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Linux Distributions for Powerbooks?

Posted by Cliff on from the penguins-and-apples dept.

sol2k asks: "I just got myself a G4 Powerbook 12' and I am still amazed at the thing. Mac OS X is beatiful and sometimes even too intuitive for someone crossing from the Windows world. I had some nice experiences with Linux on Intel machines but would love to try out a Linux on the Powerbook and make use of the great hardware. Here's a simple question: What are my options? I know about Yellow Dog (old and doesn't seemt to be updated often), Debian/PPC (a bit too much time to set up than what I have available) and Mandrake (9.1 - that's really old). What Linux adventures have you had on your Mac?"

7 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Gentoo by pardey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Gentoo runs on PPCs, and is (so I hear) less trouble to set up than Debian. Worth looking at, anyways.

    Cheers.

  2. YDL by Johnny+Mnemonic · · Score: 3, Insightful


    How do you classify Yellow Dog Linux as 'old'? They update it regularly, in my experience--I guess you can't get nightly builds, or even once a month; but it's not that far behind.

    And it's probably your best bet. Unless you want to hack on Darwin, which gets rid of the non-free parts of OS X.

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    $tar -xvf .sig.tar
  3. Re:The difference by Otter · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Also, be warned that gcc compiles slowly on PowerPC. It's not a huge deal, but I haven't attempted to run Gentoo on PPC out of fear that 'emerge -u kde' really would last until it was time for the next version.

    --
    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
  4. This guy will be modded troll, but...... by DesScorp · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...he's essentially right. OSX is the best desktop Unix available. Why replace it at all? You've got a spiffy G4. I just don't see the point. Now, if you had a G3, yeah, ok, I can see that, as OSX runs like a dog on that cpu. Yellow Dog would be a good choice there. But damn, a brand new G4? Keep the Mac system on it.

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    Life is hard, and the world is cruel
    1. Re:This guy will be modded troll, but...... by Atzanteol · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Because he's not as fscking myopic as you two? He wants to try Linux on PPC? Christ, why do people have to justify their desires to a bunch of slashdotters? HE JUST WANTS TO. Good enough for me, and most normal people. But not the pretentious Mac folks.

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      "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

      - Charles Darwin
  5. Knoppix by _aa_ · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How come everyone thinks debian is so hard?

    Here da go --> knoppix for ppc. Burn CD, boot, run knx-hdinstall, boot from hdd, edit /etc/apt/sources.list to point to your favorite debian mirror and then 'apt-get update && apt-get upgrade' and you're done. Or you can just stick with knoppix. It doesn't get much easier than that.

  6. My 800 MHZ Powerbook runs by redog · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Gentoo. Its addicted me to wireless. Gentoo takes a while to get going, 2 days from stage 1 on this box. Once its installed its fast. Feels faster than my 900mhz dell at home, though I've never really done any benchmarks.