Linux PPC users: what's you current distro?

[cb911]

i'm trying to install Gentoo 2004.0 at the moment, i've gone for about two days now with no sucess yet.

i'm just wondering what other Mac users who also have Linux installed are using? what distro do you have installed at the moment?

i'm just looking for some possibilities in case of the worst case scenario that i have to give up on gentoo.

i'm not looking for a distro thats 'bloated' with heaps of extras, or any pretty looking eye candy, just the basics.

oh well, just tell us what you've got.

 

[Stolid]

i'm trying to install Gentoo 2004.0 at the moment, i've gone for about two days now with no sucess yet.

i'm just wondering what other Mac users who also have Linux installed are using? what distro do you have installed at the moment?

i'm just looking for some possibilities in case of the worst case scenario that i have to give up on gentoo.

i'm not looking for a distro thats 'bloated' with heaps of extras, or any pretty looking eye candy, just the basics.

oh well, just tell us what you've got.

If Gentoo is a no go you might try Slackware Slackintosh. Sounds about like what you're running. But Gentoo has /great/ support on the IRC channels (or did last time I used Gentoo), so have you tried there?
Slackintosh: http://slackintosh.exploits.org/

 

[Nermal]

I tried Yellow Dog 3.0 once. But afterwards, I realised that installing Linux was stupid because OS X has all the benefits of Linux anyway.

 

[cb911]

i'm on #gentoo-ppc now... that's been a big help. but it's still a struggle...

i also checked out Slackintosha while back. it didn't have very good support though. i might check it out again.

any other linux Mac users out there? i know there is....

 

[maradong]

i am using debian sid. works like a charm on my imac 17''

 

[cb911]

OH HELL YEAH!!!!!!

w00t w00t!!!!

well i'm finally back typing this from Gentoo!!

actually got Gentoo installed on Sunday morning (!!!!) but then i spent Sunday night compiling GNOME and it just finished at 7:30 Monday morning before i had to take my PB to college.

then i had to get Xfree86 all setup... finally got it going and it's all good!!

this is so exciting!!

there were a few PPC specific issues missing from the Gentoo handbook, but the IRC channel (#gentoo-ppc & #gentoo on irc.freenode.net) were really good for help.

so it actually took me about 2-3 days before i got to having windows moving around on the screen, but it was all fun and well worth it.

most importantly i didn't break OS X.

to any people wanting to learn Linux/UNIX: get right into it and install Gentoo!! i'm a complete n00b when i comes to this... my second install attempt with Gentoo and my first sucessful install now. you learn really fast with Gentoo and that's exactly what i wanted to do.

well.... off to emerge some more

 

[tomf87]

I tried Yellow Dog 3.0 once. But afterwards, I realised that installing Linux was stupid because OS X has all the benefits of Linux anyway.

I agree with you there. The only reason I can see to use Linux on PPC is if the machine can't run OS X. For all G3's and above, you're better off just using OS X. You really don't gain anything by using Linux on late model PPC's.

 

[blaster_boy]

I originally bought my pbook 12inch with the intention of clearing of mac os x off and installing gentoo.

But then I played a few days first with mac os x. And I thought this was really nice. And it's based on a bsd kernel. And you can have fink to run unix progs. And it all works so ...together. Drag a picture from Iphoto to mail, from the Safari browser directly to the desktop, to Itunes, whatever.

Cool.

It's been seven months now since I bought my pbook. I still haven't installed gentoo on it...

 

[ExoticFish]

I've installed Linux on previous Macs I've had but like blaster_boy said, having OS X on the machine just makes the room that Linux takes up not worth it. That's why I bought a Thinkpad off EBay and installed Gentoo 2004.0 on it.

 

[cb911]

well i've had a bit of a look at Gentoo now that i've got it running... and i do have to admit that in reality i doubt i'll ever use that more than OS X. especially as a designer Photoshop and everything else i use is available on OS X... and it seems like a pain to setup the ATI cards properly. in Gentoo i've even got trouble running detailed screensavers. i'll be lucky to get 9fps out of a 'matrix' like saver...

but it was definitely to learn more about Linux/UNIX. i don't know any other way i could have learnt so much in such a short period of time.

i might start messing around with the UNIX side of OS X now... but that scares me more. i might mess something up.

anyway... i understand it's possible to run KDE and GNOME apps in OS X somehow??

i still don't understand how that works... could someone explain that to me?

also, what exactly is X11? is that kind of like XFree86?

and if i get a binary of a Linux application, how would i compile that for OS X? in Gentoo you just type 'emerge' (with some extra flags and commands, depending on what you want). is there an equivalent for OS X?

thanks

 

[tomf87]

X11 is short for XFree86. That's the windowing system you can use to run Linux GUI apps on Mac OS X.

As for compiling applications, I would use fink (fink.sourceforge.net) to get your apps running. Once fink is installed, let's say you want to install package ethereal, you would open Terminal and type:

sudo /sw/bin/fink install ethereal

If it finds any dependencies, it will download them as well.

EDIT: If you are worried about messing up OS X, create a new standard user and use that user to toy around with Unix shells/commands. You won't harm the system in this way.

 

[Stolid]

X11 is short for XFree86. That's the windowing system you can use to run Linux GUI apps on Mac OS X.

That's not entirely accurate. XFree86 is an implementation of the X11 standard. A lot like Mac is just an implementation of the PowerPC architecture. It is based on the X windowing system; the purpose of the X windowing system is to make a windowing architecture that was independent of both the type of system it was running, and where it is running (I can run an X application on a highspeed server; but have the GUI on my home computer).

 

[cb911]

thanks for the info.

i've actually got Fink and DarwinPorts installed... but i never knew you could compile using Fink? i just thought that it was like DarwinPorts, that you could only use apps that had been ported to OS X...

well i'll read up on Fink. although one thing about it i would like to know is... can i install apps via Fink to a partiton other than my boot (Panther) partiton?

and kind of off the subject - i read somethng about fooling OS X into allowing you to install apps like iMovie, iDVD etc that usually have to be installed on the boot partition on another partation? does anyone know anything about that? i'm running out of space on my Panther partition, so tat would be really handy.

 

[spaceballl]

Ubuntu!

 

[johnnowak]

thanks for the info.

i've actually got Fink and DarwinPorts installed... but i never knew you could compile using Fink? i just thought that it was like DarwinPorts, that you could only use apps that had been ported to OS X...

Just because you're compiling from source doesn't mean they didn't have to port anything.

well i'll read up on Fink. although one thing about it i would like to know is... can i install apps via Fink to a partiton other than my boot (Panther) partiton?

Yes, although it'll take some configuring.

BTW, Gnome and KDE run fine under Apple's X11.

 

[johnnowak]

i'm on #gentoo-ppc now... that's been a big help. but it's still a struggle...

i also checked out Slackintosha while back. it didn't have very good support though. i might check it out again.

any other linux Mac users out there? i know there is....

Slackintosh is no longer supported. If you want something similar, try CRUX PPC.

I recommend Gentoo or Debian personally. Ubuntu is rather lame... if easy.

And by the way, don't forget about NetBSD and OpenBSD!!