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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."
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.
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it will only boot on a "new world" mac.
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?
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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?).
/releases/ppc/livecd/1.4_rc7 for the files.
Look around and see what you can find. Also, you'll want to look in
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.
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.
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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?
I got a +5, Troll
LiveCDs are cool. I'm use Knoppix all the time (Linux bliss in the computer lab, finally).
... 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.
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
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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.
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