Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Mac-optimized Linux Distro
- Thread starter Wildy
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Perhaps some people returned laptops they never purchased?
Yeah, I guess they were that bad!
This is a noble cause...
That I will support wholeheartedly.
There aren't nearly enough distros that work well on PowerPC. Compared with x86, where there are kabillions upon kabillions. Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Fedora for sure, but they are not exactly lightweight. Sure, you can apply any window manager you want to Debian but this is quite beyond average or casual OS X users. For truly lightweight there is only Lubuntu and MintPPC. As far a as MintPPC, development seems to have stalled on it, and its also not exactly user friendly to the uninitiated. If you don't believe me, head on over to the forums and see the headaches caused by noveau driver issues, x.org config files, networking, weird video, etc.
Plus, Crunchbang is Debian based, so should work on this, if it ever materializes:
http://ben-collins.blogspot.com/2012/11/servergy-announces-new-powerpc.html
That I will support wholeheartedly.
There aren't nearly enough distros that work well on PowerPC. Compared with x86, where there are kabillions upon kabillions. Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Fedora for sure, but they are not exactly lightweight. Sure, you can apply any window manager you want to Debian but this is quite beyond average or casual OS X users. For truly lightweight there is only Lubuntu and MintPPC. As far a as MintPPC, development seems to have stalled on it, and its also not exactly user friendly to the uninitiated. If you don't believe me, head on over to the forums and see the headaches caused by noveau driver issues, x.org config files, networking, weird video, etc.
Plus, Crunchbang is Debian based, so should work on this, if it ever materializes:
http://ben-collins.blogspot.com/2012/11/servergy-announces-new-powerpc.html
Perhaps some people returned laptops they never purchased?
I was being dramatic!! I guess I should have said 'over 9,000%' lol
But yeah return rates were pretty bad
No a POWER series cpu is not outdated there was one released last year. The power 8 will come out this or next year?
And what machine are you going to be using that utilises this POWER 8 architecture?
yawn...
Naysayers.. can't live with them! Please if you can't accept that there are many of us still around then please don't post here. We have enough anti-PowerPC going around to handle.
If you want to debate about Intel versus PowerPC and even ARM, this is not the place.
Naysayers.. can't live with them! Please if you can't accept that there are many of us still around then please don't post here. We have enough anti-PowerPC going around to handle.
If you want to debate about Intel versus PowerPC and even ARM, this is not the place.
I have enough going for me on OS 9 + X Tiger and Leopard that a Linux distro wouldn't be any better to be honest.
Well, to play devil's advocate, IBM did unify the POWER and PowerPC ISAs not long after Apple went to x86, and the resulting merged Power ISA is much more PowerPC than POWER. IIRC it was POWER6 that went forward with the new unified architecture, and it had a lot more in common with our older desktop Macs than with POWER5 under the hood.
That said, as amazing as POWER7 has been and I'm sure POWER8 will be, considering Big Blue no longer does any desktop versions whatsoever outside of speculative R&D, I don't see how this applies to us. Those are big iron server chips that cost as much as an entire computer. Entry level machines sporting POWER7s are on the wrong side of $10,000.
Last edited:
But they are similar! Intel xeon and intel core i7 are not he same but they are still x86 just like powerpc is isa 2.06
And men and women are both the same because they are both humans and not chips. Porsche and Hyundai are both the same because they're not bicycles.
Geeez I miss Zen
Personally I would love to try a Linux distribution that would be more PowerMac friendly. Ive tried alot of them and every now and then use my Lubuntu partition, but have been frustrated with the bugs and hiccups that they all seem to have.
Not being a Linux buff under PowerPC, your choices are the following:
MintPPC via Debian
Yellow Dog Linux 6.7 I think.. Personally, I don't like Linux on my PPC macs, but if I have to go that route, I would choose FreeBSD which is similar to the underlying kernel of Mac OS X, Darwin.
MintPPC via Debian
Yellow Dog Linux 6.7 I think.. Personally, I don't like Linux on my PPC macs, but if I have to go that route, I would choose FreeBSD which is similar to the underlying kernel of Mac OS X, Darwin.
Many more choices...
A quick trip to distrowatch will bring up:
MintPPC
CRUXPPC
Fedora PPC
Ubuntu PPC
Lubuntu PPC
Gentoo PPC
OpenSUSE PPC
Finnix if you super luv command line.
None are super easy to install, configure, and most (Ubuntu) are dog slow on older PowerPC macs. None are very mac like (though Lubuntu can be quite nice). Most have major issues with things like powermanagment, media playback, and portables (ibook, Powerbook) are a total pain the ass. This is why, if Crunchbang can be successfully ported and maintained that would be.....AWESOME news.
And, there is no PPC equivalent to Puppy Linux, or ConnochaetOS, ie, versions that are specifically DESIGNED for older hardware. Zen (there would have been much swinging of the maple leafed sword and blood shed on this post) is beginning work on porting Puppy to PPC, but it may be awhile with his new job.
A quick trip to distrowatch will bring up:
MintPPC
CRUXPPC
Fedora PPC
Ubuntu PPC
Lubuntu PPC
Gentoo PPC
OpenSUSE PPC
Finnix if you super luv command line.
None are super easy to install, configure, and most (Ubuntu) are dog slow on older PowerPC macs. None are very mac like (though Lubuntu can be quite nice). Most have major issues with things like powermanagment, media playback, and portables (ibook, Powerbook) are a total pain the ass. This is why, if Crunchbang can be successfully ported and maintained that would be.....AWESOME news.
And, there is no PPC equivalent to Puppy Linux, or ConnochaetOS, ie, versions that are specifically DESIGNED for older hardware. Zen (there would have been much swinging of the maple leafed sword and blood shed on this post) is beginning work on porting Puppy to PPC, but it may be awhile with his new job.
Yep, Ive tried all of those. Id say Mint and Lubuntu were probably the best of the bunch. BSD sounds like its got a ton of quirks as well (as far as for use with G5's). But Im more than willing to try this one. Any idea when you miht have it ready to test?
And what is your opinion on FreeBSD? I would think BSD flavors of UNIX would be similar in design and use compared to Darwin.
What about Chromium OS? It's an open-sourced version of Chrome OS. Chrome OS can run on ARM well but it can run on traditional PCs well too. And it being open-source we could configure it to be more desktop friendly than netbook friendly and be based more on your machine than on the web. It's supposed to be lightweight enough aswell.