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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?"

8 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Gentoo by SirPrize · · Score: 5, Informative

    :-) Well, I've installed Gentoo on a G3 - and it works fairly well. Only problem I ever had was the Firewire card. Everything else worked. (Including the sound card). Mac-On-Linux (MOL) is also really fun - run MacOSX INSIDE of Linux.

    1. Re:Gentoo by SirPrize · · Score: 5, Informative

      Here's the link to Mac-on-Linux, along with the screenshots.

  2. Fink by 2starr · · Score: 4, Interesting
    All the tools you love on Linux with the beauty of Mac: Fink

    Ok, so it doesn't really answer your question, but I guess I'd ask why you want to do such a thing? I think that's a lot of the reason for the poor distribution support (actually, I think Yellow Dog is fairly good). There's just not a lot of need to do what you're asking. If you like a tool, you can probably get it with Fink.

    --

    "Let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average." - A. W. Tozer

  3. The difference by Otter · · Score: 4, Informative
    In my experience, the big advantage Yellow Dog has is that their Mac focus means that Mac-specific bells and whistles (pbbuttonsd or Mac-On-Linux, for example) are much more likely to be provided and installed with sensible defaults. You get a polished system much more readily. I've had lousy luck with Mandrake and SuSE, but as always with Linux, YMMV.

    Any idea what the schedule is for the next Yellow Dog release? The current version is ages old by now.

    --
    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
  4. Already have "BSD"... by JGski · · Score: 5, Interesting

    With essentially BSD under the hood, I've never seen the motivation to put Linux on my Mac. With Fink, Qt, Mono, X11, etc., most things from the Linux world are already available, plus the nicer UI to boot. I don't have enough hours in the day as it is, and the time to admin/RTFM has been my biggest gripe about keeping Linux boxes as production machines at home.

  5. Re:All? Beauty? by Bastian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've been using fink for a while, and I'd have to say that it does not have all the tools I love. It sure has a lot of them, but not all. Even some of the ones it does have are iffy - gnucash, for example.

    As for beauty, if by beauty you mean having a computer that contains three marginally but not entirely independent file hierarchies, yes, fink is beautiful. If you use fink for much more than a few X apps you like and think it's fun to have to remember what crap you have in /, what crap you have in /sw, and what crap you have in both but is marginally different because / has the BSD version and /sw has the gnu version.

    Fink is a great system for getting a few apps you need to work on your Mac, but it's not a perfect solution for every situation or every person. Heck, I dual boot Linux and OS X on my PB, but I also use Fink. Whatever works.

  6. Wow! by raider_red · · Score: 4, Funny

    "I just got myself a G4 Powerbook 12'"

    Holy shit! That's a really big screen. How do you carry around a 12 foot powerbook?

    --
    It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
  7. Huh? by Will2k_is_here · · Score: 4, Funny

    Maybe I'm just ignorant of Apple naming conventions, but doesn't G4 Powerbook 12' mean a 12 foot screen?