Linux-only POWER5 server From IBM
vaporland writes "This story from Infoworld.com talks about IBM's new low priced POWER5 based servers which will ship with Red Hat or Suse Linux, but not IBM's AIX.
My question is, will it boot up Apple's OSX Server?"
My question is, will it boot up Apple's OSX Server?"
No, because OSX does checks to look for Apple-specific hardware on boot.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
because most of the features important to Redhat has already been backported to their "2.4"
The thing is that Redhat isn't targetting the same market, as say Fedora or Suse.
That's why they created Fedora, otherwise all you guys would be bitching about redhat using 2.4 on your desktops.
They have their OS certified by many 3rd party makers of propriatory software, such as Oracle. Stuff like that takes a lot more work then just slapping 2.6 into a OS and making sure that everything works.
Everything has to work the way Oracle (for example) expects it to work, and Oracle is only going to tell Redhat the minimal it is needed to get it running, since it's closed source.
Don't worry, Redhat isn't dropping behind, it's just that they've adopted a much more long term-style revision policy compared to other distros. When they switch to 2.6 it will be a relatively cutting edge version of 2.6.
Which should be pretty soon. Also PPC developement is going to be falling a bit behind x86 developement due to the relative popularity of the different platforms.
You're thinking of the old Mac Toolbox ROM from the Old World machines.
On New World machines, they check for Apple-specific entries in the Open Firmware device map. There's a whole device tree that won't be present on a non-Apple machine.
So, theoretically, if you could work up enough Forth to get the appropriate entries on a non-Apple machine, it should work....
Another trick is that OS X only works with USB keyboards and mice, not with PS/2 devices. IBM pSeries machines still have PS/2 inputs. And RS-232 serial. And IEEE 1284 parallel. And video cards OS X has never heard of. And....