Slashdot Mirror
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."
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." .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."
"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
"...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..." .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)."
"I'm too stupid to understand that circular dependencies can be resolved by specifying BOTH
"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!"
-
I'm assuming I can boot this on my older PCI Mac (PowerWave 604/120, old mac clone). Does anyone know differently?
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.
There is no god
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.
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
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?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
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
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!
sure would make me happy.
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.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
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
---- Sig. gone.
We finally found people who ACTUALLY do RTFA -- *and* the comments.
They should be considered role model for this place or something.
Fear them.
IP Therefore I am.
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?
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
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
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?
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
When are we gonna see a Gentoo icon for Slashdot, like the other Linux distros have?
just before killing you.
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?
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.
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
http://penguinppc.org/projects/bootx/
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
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?
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
"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."
Gnome Flavor
KDE Flavor
Real men use rpm -i --force, you insensitive clod.
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
~Dalcius
Rome wasn't burnt in a day.
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?
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!
Have Linux installed at your place in Amsterdam, for cheap
This would be such a boon...way more important than Gentoo PPC Live.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
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
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:"
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
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.
/boot partitions to allow multiple, independent installs and provide easy failback if an upgrade goes awry).
/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.
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
Simply install your filesystem(s) of choice on your spare / and
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.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I'm amazed that Gentoo Games was not mentioned they released Wolfenstien and have a bittorent to download it!
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.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
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.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
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. :)
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
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
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Anyone remember LinuxPPC Live?
;-> ) 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.
In 1998, our esteemed kernel hacker jcarr (
(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.
-- haaz.