Linux on my iBook?

Octane, you can already do a lot of "linux" things right in OS X. What exactly is it that you wanted to learn? You can download and install Gnome and KDE through Fink and play with them, you can already use OpenSource applications that are built right into OS X, like Apache and Perl, there are innumerable OpenSource apps that can be installed through Fink (2431 packages currently in unstable), DarwinPorts etc.
What is it you want to learn about? The terminal and commandline interfaces? It's already there! The X11 environment? We've got that! OpenSource programs? There's a lot of them that run in OS X right now!
If you really really want actually run the Linux kernel on your Mac, try a live CD as was suggested. Gentoo should do fine for starters. We're still waiting for a PPC version of Knoppix. It is being worked on, but it's still in alpha AFAIK.
 
Cat said:
Octane .. what is it you want to learn about? The terminal and commandline interfaces? It's already there!
Click to expand...

If that really was the case, why isn't every Linux user running OS X? It's a rhetorical question, so I'd prefer this thread didn't descend into a petty argument. I need advice not criticism.

Cat said:
If you really really want actually run the Linux kernel on your Mac, try a live CD as was suggested...
Click to expand...

I already have these cd's as I stated earlier in this thread. And to reiterate my complaint, the instructions on their site differs massively from the experience you get once you boot into the cd; instructions say one thing, cd does another.

I've been around the Mandrake site and they look promising. Ideally, I'd like an installation as easy as Red Hat 9...
 
i'm pretty sure that you'll find a nice install with mandrake. about their support, i'm not sure. i used it after i struggled with gentoo for about a year. once you do that, you become pretty dang intimate with linux, so i never had a need for their support. it set up my hardware appropriately (gateway p3 laptop with aftermarket wireless card) and i was off and running.

i wasn't aware of a gentoo livecd that was worth its salt. personally, i'm not a big fan of live cds if you are going to seriously use it. things are just different enough to be weird. anyway, good luck with whatever you try.
 
I'll be honest, I'm too lazy right now to read that whole thread, but here is my suggestions/comments

I love gentoo on my imac. It took me forever to get it up and running though- I had no f-weeeeee-king clue what the instructions were telling me to do. But I just toyed around, and tinkered. The live cd was a valuable option when installing- I could boot up into gnome, and start the install (although it was slowed compaired to installing it w/o gnome) and then when I hit a problem I couldn't get around, I just would start up mozilla and pop off to the help fourms. Gentoo is a great system, and a great learning process when you install.

Or if you need this right away/don't want to put up with installing it by hand, Yellow dog was also a good distro. It is basicaly RH9. If you have ran the installer for Redhat, then you have also used YDL's installer, they both use anaconda. Plus YDL is the only distro that is complely centered on ppc. It is good if you are just starting out with linux, although their package manager can get fairly anoying after awhile.
 
In another post someone asked me why I didn't like YDL on my iBook and I couldn't give a straightforward answer, but I've just remembered it! With OS 9 I got from 4-6 hours of battery life, but with YDL I got around 1.5, and all my Apple function keys didn't work (like volume, mintor brightness, etc).

Mind you, Panther's not a whole lot better, with best conservation my battery only lasts 3 hours...
 
Octane,


I just installed Gentoo on my G3 500Mhz iBook2 and everything works just as I need. The Gentoo installation is a bit of a challenge but trust me when you get it up and running you will love it to death. Out of all the distros I've used Gentoo is the best and for the PPC. :D I've used Fink and it's ok I give it that. If you want to run something like Gnome, KDE, blackbox or enlightenment or whatever then I would recommend a Linux partition. Mandrake is ok but I wouldn't recommend it for the life of me. If I had to use something besides Gentoo I would shoot for SuSe. The reason every Linux user isn't using OS X is because

A) Not a lot of free software. Despite Fink ( I know they do a damn good job it's just not cutting it. Gentoo is going to port there portage software on OS X so stay tuned for that that might change some things in the OS X community)

B) I like using ReiserFS for my root partition. IMO it's better then Ext3 you can't pick what FS you want with OS X it's just Ext3

C) Installing custom kernels again OS X has one kernel while Linux has many.


That's just some of the things I can think of at this time. :)


Not to mention the Linux community is bigger then the Darwin community and it's more Open source. Sure Apple has some what of a Open source community but it's mostly closed source. (due to Apple making money off it's OS which I can understand) I like OS X in fact I love it. But I will never trade in my Linux partition maybe in a couple of releases when OS X has more options but who knows.


Also MOL (http://www.maconlinux.org/) makes my Linux box complete.

So my point is stick with it. Gentoo has great documents on how to install on the PPC and I can give you a hand if you have any other questions.
 
Hydroglow said:
Octane, I just installed Gentoo on my G3 500Mhz iBook2 and everything works just as I need...
Click to expand...

Just to reiterate my situation: I can't wipe my iBook, and I know next to nothing about Linux.

In an earlier post, I referenced an page on the IBM developer site that looked at the various distros of Linux and which are the best for Apple hardware.

Yellow Dog seems to be the consensus, but the article mentions that there isn't any way of editing a HFS+ partition in a non-destructive, at least no method that isn't out of alpha testing.

This is a massive blow. The only thing I can think to do is make a back up my iBooks system [Carbon Copy Cloner?]...
 
took me the better part of an hour to find it again (SourceForge has TERRIBLE search capabilities) but I found what helped me.
http://ppcconfdb.sourceforge.net/

This is a database of config files for linux. I just put gentoo on my iMac having no Linux, only practice on Mac OSX and it took about 24 hours (including reasonable amount of sleep during compilation). I do not recomend this to everyone but I don't discourage you from gentoo if you're not familiar with linux.

The gentoo docs had a tendancy to be great in parts, not so great in others. It would say "Change directories to root using the command 'cd /' but then it would later say "edit your make.conf file to your own tastes." It was in these moments when they assumed you knew what you were doing that I was lost beyond hope until I found a link to this project and that helped a bunch!

Good luck with Gentoo, I love it.
 
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