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First Graphical LiveCD For The PowerPC By Gentoo
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.
Unless your mac still has an old RAGE128 in it, the game might be kind of sucky, performance-wise.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Is today Linux LiveCD Day or something like that? At least this is a change of pace from beta-release Ubuntu CDs -- I was wondering how many more times we were going to be hearing about Hairy Warthog.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
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)
Actually if you check the mirrors it only has a G5 version. The Mini Mac comes in 1.25GHz, and and 1.42GHz G4 models.
Creative Demolition
If you don't care about the games it was announced on slashdot 5 days ago that Ubuntu has a graphical live ppc cd, so there's more than one option. Actaully since it says a mac verstion of this Gentoo one is 'in the works' it looks like Ubuntu is the only option
I wonder how they do on oldworld macs?
Besides that, those screenies of cube look great. Anyone played it?
This wasn't even the first Gentoo X-based LiveCD for PPC. There was one back in June of 2003!
About the same difference as x86 boxen made by Via, Dell, and Sony.
The first is oriented towards the embedded space. The middle is the big corporate mass-producer, while the latter focuses on cool-looking eye-candy.
For every case, Linux can run as an operating system. However, IBM and Apple designs their own UNIX-based operating systems to run only on their own hardware, although with some minor effort they each could extend compatibility to other manufacturer's boards.
For example, it is technically possible to run Max OSX on an IBM PowerPC based RISC6000 workstation. It is technically possible to run AIX (PPC arch) on Apple hardware. But it is terribly unlikely that either company will make any effort to develop the necessary hardware drivers and loaders in their respective OS' to make it happen in reality.