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Gentoo/PPC64 Beta Live CDs Released
pvdabeel writes "Gentoo/PPC developer, IBM employee and former PPC64 kernel maintainer Tom Gall has announced beta-level live CDs and stages for ppc64. The hardware supported by gentoo-ppc64 is PowerMacintosh G5, IBM pSeries, older IBM 64 bit RS/6000s
(such as the model 260, 270, F80, H80, see linuxppc64.org for a complete list) and soon IBM iSeries hardware.
Gentoo-ppc64 is the other side of the ppc equation, it is a 64-bit kernel as well as a 64 bit user space. We are the first linux distribution to offer a 64-bit top-to-bottom solution which is not a toy environment. This is a significant and exciting step as there is interest in cluster computing circles, users of java, and more generally those who have needs of large address spaces. It's fairly exciting to be on the forefront and continue to push the capabilities of linux on ppc64 forward."
Get some perspective.
For servers there's the JS20. If you're talking about an IBM Linux PPC workstation, give up already; that market's even smaller than Apple's.
Why, exactly, do you find this so disturbing? Go use Windows or Linux or whatever you prefer and quit stressing. ;-)
Apple's marketing hype aside, the G5 is a really sweet machine. It'll be even nicer when OS X is 64-bit native. In the meantime, it will be fun trying some of these 64-bit PPC Linux distros in dual boot.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
While I'm proud to hear that Linux has come a long way and now supports more architectures and most other OSes, I'm starting to wonder what's the point. We have Sparc, iAMD64, Power, Itanium, PA and another dozen uncommon architectures out there - and the further you get away from the "standard" i386 the worse support gets. Look at Fedora Core 2 for AMD64 - mysql is 32bit... Try get a JDK1.4 for Sparc Linux... How about Oracle for Linux/Power4?
While we have dozens of distributions there is not a single 64bit Linux out there that is even close to being as full-featured as debian, fedora, redhat, mandrake,... on i386 are...
Since 64bit porting is pretty much the same for all platforms, wouldn't it make sense for the distributions to work together in that aspect?
I think the PPC 970's architechture specs are open. I think this means a company, with enough resources and ambition, could create a PPC 970 mobo, bundle it with the CPU, and put it out on the market. I don't think this has been done (well, outside of apple), but i think it is doable. I've wanted a POWER-esk chip for at least a couple years now, and i'd be in the market to buy something like this. I wonder how much a PPC 970 system would run without all the apple branding and sleek design overhead.
Apple is your best bet for a non server workstation.
Yes IBM, SUN, SGI, and HP all have taxes on proprietary hardware. Either way your screwed and are paying a tax. Hell I remember installing HP kayaks and telling the user they would have to wait for 3 weeks for special tracks just to mount the cd-rw drives?? (The cdrom-rw was also made by HP)
Ask anyone who bought ram for an SGI or Sun workstation?
I was under the impression that new world macs are more open. Jobs saw to that to make more peripherals available to the macs when he returned. This is why Linux runs on them and not older world macs.
The trick to save money is this. Don't buy the upgrade options from Apple's website. By the ram at compusa or from micron direct. If you want gigantic storage, buy a mac with teh smallest hard drive and purchase the big ones seperately.
All the macs have affordable 3d opengl cards, SATA, dvd drives -rw, USB and firewire support, flashdrive support, and MacOSX.
Things a Pseries would not have anyway.
Its great to use shockwave or photoshop on occasion or to see what a webpage will like like on IE. The dual boot option is nice.
If you want the IBM because of scsi you can also buy an adeptec scsi adapter or buy one from apple with scsi hardware including raid. They are pricey of course with that installed. Or buy the mac adeptec card yourself and buy the scsi drives seperately like I mentioned above.
There is nothing these machines wont have that the pseries has. The exception is server oriented features like hot swappable hardware and special more professional 3d cards and ECC ram. But even then I am sure the true 3d support will only be available for AIX.
Intel might become proprietary too if palidium comes into existance. MS would love to use the hardware to defeat Linux... all in the name of security of course.
http://saveie6.com/
IBM probably wants you to go out and buy a G5 system if you're a home user.
Think of it, with Apple selling G5's by the boatload, IBM makes cash, plus they don't need to support PEBKAC lusers.
If IBM sold cheap(ish) G5 rigs running Linux, they would need to support every single moron who calls them up, probably not something they want to do.
hey!
There is nothing wrong with learning a new system. It will make you more well rounded as a computer user and for those doing support and other IT jobs, it can be valuable. If I had a G5 and a few GB of disk space to spare, I would probably install this just to check it out, figure out the differences between it and OS X, etc.
Now, I imagine there is little reason to replace OS X with Linux, but there is nothing wrong with using both.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
This is true.
On the other hand, Linux, which also ran (and of course still does run) on the Multia was 64-bit.
You know, not that long ago people would've said the same thing about running Linux on x86...
http://www.talknerdy.org
umm
Second, this needs not be limited (and indeed is not) to G5. I guess for an Apple fan Power970==G5, but there are such things like Power970 workstations/blades that have nothing to do with Apple. After all, the chip is IBM's, not Apple's. Can you run OSX on an IBM PPC64 blade? I didn't think so.
Mods, how can this post be informative when the article clearly counted G5 as just one example in the list of supproted archs?
This is just another Apple fan confusing G5 with PPC64, nothing more.
i've tried the whole linux-on-a-mac thing many times, and on the older machines, its hardcore. mac os 9, IMO, sucks really hard, so running Debian on a PowerMac 7500 (i think that was the model) was really cool, and brought extended functionality to that aged old-world machine. but gentoo/debian/yellowdog instead of mac os x on a desktop? i don't think its worth it. maybe for cluster computing, or servers, or whatnot to avoid licensing issues. but i think those that honestly think linux is better and/or more functional than mac os x on the same machine are smoking something that, if not already, should be made illegal (or government sanctioned). user interface? osx wins hardware compatibility? osx wins, it was made for the hardware after all multimedia? osx wins software availability and ease of use? osx wins again the only area where i could think that you would want to use linux over os x is if you are a linux developer and NEED full compatibility with hardware-related procedures, or if you are a 13 year old kid who got a mac, dont feel like learning OS X (which takes the better part of a measely hour), and think you're gonna be l33t by running a "free" os rather than mac os. if thats the case, go for it. but IMHO you're wasting your time. especially with a fully-functional GCC, xcode, X11, terminal, and BSD base.
I'll just say this..
"Why not?"
Why would anyone run yet another lame Linux distribution on their G5
Because Apple makes really great hardware, but I don't use software that doesn't come with source code and the freedom to improve it.
I used Apple systems while growing up, and I've always thought (most of) their hardware was fantastic.
In the time since I installed MkLinux DR2.1 on my family's PowerMac 7500 back in 1997, I've decided that the long term advantages that come from free software are worth much more than the few slight and temporary advantages a proprietary program might offer, so as far as I can, I use only free software.
The OS X kernel ("Darwin") is free software, but the interesting stuff- Cocoa and the GUI stuff is proprietary.
You might might not think that software freedom is important, but some people do, and the combination of that concern with Apple's fine hardware is the reason someone would run GNU/Linux on a G5.
~Phillip
Perhaps I'm simply naive about PPC32/64 porting issues (okay, no, I'm not), but y'all are aware that the recent JDKs have full source available?
I mean, yes, it will take a bit of nudging to get it to compile if you're on an unexpected platform. (Most of my work's been on FreeBSD.) But it's not like you have to wait for the graces of Sun or IBM to deem you worthy to have a binary JDK.
That's why I was always confused about people saying "FreeBSD is great, but no Java!" right after I'd done a `make install` in the jdk14 directory. Is there any reason why this wouldn't be the same deal?
First off this was an IBMer not an Apple zealot. And of course while you were a bit rough around the edges, 64 bit distributions for Alphas (DEC/Digital) existed, and currently Suse 9.1 is available in release form and supports 64 bit.
Consider that Apple shipped USB before Intel platforms did, invented Firewire (IEEE1394), started shipping CD-ROM drives early on. Standardized on SCSI (finally dropped it when IDE sort of caught up to save costs), SCSI is now retired from most desktop applications and reserved for servers so Apple put server class mass storage as the default on their PCs, and put 1000BT ethernet interfaces on their computers first (in general, not as a add-on) while PCI cards cost multiple hundreds of dollars for the same funtionality. I could go on, but that would only feed the flames.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
How often do you encouter Linux machines without the following:
sh
perl
awk
grep
mail
tar
What else (from a software perspective) would be required ?
So no, SLES and RHEL are not referred to as toys, as far as I read it, since they are not full 64bit. This looks more like something on the line of "so far the PPC64 distros were a 32b/64b mix of code for various good reasons. Now, for those who want/need a full 64b distro that is not some research project, here it is. Enjoy.' There's nothing that I can see downplaying the previous work or design choices done by SuSe, RH and the rest of PPC64 devs.
Also, in your own words, they probably did 'a little more' than just recompiling the apps that were normally shipped as 32bit binaries for PPC64. The non-obvious good thing about this is probably more 64bit-clean code in the base distro, that can benefit the other 64bit platforms. If only for this thing alone, I think this new PPC64 port should be welcome.
If I buy Apple hardware, Apple is just going to use those sales to claim more OS X installations and to try to use that as a marketing weapon against Linux.
Or you could forget about being a pawn in a marketing war and just buy the hardware that best fits your needs.