Slashdot Mirror
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."
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'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.
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
But the obivious question; what are the advantages of running Linux on Mac hardware?
:-)
:)
It's nice hardware, and I got my iBook for a better price than I could find an equivalent x86 laptop for.
I got firewire, long battery life, 12" screen (I wanted something small I could lug around easily), as much RAM and HDD, all for less than the closest x86 laptop. It's also hellishly attractive.
Oh, and the suspend/resume stuff is far faster than on all of the Linux/x86 laptops I've seen.
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..
Only the latest iBooks have "seriously lacking" hardware support, and even that is close to being fixed. (IIRC the latest benh kernels can enable power-saving).
My iBook was bought at the start of last year.
After 12 months on OSX I decided to switch back to Debian, mostly just because I prefer GNOME, and it was what I used everywhere else. It also gave a much-desired speed boost
The only thing that doesn't work is the modem, and that's just because it's a software modem and I don't want to use the (buggy, non-open-source) driver.
Overall, it was worth it, the biggest thing I lost was the ability to use WINE to play Windows games!
I've been doing a bit of clustering, and have been using the OSCAR system for building clusters. OSCAR is build using RPM-based distros (primarily RedHat). There are some folks porting OSCAR to Debian, but it's not there yet. Apple's got some pretty good tools that can be used for clustering, but nothing I've been able to get my hands on yet does all the stuff OSCAR does.
So since YDL is an RPM-based distro, there is a hope that OSCAR could be used with YDL. It doesn't work now, but it would probably be easier to do than try to port everything over to OS X right off the bat.
Now I will say I didn't like YDL on the G5 AT ALL. I told a co-worker it was like being a kid and taking apart your favorite Tonka truck to "improve" it. I ended up with something different, but I really wanted my old truck back. Also, there are some things that OS X is slower than Linux for (eg - run openssl speed on a dual G5 vs. a single Xeon - the Xeon will be multiple times as fast).
OS X is a fantastic operating system. The developers package is incredible, Fink rocks, and having X11 inside is cool as heck. I'm saving up to buy a G5 for my next personal machine. However, it's not perfect (no OS is). I can fully understand folks wanting to get a working Linux install running on Apple hardware.
Other than the obligatory references to climbing mountains because they're there, why would anyone want to run Linux on a G5?
Because Linux runs circles around OSX in terms of speed. Especially for servers. OSX's file IO and network IO in particular have too much overhead.
The same holds true for the desktop. Linux is much snappier on the desktop than OSX.
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
run openssl speed on a dual G5 vs. a single Xeon - the Xeon will be multiple times as fast
In all fairness, openssl has many hand written assembler routines for x86.