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).

Re:Will the G5 livecd work on G4s?

[MBCook]

Nope. G5 CDs won't work on G4s or G3, but G4 CDs will work on G4s and G5 but not G3s and last but not least G3 CDs will work on G3s, G4s and G5s.

OK, if you didn't survive that, let's put it this way. The CDs work "UP" the processor list, but not "DOWN" (unless there is some specific bug that would prevent the G3 CD from working with the G5s, for example).

So will there be specific G5 distros? Not any more than there are specific Pentium IV distros or Athlon distros.

Re:Will the G5 livecd work on G4s?

[Ianoo]

There is more of an impotus to optimise for G5 though, to exploit its 64-bit-ness. People quite happily run Pentium-optimised Linuxes and indeed Windows programs on their Pentium 4 systems, never exploiting the extra instructions available on these platforms.
If the G5 were just a faster version of the G4 with one or two extra instructions, I expect the same would be true. But since it isn't, people will be much more interested in distributions that are (a) compiled from scratch or (b) available in binary G5-optimised form.

Re:Will the G5 livecd work on G4s?

[MBCook]

That's true, but with Gentoo it doesn't matter that much if you install with a G3 CD. Since everything get rebuilt for your computer from the ground up (or downloaded that's prebuilt for your PC) you'll get those optimisations.

But if you're using the LiveCD as a DEMO CD for Linux, then you're right. But for installing, it's not too big a deal.

PS: Go Gentoo!

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

[Bytesmiths]

"can't you just compile && install vanilla XFree and run it on top of the Darwin/Mach/BSD core?"

Sure, but again, why? The lastest MacOS X (10.3) comes with XFree86 4.3.0 as a supported binary.

IMHO, the biggest difference between MacOS X and a dual-boot Winux box is that you don't have to reboot the Mac to run Excel after you've been using GIMP. :-)

Re:Question for Mac Linuxers

[illogic]

I don't think it's a question of users moving away from OS X to Linux, rather it's Linux users deciding to buy Macs rather than Wintel machines. Many Apple Linux users that I know simply wanted good hardware to run Linux on (especially *Books).

Driver support can be easier as Apple computers are much less of a moving target than the myriad x86 laptops, each with their own blend of proprietary hardware. Compare how many models of laptops a company like Sony puts out, and then multiply that by every PC manufacturer... buying an Apple seems like a pretty safe bet.

And after all, they're just plain sexy.

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!

Re:Gentoo vs Yellow Dog?

[Otter]

Which is most likely to work? what's the deal with Gentoo (YD is RedHat based... is Gentoo as well?)... I feel like such a newb when it comes to PPC linux.

Basically:

• Yellow Dog is Red Hat based while Debian and Gentoo (and Mandrake and SuSE, if they still exist for PPC) are what they are on x86. Going with what you're familiar with is probably a good idea.
• Yellow Dog, Gentoo and Debian have large PPC communities to provide support. The others don't.
• Personally, I prefer Yellow Dog because its PPC-only focus means it's better about putting in the little bells and whistles for Apple hardware support. YMMV.

Re:Gentoo vs Yellow Dog?

[puregen1us]

Gentoo is source based. Ie. you compile everything from source. That isn't strickly true for the install, a lot of larger packages can be got pre-compiled for specific chips, but generally everything is installed with *your* settings for *your* computer.

It takes a while, but you have nothing installed that you don't want.

I used it on x86 because, In MY opinion, its the best system. SuSE comes close, but gets into too much of a confused mess.

I also found gentoo easier to install than debian. They have a very good docs section, and one of the better forums around. Very helpful and friendly people. They seem to enjoy helping new people to get the best from their computers. Actually makes gentoo a pleasure to use.

YellowDog is a PPC only red hat clone. The only support PPC so are totally dedicated to making everything run well. I think their distro is excellent, and very easy to use. A good newbie install.

SuSE support stopped a while ago.
RedHat never started.
Mandrake might still be around. I'm not a mandrake person.
Debian isn't for me.

Hope thats enough, all thoughts are my own, don't flame me for them. Use whatever you want.

In fact install every distro you can get. You will olny learn more. Choose one you like and stick to it.

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.

Use parted

[justMichael]

You can use parted which is on the Gentoo Live CD and probably others..

From the FAQ: ...Before installing Gentoo, startup with the Mac OS X Install CD. Use the Disk Utility to partition the drive in your machine into two or three partitions. Alternatively use parted from the recent LiveCD, that can handle HFS and HFS+ partitions. Furthermore it is able to shrink a partition so you don't need to delete your whole disk...

The downside to this is that the current Live CD may not work on your box due to a frimware issue, but a fixed iso should be available soon.