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Linux on Virtual PC?

V

vawolf

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 3, 2004
38
0
Can anyone recommend a Linux distribution that will install successfully and run well on Virtual PC 7? I tried one called Ubuntu: it froze my PBook once, then took like 12 hours to install, only to not run at all in the end. I just want to dabble in Linux without having to deal with a dual boot or anything like that. I know about X11 but I want to play with Linux itself. Thanks! :)
 
vawolf said:
Can anyone recommend a Linux distribution that will install successfully and run well on Virtual PC 7? I tried one called Ubuntu: it froze my PBook once, then took like 12 hours to install, only to not run at all in the end. I just want to dabble in Linux without having to deal with a dual boot or anything like that. I know about X11 but I want to play with Linux itself. Thanks! :)
Click to expand...

That's not a very good idea... if you want to play with Linux without making a dual boot, you should use a Live distro (they can be used directly from the CD, no installation required), and they run at full speed (well, almost, because it takes some time to read from the CD). Ubuntu has a live distro for PPC, and is very user friendly, so I'd give it a shot (or better yet, Kubuntu, because it has KDE instead of Gnome... but that's a matter of tastes).
 
Well, back in the day, you could install Linux using VPC 6. However, after M$ bought it, suddenly using Linux in VPC 6.1 and onward became "unsupported" (as did everything else except WinXP). :rolleyes:

I'd also suggest using a live distro if you don't want to dual-boot. It's cleaner.
 
FoxyKaye said:
Well, back in the day, you could install Linux using VPC 6. However, after M$ bought it, suddenly using Linux in VPC 6.1 and onward became "unsupported" (as did everything else except WinXP). :rolleyes:

I'd also suggest using a live distro if you don't want to dual-boot. It's cleaner.
Click to expand...
"Unsupported' doesn't mean that it won't run. The practical impact is that VPC Additions doesn't install on the "unsupported" OS. For VPC 7, Win 2000 and WinXP are "supported" but most other Intel-compatible OSes run fine.
 
The LiveCD is nice, although you might be limited in "learning" because you won't be able to write to the part of the filesystem that has the distro files on it (cuz they're on the CD).

Some other options might be... using MacBochs or QEmu, although these will be crazy slow. I got DSL running on QEmu, but I could not get Slax running, which is too sad, because I wanted to try Wine under Slax. They are both much slower than VPC, sadly.

Finally, if you're on Panther, on off chance, you can use MacOnMac to run a PPC Linux distro in a virtual environment -- you will be able to write to the mounted disk image, but won't have to repartition, and you'll have relatively close to native speed this way. :) The only sad thing is that MacOnMac development doesn't seem to be very fast-paced at the moment. The site hasn't been updated since around when Tiger came out, and it is not Tiger compatible. (FWIW, MacOnMac is a derivative of MacOnLinux, which can be used to run the MacOS in a virtual environment on top of PPC Linux on Mac hardware.)
 
I never managed to get any linux distribution to work on VPC. Neither version 6 or 7. I tried many. Fedora core, debian, mandrake, and probably some others. Such a waste of my youth.. :)
 
Yeah, I tried to get ubuntu to install on VPC and it just froze, took forever, and then never worked. The live CD for x86 ran in VPC though using a blank newly created XP drive in VPC. Horribly slow though, but that was on my 500Mhz G3 iBook. :rolleyes:
 
I've got Xandros running on VPC 6.1.1 but it's even slower than XP. :(

I've got some others but I can't get their live CDs to work consistently which is a shame.
 
Omen88 said:
I never managed to get any linux distribution to work on VPC. Neither version 6 or 7. I tried many. Fedora core, debian, mandrake, and probably some others. Such a waste of my youth.. :)
Click to expand...

oh damn, i have fedora core half installed on my vpc7..i.e. i started installing and got bored to quit VPC.

I guess that disk image can go straight in the trash then..
 
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