linux on vpc, mac, etc.

jonmichael23

jonmichael23

Registered
I love OS X, but I have been hearing some good things about Linux also. I have been wanting to try it out for a while now, but I don't know which distro is the best. I downloaded Red Hat Linux 9 (the first cd-638.1 mb). I'm not sure if this version is compatible with PPC processors, but I figured I could run it in Virtual PC anyway.

I burned it onto a CD, and set up a new pc for using linux in VPC. At first it wouldn't boot from the cd but i figured out that you had to capture the boot.iso image for it to work. The installer came up and the graphical installer works fine but when i get to Installation Method where it asks what type of media contains the packages to be installed, when i select Local CDROM it says the red hat linux CD was not found. The hard drive option doesnt work either, and theres also the NFS image, FTP, HTTP ways to install it too, but I already downloaded it. How come it says it cant read the CD, if the installers being run from the CD?Do you need the Cd 2 and 3 files too( i thought they were just add-ons with extra progs, etc.?) And if so do i need to burn it on a dvd or onto three cds.? Anyone set this up and knows what im doing wrong?

Well, since I couldn't get that to work I figured I'd try a linux distro that would run on my mac versus running on vpc. Right now I'm downloading Mandrake 9.1 for PPC. Anyone use this? I went for downloading it first because it comes with Mac-On-Linux which looks very intriguing. That way I could just boot into linux all the time and have instant access to OS X. Is there a better PPC linux distro out there? I heard yellowdoglinux was good, should i get that and just download MOL?Also, is there a Red Hat PPC version and where can I get that? I was also interested to know about Gentoo, SuSe, etc. Any help appreciated, sorry for being such a newbie to linux! :)
 
Get Yellowdog Linux instead of Mandrake. The reason I'm saying this is because its more up to date than the Mandrake distro and since I don't know what hardware you're using, Mandrake might not support it.

I know Mandrake has a hard time with my Powerbook 12'.
 
Yellowdog for sure. You could pretty much say that Yellow dog is the PPC version of RedHat. You will surely see that OS X is much easier than Linux. But it is fun to play with.
 
YellowDog is a PPC version of Linux, meant to run natively (NOT under VirtualPC) on the Macintosh. You simply burn the disk images to CD-ROMs and restart from the 1st CD-ROM to install. It's easy to set up and runs wonderfully on old hardware and new hardware alike. I have it running on an old PowerMacintosh 8500/150 and it runs decently.

If you want to install Linux under VirtualPC, you'll need the i386 disk images. The procedure to install is the same, except you don't start your Mac with the first CD-ROM in the drive -- instead, you start VirtualPC with the first CD-ROM in the drive.

Good luck, and happy Linuxing!
 
Yellow Dog Linux all the way. If you are daring enough, try out Debian for PPC or Gentoo for PPC. From personal experience, stay away from Mandrake....I don't believe that they put the time into the PPC version as they do with the x86 version. SuSE is another option, but that's straight FTP install unless you are willing to pay for the boxed set.

There's also Slackintosh, which is the unofficial port of Slackware on the Mac. I haven't yet tried it, but I may in the future if I come across a nice Power Mac to play with.. :p

In case you're wondering, my icon is the logo for the Slackintosh project. :D
 
Suse is even worse than Mandrake. Their PPC version is stuck somewhere at version 7 which was released years ago. They're currently planning a 9.1 release on the x86 front.

This basically leaves Yellowdog Linux, Gentoo and Debian for the PPC. While I'm a fan of Gentoo, I think Yellowdog is more friendly.
 
it seems as if yellowdog would be a better choice for a new user like me. Mandrake has been nothing but a headache, it's 702 mb so I put it on a DVD rather then a cd and it won't start-up from the DVD when I hold down the C button. I've been reading their support pages and the current 9.1 version was made a LONG time ago when the powermac G4's were just coming out. I'm trying to download yellowdoglinux right now so hopefully I'll have it in a couple hours :p ...... Red Hat seems to be another good linux distro, but I'm guessing they don't have a PPC version? And as I said before, I can't get it to work in VPC, anyone know how to fix that problem? The installer comes up and it boots from the CD fine in Virtual PC, but then it asks what media contains the packages and it says the red hat linux cd was not found?! I guess I can wait till later to use yellowdoglinux, but I did want to play around with Red Hat Linux 9 in the mean time. Also, anyone run Mac-On-Linux on yellowdoglinux? It hasn't been updated in forever and it says support for up to 10.2.5 or something like that, but I was wondering if it would work with Panther. Again, thanks for any help :)
 
Viro said:
Suse is even worse than Mandrake. Their PPC version is stuck somewhere at version 7 which was released years ago. They're currently planning a 9.1 release on the x86 front.

This basically leaves Yellowdog Linux, Gentoo and Debian for the PPC. While I'm a fan of Gentoo, I think Yellowdog is more friendly.
Click to expand...

I do agree with you about SuSE. I just didn't want to say anything that would step on a SuSE-lover's toes... :D I never was able to get SuSE working on PPC, though it would have been nice just to at least see it run. Oh well... :p
 
A few years ago LinuxPPC 2000 was, I think, one of the first distributions of Linux for Mac (http://www.linuxppc.com/). It used the RedHat Package Manager for installations, though I never successfully installed anything after the initial installation. About a year after I purchased the boxed set which included the "geek" Penguin Linux T-shirt, Apple released Mac OS X Public Beta. Compared to running Mac OS 9, LinuxPPC 2000 was REALLY fast, and stable. It came with Netscape Communicator, which was a decent web browser at the time, now I use Mozilla (http://www.mozilla.org/) ALL THE WAY with the Googlebar plugin (http://googlebar.mozdev.org/). If you search the web using Google, you will really like the Googlbar plugin for Mozilla; you do multiple/simultaneous searches for text on the same web page- great for data-mining or very quickly finding what you need. LinuxPPC 2000 also came with GAIM, an AOL IM chat program that worked pretty well. Personally, I liked the XMMS (X MultiMedia Player) for playing MP3s, it used ONLY 5% of the CPU as opposed to iTunes hogging 12% to 20% (depending on EQ/visual plugins active) in Mac OS X. I miss the days of simplicity, XMMS was great, a WinAmp clone that didn't put a load on the CPU.

Unfortunately, one of the founding members of the LinuxPPC 2000 company was seriously injured in a car accident and the company folded, hence, the link above is very likely dead.
 
well I have to apologize to everyone here. I've never used linux before or installed it and just went ahead and didnt read any docs or anything on how to do it. The problem was I opened the iso image file, took all the folders and everything and put them on disc, not just the iso image. I just figured out my error and Red Hat's installing in Virtual PC now. Also, Yellow Dog Linux is 476 mb downloaded so I'll have that in another hour too! Would it be a good idea to download the disc 2 and 3 images for Red Hat Linux 9, as well as the other discs for yellowdoglinux, or are all the basic things I need included on the first disc? Thanks for all your help guys.
 
Well, if you want to run Linux natively on the Mac, you can't use Red Hat. Red Hat is only for x86 hardware (and some other hardware, but not PowerPC). You would ned Yellow Dog (or any of the other PowerPC distributions mentioned above).

Once you have the ISO image on your hard drive, you need something like Disk Copy or Toast to create a CD-ROM disc from the ISO image. Simply opening it and copying the files won't cut it. The only problem is that I think you might have corrupted the ISO if you mounted it on the desktop to get the files. I could be wrong, since I've never actually done that out of fear that something would get corrupted. Worst case scenario, you would have to download the ISO images for Yellow Dog again and then use the above tools that I mentioned to create a CD.

Good luck. Please let us know what happens...
 
I wasn't talking about Yellow Dog Linux, I was talking about why Red Hat wouldn't work in Virtual PC. Yellow Dog got done downloading a while ago, I dragged the iso image onto a the blank cd and burned it, and when I try to start up from the disc (holding down the c button at start-up) OS X just starts up and nothing happens. It won't let me select the cd as a start-up volume in system preferences, I tried holding down alt/option to select a start up volume but it just shows the OS X folder and no buttons result in a change for the start up volume. I'm running 10.3.2 should I repair disk permisions? I'm installing 10.3.3 right now so I'll probably just wait until that is done and then try again.......
 
Oh, ok. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Virtual PC sometimes does funny things with Linux as far as support. Another thing to consider is that Microsoft is now the owner of Virtual PC, so though they haven't dropped support for Linux, I'm sure they are going to make it a little harder than it would be for Windows.

BTW, what Mac do you have? If it's at least an iMac or B&W G3, you should be able to boot from the CD. If it's anything prior to that, including the beige G3, you can't start from the CD....you would have to use BootX to install and then boot into Linux.

If you do have one of the newer Macs, try setting the startup disk from the System Preferences. That option has proved successful to me than using the C key.

Hope this helps...
 
I don't know if dragging the ISO file to the CD icon on the desktop is going to yield a bootable disk (this is what I think you're doing from the sound of your post).

You'll need to use Disk Copy (Jaguar) or Disk Utility (Panther) or even Toast to burn a bootable CD from that ISO image. In Disk Copy or Disk Utility, use the "Burn Image" command, while under Toast you'll need to navigate to the "Disk Image" format.
 
I have to agree with ElDiablo here... All that does is put the ISO file in the CD. It doesn't create a CD out of the ISO image file. You have to use Toast or Disk Copy/Utility.
 
thanks for that advice ElDiabloConCaca! Yes that is what I did, I never even thought to burn it in disk utility. So to make a bootable cd you have to burn it in disk utility?........good thing I bought this 20 pack of cd-rs :p . I will post after I have burned it.
 
yes burning the image in disk utility did allow me to start-up from the cd, I am now getting ready to partition and clean install OS X. After this is done I will attempt to install Yellow Dog ( i already booted it up and that anaconda installer looks exactly like red hat linux 9 did, i guess yellow dog is the red hat for mac?) After having gone through the red hat install in virtual pc, I am guessing I need all three disc images to install it? After OS X is done I will try to install it and see if I need the other discs or not, hopefully not or else this will become an all-nighter. Anyway, I look forward to yellow dog and hopefully mac-on-linux will prove useful. Thanks again!
 
Good job, man! I do believe you'll need all three disks. When I installed Yellow Dog, it required all three disks and I selected the Workstation install with a few extra options. It's quite cool -- the video card/monitor auto-detection didn't work quite right off the bat, but the help files at yellowdog.com got me through it in no time flat.

I do believe Yellow Dog is RedHat based.
 
yes I do need all three discs, I am going to download them right now. I don't understand how to partition for this. Okay I put in the first panther disc, opened disk utility and partitioned the drive. So I had a macintosh HD drive with 60 GB, and a Linux drive with 16.36 GB . I booted up the yellow dog disc just to make sure I could install it on the 16 gb partition. I did the manually partition drive, selected hd5 which was the 16.36 gb partition, but when I clicked next it had an error saying the root (/) something wasn't right. The only partition that did work was a auto-partition which cleaned the HD and made it one 76 gb drive. I quickly went back, powered off and on and am sitting here stumped. I'm downloading the second disc now, and I should get them both done by about 1, but how do I partition for this? I'll go read the docs at yellowdogs site but I'm not sure if I'll figure it out. Any help appreciated!
 
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