Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

First Graphical LiveCD For The PowerPC By Gentoo

Posted by timothy on from the hey-take-the-first-fight-up-with-them dept.

nberardi writes "The PPC team has prototyped the first completely graphical LiveCD for the PowerPC platform featuring a 3D multiplayer OpenGL/SDL game called Cube. Designed for the PegasosPPC, a CD variant to run on Macintosh hardware is already in the works. While the 198 MB GameCD is already available for download from the mirrors (in the experimental/ppc/livecd directory), a whole cluster of ODWs running Cube will be part of the presentations in the Gentoo developer room at FOSDEM in Brussels, 26-27 February 2005." Finding this ISO is a bit of a chore; first, go to one of the download mirrors, then follow the experimental/ppc/livecd chain. However, note that until the Macintosh version is ready, only people with Pegasos hardware will benefit.

3 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. 3D Acceleration by Digital+Pizza · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Since it's a 3D game, will there be any 3D acceleration, and if so, which Macs and how? As far as I know, there's no PPC version of NVidia's driver for Linux, which is the only one that has 3D acceleration. I'm under the impression that the same problem exists for all of the relatively recent ATI chips as well.

    Unless your mac still has an old RAGE128 in it, the game might be kind of sucky, performance-wise.

    --
    We apologize for the inconvenience.
  2. PegasosPPC by BrookHarty · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've been wanting to buy a PPC board for awhile, the problem boards where expensive. Now that systems are cheap with upgradeable CPU slots, I've tempted to pick one up. Ultraspec.us has a systems for 1495, and it runs MorphOS, Amiga OS4, all the PPC versions of Linux and BSD. I hear there are cracks for OSX, but I cant seem to find any proof. There is MacOnLinux which runs OSX under Linux but I found it slow on my dual g4, but useable. There is also a dual G4 cpu card for the board, I've seen on the MorphOS website in development. So a nice upgrade later.

    MorphOS looks rather nice, my friends who seen the demo in Germany says it boots in seconds, and multitasks quicker than anything they have seen. Made to run in 128megs of ram, its very stable and quick OS. But it looks like most applications are GNU Applications converted and Amiga applications for PPC recompiled. But since most people are using Linux and GNU applications, or OSX and GNU Applications, its might make a better desktop workstation than KDE. (Hint, someone do an article!)

    There are some desktop screenshots of MorphOS at Morphzone.org which shows some eye-candy.

    Having used an Amiga, (which the networking started my migration onto linux by way of amitcp and sockets...) I'd like to see what the current status of the whole PPC desktop scene is like. A few friends who got Pegasos boards love it, even the early g3 boards are stable and great little development boxes. Some people still love CygnusEd for coding. (Some moved to Emacs, but I forgive them...)

    Good to see Gentoo on the PPC front supporting the pegasos board. I wonder what Gentoo does beyond bring the Gentoo base to PPC, do they have developers working on PPC specifics drivers, etc? More detail than just taking the linux PPC kernel and add Gentoo's features and package support.

    I wish there was more detailed news, other than Gentoo releaseing PPC LiveCD's. (Which is still good news)

    1. Re:PegasosPPC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      PegasosPPC is a bit of a rip now that Mac Mini is here. A PegasosPPC costs $750 bare bones (mobo and proc). A Mac Mini costs $570 shipped with 512 mb ram, hard drive, video card, case and power supply. Even if you were going to wipe the drive and use Linux, the hardware alone is a better deal.

      PegasosPPC needs to go Power4/G5, Power4+, or Power5 for little extra money to be a competitive lost cost PowerPC platform now. Otherwise what's the point?