Linux on OS X

S

saurya_s

Registered
Hi all
I have been using mandrake linux on PC for a while and I love it!!
Now, I am thinking is Linux on G4 powerbook is woth having; Few questions:
So, YDL or mandrake?. With the demise of Red hat, I am not sure how YDL will go.For Mandy PPC , I guess the development is not as fast as for PCs.
rpms are they universal - for PC and mac or do I end up in compiling all softwares myself.
How r things with modem, DVD writer, bluetooth etc?
Any installation advise?
My new Powerbook has MS office etc for which I haven't got CDs, as installed probably from network by IT guys. So I don't want to screw up anything on OS X.
Suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks
SS




1.25 GHz G4 Powerbook with
Superdrive
 
Hey, you want to keep your M$ office and install Linux? :p OpenOffice rules, man ..

I'd probably go for Mandrake. I haven't tried that on powerbook though, so I have no practical advice for drivers etc.
 
I tryed both YDL, and mandrake. They each have advantages and dissadvantges. It realy is just a matter of trying them and seeing if you like them. I didn't realy like how packages were handled on eather of them, which is why I migrated over to gentoo.
 
Red Hat DOES still exist, it just isnt "free" any more, because you can't get the commercial release without support, and the "free" version is supposedly buggy.

I think i read somewhere that SUSE is available for macs (and other PPCs)
 
Suse, in my opinion is a good alternative to YD. I played around with both on my old G3. Both installed nicely, YD did not recognize my video card, had trouble config resolution higher 600x400. YD is based on Red Hat. Suse is still available for free download, of course with out tech support.
 
SUSE seems to be an old version for the PPC, so I guess you'd better stay away from that. Mandrake still hasn't released a PPC version of its latest 9.2 so you might want to wait a while for them to do that.

Of all the Linux distros I've tried, I liked Gentoo the best, and Yellowdog 2nd. You can't take any regular x86 RPMs and install it. I like Gentoo as it makes it very easy to compile from source, something that I end up doing quite a lot because its not as easy to find PPC RPMs.

Give both a try. Gentoo is slightly harder to install, but is well worth it.
 
I've been a supporter-in-principal of YDL, but when it came time to test install it on my iBook (below) it lasted about 5 minutes before I got fed up and installed Panther; that's just my opinion ;)
 
Can't really put my finger on it, I just didn't like it's feel. For some reason however, using RH9 on my 200MHz dell is a dream.
 
RH9 on a 200Mhz Dell? You're kidding right? I've used RH9 on an Athlon 1700XP and a P4 1.8Ghz and I found it to be ...sluggish (I know, this is subjective, but that's how it felt anyway). I think its due to RedHat's custom kernel, or the NPTL stuff they added that makes it feel unresponsive at times. That's when I moved to Gentoo :)

What desktop are you using?
 
I'm using GNOME, but headless (logging in with XDarwin over XDMCP).

Sluggish, yeah maybe, but what do you think Windows 98 would be like on it? ;) I needed something to test out RedHat on, set up a server, play around with, give some shell accounts to friends who want to learn about linux, etc. Hey, since this was given to me for free, why not... It's not an enterprise server, and 99% of its use is shell-based anyway (I only use the GUI for configuriation utilities).
 
Well, RedHat 9 has a lot of components that will slow it down, but an experienced user can take care of that.

When I had RedHat 6.1, it was decent on my 486/66, and it was fine on a Pentium 1/90. The reason for this? This is before RH sold out and got bloated :p. But, because it is linux, you can unbloat it at your own will.

As for PPC Linux, I have a few opinions on the matter.

YDL (Yellow Dog Linux) is great. And its the only distro that ONLY supports PowerPC (Although based off RedHat, the company is purely powerpc). The mailing lists are great, and if you know a thing or two about linux already, this is what I would choose.

Debian Linux for PPC is also a good choice. I have it running on my PowerMac 4400 (Which I'm building into an MP3 player for my car). Debian is nice because you can choose EXACTLY what to install, and what not to. Debian is completely customizable, and its rather easy. apt-get is wonderful, and beats the heck out of rpm. The nice thing about debian, is you can install it in as little as 300 megs (hard drive space).

I haven't had the pleasure of trying Gentoo yet, but my guess is it is very similar to debian, only you'll have to have a little more patients (as you must compile everything on the install). It is likely WELL worth it though. There's nothing like a finely tuned system.

If you've never tried ppc linux before, I would go with YDL. Its just very built-for-ppc. For example, you don't have to sift through mounds of i386 install guides. And whenever you include 'ydl' in the ever-present google search, you can be confident its all ppc-related.

If you're a bit of an expert, go with debian. And if you're insane, and you are only happy with the best, go with Gentoo (do not choose gentoo if you have trouble with more advanced things, imo).

I'm confident my next install will be gentoo.

And remember, you can run most of your mac programs within linux. All you'll need to do is partition your hard drive (say, half for mac os x, half for linux). Then install the previously mentioned MOL (Mac-on-linux).

You will need to reinstall Mac OS X either way - thats a given here. But its well worth it, and you'll likely notice that ppc linux runs faster than Mac OS X (this is of course, debatable).

enjoy!
 
Hi, I heard a lot of things about Linux, so I wanna try it. I never had used linux, so I think that YDL is my best alternative (probably in the future, I gonna try with debian, and if I become insane, I wil install gentoo)

My question is where can I get the YDL? and can I install it with a simple double click like MacOSX ????

thanks very much
 
leinad256 said:
Hi, I heard a lot of things about Linux, so I wanna try it. I never had used linux, so I think that YDL is my best alternative (probably in the future, I gonna try with debian, and if I become insane, I wil install gentoo)

My question is where can I get the YDL? and can I install it with a simple double click like MacOSX ????

thanks very much
Click to expand...

For someone who has never tried Linux, I would recommend Yellow Dog. It's much more geared to the new user. Now I haven't used the latest version, but with 2.x the install was quite easy. I'm sure 3.x should be even easier.

The link to download YDL is on this page. Try one of the mirrors if you don't have luck with the main download site.

There's also Mandrake Linux for PowerPC. The link is here. The only thing is that the PPC version is always one generation behind the x86 version, so that might be something to be aware of.

SuSE is also a good distro for the beginner, but they don't offer ISOs. It's all FTP.

If you feel daring enough, you can try Debian or even Gentoo, but they take a little more user input (as well as time) than YDL or Mandrake. There is even a version of Slackware for the Mac called Slackintosh, but it's an unofficial version and isn't supported by the main Slack tree or distributor. Regardless, I would give it a try...Slack is a great distro. :D
 
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