Sergio1704]

Exactly. And therefore it goes in a direction that is opposite to the one I favour: I want linux to eventually replace M$, and we are not going to impress Jo Windows'user with distros like Gentoo. However, only a few days after my previous post I am beginning to understand why a distro like Gentoo is good for power users: you create your own OS. I am beginning to do it myself by picking and mixing between the many redhat compatible distros.

speed comparison

[hayne]

Fink is a very slow way to run Linux applications on OSX

You seem to be implying that fink-ported apps are running under an emulator of some sort. Not at all. Fink merely handles the (usually small) changes to make the apps run under OS X and X11.

no need to mention that OSX apps in native OSX boot are much slower than Linux apps in native Linux boot on the same PPC.

Which apps are you comparing here? The OS X version of Word versus the Linux version of Word? The OS X version of PhotoShop versus the Linux version of PhotoShop? The OS X version of iMovie versus the Linux version of iMovie? Don't tell me about the "equivalents" - you have to compare the same program if you are going to talk sensibly about speed. An "equivalent" program often turns out to not be quite so sophisticated and speed versus functionality is one common trade-off.

Re:speed comparison

[axxackall]

You seem to be implying that fink-ported apps are running under an emulator of some sort. Not at all. Fink merely handles the (usually small) changes to make the apps run under OS X and X11.

I am implying what I've seen by myself.

Which apps are you comparing here? The OS X version of Word versus the Linux version of Word? The OS X version of PhotoShop versus the Linux version of PhotoShop? The OS X version of iMovie versus the Linux version of iMovie? Don't tell me about the "equivalents" - you have to compare the same program if you are going to talk sensibly about speed. An "equivalent" program often turns out to not be quite so sophisticated and speed versus functionality is one common trade-off.

As an user I care about functions. Text processing (in other words: style based text editing) functions of LyX under Lunux/PPC work more convinient and much faster than text processig functions of Word for OSX. Graphical editing in GIMP/Linux works same convinient as in Photoshop/OSX, but much faster. Cannot tell anything about iJunk as I don't need it and didn't use it. So I don't have to compare same programs. Functions - that what matters.

However, if you want to compare exactly the same program, then do it with Mozilla, especially its Composer mode. My experience shows that Mozilla/Composer under Linux/PPC (Gentoo) works faster with the same documents than it does on OSX. I didn't have a chance to compare OpenOffice yet. You?

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[Sergio1704]

I thoroughly enjoyed your post. It has become oh soooo fashionable to pretend you are a geek, even if you are not. Well, I for one consider myself little more than a newbie. My (unusual?) way of learning has been to download all the linux distros that I considered worth trying (some 41 by now) and installing them. This has been my FIRST learning step. With Gentoo I have tried twice, printed their documentation (plenty of wasted ink), but all I can get is: 'no such file or directory' or 'command not found'.They can call me an idiot if they want. Do they like Gentoo? Well, good luck to them! But I don't like comments such as:'Newbies should install Mandrake'. Whilst it is true that any newbie can install Mandrake, it takes years before you become proficient. And that is the beauty of it: you can have a very beautiful, complete linux box up and running in no time, but then you can take all the time in the world to customize and hack it! Do we want more ordinary people to use linux and possibly one day replace Microsoft? Then give me Ark linux everyday! As to the allegation that other linux distros are 'bloated up', it is only nonsense, as you can choose as many or as few packages as you want. And please stop putting Gentoo and Slackware in the same class, because they are NOT! What is so difficult about installing Slackware? And yet you have one of the best distros: fast, stable, not too difficult to customize... I can hear people saying: 'So what do you like: Mandrake, Ark, Slackware?' My reply: I'd like to see some good common sense in the Linux world!

Re:[yawn....] Been there, done that.

[PotPieMan]

Do you know of a place to download any of the older LinuxPPC bootable CDs? I have a 7600 that I would like to try booting.

Re:This has been postet a lot of times, but still.

[Anonymous Coward]

you Debian zealouts always come out of the closet whenever Gentoo gets posted to Slashdot. Get off your high horse. Debian is a great distro too, but they just have different goals. Gentoo users don't spend all their time talking about how Debian really sucks because they don't feel that they have to"

no its because they are too busy compiling everything..

Re:[yawn....] Been there, done that.

[WillAdams]

LinuxPPC live was also placed on the CD bundled w/ that year's MacWorld Expo issue.

William
(who's still trying to get MkLinux or something like to it installed on his wife's PowerMac 8100 (again! Had it installed before, but things haven't been working since adding a non-Apple HD and CD-ROM :(

Yes, but it won't run on my Mac :-(

[bobgap]

I have a G4 Dual 1 GHz, introduced in September 2002. FYI

Article heRe:There is a very good reason for this!

[Anonymous Coward]

That article is found at http://www.unsanity.org/archives/000044.php

excellent wardriving cd!

[mousehouse]

i absolutely love this CD! it comes with good WLAN modules already in the kernel and airsnort on the CD. i went crazy for good WLAN tools without destroying my OSX install, this bootable CD actually has the right things already... i love it, thumbs up.