Gentoo LiveCD for PowerPC G5

tantive writes with this announcement from the Gentoo home page. "Gentoo for PowerPC G5 now available. We're proud to announce the availability of the Gentoo for PowerPC G5 32-bit LiveCD. ISOs are now available on our main OSU mirror. The LiveCD has been tested on a dual 2GHz G5 SMP PowerPC machine with 2.5GB RAM, a 1.6GHz machine, as well as others. It includes pre-released yaboot-1.3.11 bootloader and a 2.6.0-test9 benh kernel. It runs at 100% speed, with fans currently also at 100% (kernel developers are working on slowing down the fans when not needed)." Read more below.

The announcement continues "Installation is possible on the SATA drives. We are now hard at work to create optimized stages, and the store will carry G5 LiveCDs when stage building is finished. Right now you can bootstrap your own G5-optimized system, or use a generic ppc stage3 install with GRP to install Gentoo in 20 minutes. We would like to thank benh (PPC kernel developer) for his excellent work in supporting the G5, as well as all users who tested the ISO, and particularly IBM System Software researcher Eric Van Hensbergen, who provided fantastic test/debug help during the LiveCD development process."

Comments

Re:Gentoo vs Yellow Dog?

[bobthemonkey13]

Don't forget about Debian, either. Debian GNU/Linux has a PowerPC version as well. Of course, there are pros and cons to using Debian (please, let's not have a Debian vs. Gentoo pissing match here), but more options are always good. No matter what distro you choose, be sure to check if there are any pitfalls or tricks with your specific hardware configuration, and with the dual boot.

Now, for my opinion: I try to avoid RedHat-based distributions as much as possible, so I'd go for Debian (if I just want it to work) or Gentoo (if I'm feeling adventurous).

Question for Mac Linuxers

[Ianoo]

There are reasons for using Linux on a PC, which is because Windows can suck at times (well, a lot of the time!).

But what about Macintoshes? Your systems already come with a highly optimised BSD, why would anyone ever want to install Linux? Sure Aqua is proprietary, but can't you just compile && install vanilla XFree and run it on top of the Darwin/Mach/BSD core?

What is the reason for using the Linux kernel explictly, when you already have a GNU compatible toolchain and base system available out of the box?

I'm not trying to troll or anything, I'm seriously asking this question of Macintosh users, mainly since I have my eye (and my chequebook) on a PowerBook...

Re:Question for Mac Linuxers

[Ianoo]

I see your point. But consider, the following are the usual reasons that people choose Linux on their PC:

- Open Source. Darwin is already open source. Using XFree rather than Aqua also means more open source.
- Stable. Darwin is already stable.
- Secure. OSX seems fairly secure and its toolchain is obviously as secure as FreeBSD's.
- Compatible. I don't know about this one, but it seems a lot of software can easily be ported from Linux & BSD to Darwin. How different are the kernel headers and so on?

Linux is the 'natural' choice for me when using a PC, but I'm not sure I could say the same if I owned a Macintosh. I'd probably just leave OSX running.

Re:Question for Mac Linuxers

[rizzy]

The mach microkernel performs horribly. CPU-intensive work will do just fine on Darwin, but if you do anything that involves the OS, you'll pay a penalty.

Darwin is a very odd UNIX, as well (.dynlib, Mach-O binary format), so a more famvilar UNIX like Linux or NetBSD might be a fine choice for the excellent G5 hardware.

lmbench numbers backing up my OS claim

G5 fans must be on 100%.

[heldlikesound]

When I was at WWDC, I had the chance to talk to the team of engineers at Apple that designed and programmed the cooling system for the G5. They said that if the openfirmware detects anything but an Apple operating system, all fans crank to 100% to avoid meltdown, as you don't want to rely on a foriegn OS to regulate the 9 fans, which is a bit of a juggling act as it is!

Why use up CPU cycles controlling the fans?

[Anonymous Coward]

...and what happens to the fans during a kernel panic?

It seems strange that they wouldn't use an independent circuit for this sort of thing. A solid state one, even.

Re:Ahh fan speed - maybe not troll

[Ffakr]

I've got a dual 2GHz (in my office), and I found that removing the clear plastic shroud caused the expected increase in fan speed to compensate. Unfortunately, putting the shroud back causes the machine to crash. It looks like a bug in the firmware.
You don't notice it immediately, unless you try and use the hung machine of course. Slowly, the fans speed up because the hardware isn't hearing from the monitoring daemon. It does, in fact, sound like a jet reving up and it gets pretty damn loud.

So far, this is the only bug I've found with it. It's a gorgeous machine, like an industrial work of art and it's scarry fast.