Gentoo is Fast on New G5s

Durin_Deathless writes "According to a thread on the Gentoo/PPC forums, some Gentoo users have installed Gentoo on their new G5s without any problems whatsoever. Benchmarks are extraordinary: compiling kde on a G5 running at half speed takes 15 minutes, while it takes one hour on the fastest P4 available. Gentoo/PowerPC lead, Pieter Van den Abeele, reported that the machine currently runs at half speed due to fan controlling hardware not yet supported. The Gentoo team will post benchmarks, and will update installation instructions as soon as possible. There is some question as to what exactly was compiled, as the times seem impossibly fast even on the P4."

Comments

I can't wait to see

[iendedi]

How this thing runs Linux once it has been optimized for it (correct drivers, kernel patches, compiler switches, compiler version, etc..)

compile time?

[sdibb]

There is some question as to what exactly was compiled, as the times seem impossibly fast even on the P4.

No kidding... my Athlon XP 2500 took about 15 hours to compile KDE. You can't even download all the KDE packages in 15 minutes.

Besides, the actual "kde" ebuild is nothing more than a little flag that says yes indeed, I installed all the other KDE packages: kdebase, kdenetwork, kdemultimedia, kdeaddons, kdeedu, kdegames, kdegraphics, kdeadmin, kdeutils, kdeartwork and kdepim.

Fortunately, you don't need to install each one if you want to use KDE's basic functions.

Hopefully, Apple will help

[ZackSchil]

I think Apple likes it very much when someone buys their hardware and runs Linux on it. The large margins on their boxen help cover OS X R&D (which is more expensive than you could possibly fathom, a full modern OS in 4 years, wait, what?!). They even have a reseller that is allowed to sell Macs pre-installed with Linux, unlike MS, who threaten any Wintel PC makers who try to offer Linux on their boxes with expensive licensing.

Plus, Mac OS X plays very nicely with Linux boxes and they know it. I just hope Apple will help the small Linux on Mac community integrate their software and proprietary hardware for at least full functionality. I have a feeling they will.

Re:Hopefully, Apple will help

[ComputerSlicer23]

Uhhh, there's a lot more then 4 years into Mac OS X. I was reading Mac OS X runtime docs 4 years ago (they we're the best docs for OpenStep runtime I was using at a job, I quit 3.5 years ago, and I worked there 1.5 years, so I am pretty sure it's got at least 5 years in it at Apple that they've had public documentation). They have a lot of pre-existing software from FreeBSD, and Mach. They also have all of the code and coders that cames from NeXT. It's still no small feat by Apple, but how long was BeOS around? They had pretty good stuff from what I hear, and I'm not sure how long they have been around. QNX 4 was put together pretty quickly. It was a complete re-write of QNX. So was Neutrino.

Second, Linux could have been written in a lot less time if it had been designed from the beginning to end up what it is (it might not be as good, but it could have been pretty good a lot sooner then it was). The concept that SMP existed. Having somebody who knew what the hell they we're doing at the beginning of it. Linus is a damned genious now, but when he started it, he wasn't a C programmer at all. Which leads me to guess, he wasn't much of a UNIX programmer at the time (let alone an experienced kernel programmer). It wasn't like he designed around the concept of having SMP, or even optimized disk accesses. Scalability wasn't a big deal. Running with more then 8MB of RAM was impossible (he only had 8, so if you had more and wanted to use it, you had to fix it yourself). Second, it's a whole heck of a lot easier to write an OS when the platform is relatively fixed (yeah it needs to work under x86, but if it doesn't, that's not Apple's problem).

Kirby

Re:Hopefully, Apple will help

[nacturation]

Linus is a damned genious now, but when he started it, he wasn't a C programmer at all. Which leads me to guess, he wasn't much of a UNIX programmer at the time (let alone an experienced kernel programmer).

When I first started using Linux, it was at version 0.2 back in 1991/92 or thereabouts. It was blazingly fast on my 486 -- naturally, text mode only but it made MSDOS shit its pants. What I saw back then was certainly not the result of someone who's "not a C programmer at all".

Re:Hopefully, Apple will help

[WatertonMan]

One should point out though that Longhorn will contain features that are not in 10.3. The much anticipated metadata savvy Finder and file system aren't part of Panther, for instance. (Despite expectations which only increased when the BeFS guy joined Apple)

Re:Hopefully, Apple will help

[ComputerSlicer23]

Uhhh, you better hope an NeXT head never, ever reads that... They make Apple geeks seem like fair weather faithful. :-)

I was not much of a NeXT user (only used it a handful of times). However, their development kit, especially their AppBuilder stuff was incredible (I used that on other platforms). I've heard about the feature set the OS had in 1991 was pretty impressive. I used to work in a room full of people who talked about the wonders that NeXT was at the time. NeXT was an incredible OS from everyone I've heard from (I know at least 3 independent sources of people I trust who say that). It's largest two failings, were interrelated. It was too expensive, and nobody made third party applications for it. It was right there with Amiga and OS/2 in terms of wonderful OS that nobody used.

place your bets

[BortQ]

So how long before IBM starts selling G5 boxes running linux and openoffice?

Re:place your bets

[CoolMoDee]

I remeber hearing talk about an IBM PPC 970 (g5) workstaion. IBM want's more of the community to help with Linux on PowerPC, so making a semi-afordable linux power box would defiently be a way to get that, espically if it runs linux out of the box. I know I would buy one..as would a lot of other linux geeks.

Processor performance has never been my limit

[MerlynEmrys67]

Long time ago... I learned that the hard disk speed is the most important factor in compile speeds. Once you have LOTS of memory, then get the fastest SCSI hard drive you can get your hands on... forget 7200 RPM IDE drives, think 15K RPM SCSI disks. Every time you have to open a new file for compiling... you have to spin (on average) 1/2 of the disk to get your head positioned... it makes a huge difference

if it was real

[Raleel]

even if it was real (people at the top said it was only a small subset), I would be skeptical of anything actually running fast on said system. generally, if it compiles fast, it's not very optimized.

compile times don't impress me any more, although they sometimes do reflect overall (disk i/o included) performance.