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New Patches Let iMac G5 Boot Linux
An anonymous reader writes "Apple enthusiasts and Linux geeks allied and the result is the announcement of a set of patches (still in test stage) that allows iMac G5 owners to (at least) boot Linux on their toys."
I don't have an iMac, so this doesn't really affect me. Still, it is another symbolic victory for Linux, and hopefully many more will come. Perhaps this will help Linux market share rise above Macs?
Scott Simontis
Yet another reason to get a Mac.
Sounds great, yet another temptation by the devil to bring me towards macs... I am still wanting the day for OSX on my x86 hardware though (not emulated, thanks thought PPC). Now, how about a patch to bring down the price? :)
It is redundant to argue either:
1. There is no need for linux when you have Mac OS X. With its Unix-underpinnings yoiu can do basically everything on Mac OS X that you can use linux for.
2. Some people like Apple hardware (even though it might be more expensive compared to x86) but for (e.g.) political reasons prefer to use linux.
Read my lips. This is redundant. These arguments has been posted thousands of times at Slahsdot's Apple-section.
Please moderators. Take this into consideration when you moderate. I am tired of people telling the world that 'I can use Photoshop and Word on the same OS/computer as I write shell scripts and run Apache' and I am even more tired of when these postings are moderated insightful.
They are no more insightful than someone explaining that if you spend the same money you would get a faster computer today compared with a year ago.
I don't mean to troll or hurt anyone's feelings :) But the obivious question; what are the advantages of running Linux on Mac hardware?
As far as I've read, Linux can be run on iBooks but the hardware support is seriously lacking, which disables some important functions like power saving.. I doubt that Apple has yet documents available on controlling G5's fan system, enabling driver writing?
Again, as far as I've read different articles and reviews about OS X, it seems like heaven on earth for most Linux users.. Including something like extremely nice user interface, stable system, quality programs, programming tools, ability to run most linux applications with a recompiling.. Not that I had ever used a mac, there ain't too many around here. Hopefully my next computer will be one.
So back to the point; is there some long term goal like full G5 support or is this some "just for fun" stuff?
I'd like to see somebody come up with a dual-cpu monstrosity using hyperconnect or such, and link a G5 and an X86 together.
;-)
Even slicker is to use the old neXt packed binaries and compile for both X86 AND G5. I figure Jobs came up with it, why not use it
And why do this? Best of both worlds. There's a lot of software that is only MS NT X86 binary structure.. this beast could run it.
oh, and this beast could bootstrap all those X86-only pci cards that you cant use in the Mac.
If you're going to pay the premium for a G5, why not enjoy the complete hardware integration and plethora of available software offered by OS X?
A battleship's engine under the hood of a Rolls Royce.
I recently read Colin Charles' blog and came across his announcement of FC3 for PPC is in testing. He notes that "the release is known to not boot on G5's, and we are working on re-building another tree, which we can push out soon", would this new Linux kernel patch help with this?
Digital Citizen
Who exactly is behind this FHS initiative? The linked web-site is scant on details and information. There seem to be no know organisation sponsoring this operation and the only other thing on this web site are Enya lyrics (which is nice, I like Enya, but still).
well, i have 2 macs on my desk, and have 2 powerbooks current. I run 2 mac clusters and bought another one this week. All currently have os x.
:)
However, there is a good reason to run linux. OS X is (currently) a 32 bit OS. Many of the apps can't see all the memory. PPC linux is 64 bit.
that having been said, I'm only just now finding a need
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
I use Linux on a Mac, for several reasons:
Apple makes REALLY solid workstation/server-class desktops. My G3 circa 1999 has 64-bit PCI slots, shipped with Ultra2Wide SCSI hardware, and a 66MHz PCI slot (double-speed). You can't find reasonably-priced PC hardware like that, it's just not available.
Now we all know that OS X is really cool, but it packs some serious overhead for the graphics and sound systems, and while it's perfectly acceptable for a desktop OS (or a server if you're running it on newer metal), I'd much rather have the lower latency, higher performance, and reduced resource use of Linux on my more utilitarian boxes.
Also, if you're running a server on Apple software, you're limited to UFS, HFS+, and VFAT file systems, which is alright if you don't do anything wild, but I often need to pack 120,000 data files into a single folder and then manipulate them, that's something I find much more appealing when it's happening on a reiserfs partition, which only works under Linux.
I run Linux on a second partition on my AlBook as well, and I can tell you that the hardware support is quite good, Apple uses mostly commodity parts, so there's usually existing drivers in the kernel for Apple's hardware. I particularly like the feature where you can switch the 'apple sleep light' on the PowerBook and iBook into a hard drive activity indicator, very useful.
Another thing, I just realy LIKE Linux, I enjoy booting to an XDM session that kicks-off WindowMaker. It CAN be done on OS X, but it's a lot of work if all you want is to use *NIX apps. I like portage, and the OS X implementation is still mostly useless.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Word docs, etc. open just fine with double-clicking on my Mac.
Look for an app called Start OpenOffice.org that comes with the Mac package. It works great.
rc.local - apple's plist thing is the sux0r
No offense to linux, I've been using it since '93. However, as a desktop env. it's inferior to MacOSX. Maybe some rich linux guys just want a nice piece of hardware to run linux on?
I love my linux - simple as that..
Read my screen, "I DON'T WANT OSX"
I love the high quality Apple hardware and my Linux OS, is that so hard to understand?!?
~
What was the last time you used OO on a mac?
Yes, you have to have X11 installed, but all those other steps are long gone. No need for fink, no need to explicitly start X11 etc etc. Double clicking a document to open it also works just fine.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
With that "plist thing", they threw out the fundamentally flawed designs from the UNIX/Linux world and designed something that actually works. Frankly, I wish a lot more vendors would adopt such an approach. It's the -right- approach. The UNIX/Linux world would be a better place if more groups tried to come up with innovative means of making administration easier rather than just trying to "keep things hard to ensure job security for us".
God I hate to say this...
The x86 vendor that went in hybrid CPU directions was SCO (now this was in the early 90's when SCO was in the business of making operating systems not suing people). They did some excellent work on hybrid 486/i860 systems.
But those CPU's were different enough that there were big advantages (i860 could barely multitask but was built from the ground up for vector math....) What do you see as the advantage the x86 brings to the G5 or vice versa to make it worth the management cost?
I doubt there is anybody left at the company from those days but they might be on the market somewhere.
Alright, so far I've been frustrated by packages that don't build, and packages that require dependencies that could easily be satisfied by 'native' OS X stuff, but instead require the building of strings of dependencies that seem unnescessary.
for some things, portage on OS X is great, CLI tools seem to work (and look) fantastic. I still get a lot of collissions when trying to install stuff though. I hope it gets better, and that I get better at understanding the direction it's moving so I can test and submit bugs for it.
BTW, I figured that portage for OS X would do stuff like let me build firefox for aqua, but it seems to build for X11, which seems lame, I think it should aim to build targets as native as possible. Granted, you could never do this with a lot of packages, but those with aqua ports should be built with them. Of course, then there's the folks running straight Darwin with X11 on top, and they'd want the X11 version, sounds like time to keyword out stuff like that.
Has anyone managed to get an aqua GTK+ wrapper out? that would make 'native' aqua ports a lot easier, methinks.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails