Unix Newbie can anyone help?

R

radar24

Registered
Hi,
I am Running Mac osx Tiger on a G4 Powermac is there any way i can get another Unix Based OS to load up? eg: Solaris, or simalir.

Cheers for any help in advance
 
I assume you mean getting other Unix based OSes to load on the G4, not on some other computer.

Solaris works only on Sparc and x86, so that's out I'm afraid. Your best bet would likely be a Linux distro (apparently Ubuntu is a nice one, but I've not tried it), or NetBSD (the latter has a somewhat involved install process on Macs, but it does run well once installed.)
 
Linux distros for PowerPC Macs (I mention this specifically since Debian has a port for 68K Macs):

1. Fedora Core 4 (recently released and has PPC support now)
2. Yellow Dog Linux (one of the first successful Linux/ppc distros out there, based from Red Hat, and now Fedora)
3. Debian (been around forever....great package management system)
4. Mandriva (another RPM-based distro, geared to users new to Linux. Formerly called Mandrake Linux.)
5. SuSE Linux / Novell Linux (don't know what they are called anymore now that Novell is in charge... :p)
6. Ubuntu (Awesome up-and-coming distro based from Debian geared for the end-user. Uses Gnome as the desktiop environment.)
7. Kubuntu (Same as Ubuntu, except that KDE is the desktop environment used)

I think that's about all of them.
 
nixgeek said:
5. SuSE Linux / Novell Linux (don't know what they are called anymore now that Novell is in charge... :p)
Click to expand...

I think it's still SuSE who makes it, but on newer boxes there's the Novell logo on it, so I'd say Novell Linux.
 
Don't bother with YDL. (yellow dog). I've been suffering with YDL related problems on two computers for several months. Their support is non-existent (unless you pay) and their "help" files blow. There's no audio support, so don't count on alsa or other... no cd -- no sound. I recently installed Ubuntu and it works fine so far... number one issue solved is that audio works. YDL claims to "have some issues" with build in (PCI) audio, but claims that their support of USB audio is the best. Well, that's fine if you use USB audio.... which I don't think anyone does as all of the Interfaces now are either PCI or Firewire, and there's no firewire support in linux yet so that leaves...

okay, done now

-Scott
 
radar24 said:
Hi,
I am Running Mac osx Tiger on a G4 Powermac is there any way i can get another Unix Based OS to load up? eg: Solaris, or simalir.

Cheers for any help in advance
Click to expand...

Now that Mac OS X is such a "grown up" OS, you'll find more binaries and packages for it than for other unix based OSes that run on Macs. So it's probably a good idea to stick with Mac OS X and get familiar with it. The Terminal is nice. And if you don't like the GUI, you can log in as ">console" from the login screen and get the good old console filling the screen.

If you need to learn other OSes, my suggestion is picking up a cheap PC, upgrading the RAM and playing around with that. It's a much more supported platform hardware-wise if you intend to do other stuff than importing video and printing photos.
 
You could do this, but sometimes the urge to tinker is there. I've actually installed Linux on a 68K Mac, although it was shortlived since I didn't have enough space for a full install (I was installing Debian Woody).

Plus, it's cheaper than buying a PC (even if dirt cheap) to just download the ISO and burn it. ;)
 
ksv said:
Now that Mac OS X is such a "grown up" OS, you'll find more binaries and packages for it than for other unix based OSes that run on Macs. So it's probably a good idea to stick with Mac OS X and get familiar with it. The Terminal is nice. And if you don't like the GUI, you can log in as ">console" from the login screen and get the good old console filling the screen.

If you need to learn other OSes, my suggestion is picking up a cheap PC, upgrading the RAM and playing around with that. It's a much more supported platform hardware-wise if you intend to do other stuff than importing video and printing photos.
Click to expand...

I'm all for folks 'pushing the limits' on whatever hardware they have. The OP may find, after installing NetBSD, that they prefer it, or that they would rather have OS X. If the OP wants to learn about OS's, that is certainly one way to do it, and is a rewarding experience.

I've got a G3 Powerbook right now that may end up running NetBSD. For a guy with a *nix background, OS X can be very frustrating.
 
Another idea is to take your favorite UNIX programs and compile them to run on Darwin. OSX's integration the GUI is the most seamless of all the UNIX implementations with a single window manager. Whereas X11 thinks each window is a separate telnet connection and spawns yet another process for each window you have open, not very effecient...
 
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