Anyone use Linux on a Mac?

J

johnnyutah2k1

Registered
I assumed that the only OS you could run on a Mac was OS X but apparently not. Although there are less PPC compiles, it appears that there are people who run Linux and OS X on the same machine (I particularly like the look of Mac On Linux).

So I'm wondering what you're thoughts are on Linux for the Mac. It seems the most popular versions are Yellow Dog Linux and Mandrake Linux. Would you recommend either one of these?

What appeals is that Linux gives you a lot more control and power than OS X plus there's a lot of great open source software available. How limited is the no. of PPC compiles available?

The major problem in the past has been getting Linux to work on my PC, but with Apple's "standardized" hardware I don't anticipate any problems during installation.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.
 
Actually expect problems. First and foremost there are no proper ATI or Nvidia graphics drivers for PPC Linux. Both companies refuse to develop drivers for PPC Linux which have to be binary only. They will not give out specs or code for independent developers in the community to write drivers either.

Last I checked Airport drivers were not available yet but I haven't really been looking.

Certain Mac hardware specific features like the special keys on the keyboard DO work but there's a lot of people having trouble setting it up from what I've seen in PPC Linux forums. Sleep and wake functionality has varying stability issues as well.

Overall, inspite of the hardware being "standardize" or just fewer variety to suport, it does become difficult (but not impossible). I've run Gentoo Linux on my iMaca and it's awesome. Linux in general feels more responsive than OSX on the same hardware. Like it or not OSX has a lot of baggage that makes it feel heavy on slower hardware but fine if you have the high end stuff.

I don't see much point in running Linux on Mac hardware though becuase OSX is so well designed for the hardware - I don't mean PPC, rather the special keys on the keyboard for volume and brightness, sleep mode and such, it just works better in OSX than PPC Linux. But it still exist for other non Apple PPC platforms like IBM PPC machines and even other PPC manufacturers.
 
Contrary to what you may think, Linux is easier to setup and run on x86 hardware because everything is supported, or parts can be swapped out in favor of a supported component, whereas with a Mac, you're stuck with what's in there.

Also, using PPC Linux you'll be sacrificing certain things such as the Macromedia Flash plugin that's only distributed as binary only. That and the ATI/Nvidia graphics drivers are among several crucial software that's distributed in binary form only and that binary is for x86 only right now.
 
Mandrake 9.1 PPC versions and Yellow Dog Linux 3.0 is all I have to say... The rest is history :p

Get them here (get both in order to find which one will suit you better --this goes for anyone who wants to give Linux a worthy shot on the Mac platform ;) ) but I think that YDL is the better one (then again I could be wrong) :D
http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/products/ydl.shtml
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/press/pr?n=/pr/products/2417
or here:
http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/
 
Don't forget about Debian / GNU Linux.

We're running Debian on a bunch of machines, and have never experienced any serious problems. Kinda hard to install though..
 
Originally posted by wiz
dosen't gentoo work as well?
Click to expand...
Ok so my first post was too long for you. Yes, I've ran Gentoo on my iMac, used fbdev for graphics drivers, didn't have airport at the time to play with that. Yes it does work but requires more work to setup than YellowDog or Mandrake, but that's the idea behind Gentoo believe it or not.
 
Well it depends on how a person plans on using Linux on a Mac. Debian is perfect for servers but it's a bit behind the times if you want to run it as a desktop.
 
isin't SuSE the best... it has a lot of support. hehe i can get my Audigy sound card to work with it and my nvidia graphics card..
 
One year before Mac OS X was released I ran Linux PPC 2000 on my Blue & White G3, 400MHz. It was incredibly fast and stable. But since Apple relased X11 public beta for Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaquar), you really don't need Linux. I have GIMP and OpenOffice installed and X Windows gets along very well with Aqua. With the help of a friend and Fink download/installer, I compiled a UNIX command line-type IRC program on my Mac called Blackend that also works fine. From what I hear, Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) will come with X11 pre-installed so running programs in X Windows will be similar to installing "Mac" programs.

As far as controll over the system, Mac OS X is very flexible, you just have to know what the commands are and where the files are. Examples include the "defaults write com.Apple.XXXX" files.

One of my favorite screensavers in Linux PPC 2000 was "IFS". Since I'm not a programmer, I asked a well known programmer in the Macintosh community to port an X Windows screen saver over to Mac OS X. The website is here:

http://spazioinwind.libero.it/tpecorella/uselesssoft/software.htm

and the screen saver file is "IFS 1.1.1". All the guy did was compile the source code with Apple's compiler and place the "hooks" for software to run in Mac OS X. By the way, this is an awesome screen saver, OpenGL enabled, fast, and cool.

If you're serious about Linux PPC, wait for IBM to release their blade servers/workstations with a PowerPPC 970 in them.
 
I run Redhat 9.0 on an Intel box and Mac OS X on my iMac. Both are excellent. I agree with the other posts that Linux is better on PC hardware (I have used YDL in the past).

You need to ask yourself why you want to run Linux on the Mac. The only reason I can see at present is where you have slightly dated hardware and you want a bit of a speed boost. Otherwise why bother? I have a glut of opensource software running on both machines and the support for OS X in the opensource community is getting better all the time. It is quite common now for opensource developers to either include a Mac OS X binary or to provide links to another website with compile instructions. I think I read somewhere that Mac OS 10.3 has been designed to make it easier to port Linux apps to it.

The speed problems with OS X on slightly older hardware is mostly due to high level stuff such as Quartz and Aqua. There is the option of installing Darwin only offcourse but in my opinion the documentation is terribly bad - it doesn't exist in fact.

Linux is excellent but on Apple hardware stick with Mac OS X.

will
 
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