linux?

[venkman]

posted the following on the linux forum with no responses. Thought I would check here and see what you guys thought:

I recently came into possession of g4 500 mhz laptop. I've always been a pc person and know very little about macs. I was thinking of making it dual boot os x and linux. Wondering what distribution is best for macintosh. I know that's a rather personal question, but consider that I tend to use redhat on my x86 machines. linux.org lists several choices (mklinux, yellow dog, suse, debian, mandrake). I know yellow dog is redhat based, but it says on their website that they are only up to redhat 7.2, two revisions behind normal redhat. Are there distributions known for keeping ppc linux up to speed with x86 systems? Or is it that the linux kernel itself usually gets developed for x86 first anyways, so mac systems always have to be behind?

-Venkman

 

[jimoblak]

The best Mac 'distribution'? OSX

OSX has a unix core running it. Installing Linux on an OSX Mac is redundant. You can run X windows on OSX and many other nifty things one can do on Linux. Check out Fink at

http://sourceforge.net/projects/fink/

for a good list of packages that it handles.

OSX is an elegant version of unix. You might be dumbing down the computer by loading Linux.

When you power up OSX for the very first time, you already have Apache and PHP running.

If you intend to use Linux on the Mac simply to test code on a PPC, keep in mind that the majority of other Mac users will not be using Linux with the proliferation of OSX. There may be little or no use to program or test PPC Linux apps for Macs. ...Or do you know some Amiga Linux users?

 

[venkman]

The thing is that I'm much more familiar with linux, and don't really feel like learning all the guis to do things I can do in 2 seconds from a text prompt. For instance, I run a very small LAN at home, where I'm using this mac. My network is already setup and I do not use a nameserver (I only have 4 machines, so it's not really needed). Now from linux, I know that you edit the /etc/hosts file to add custom name resolutions. This file is read automatically, and does not require reboot. While this file does exist on the bsd subsystem of osx, it either does nothing or is read at boot time only. Now, I know you can add name resolutions through the net-info gui of osx. However, it took me 15 minutes to figure that out. I'm glad I know how to do it now, and like moste ppl who post here, I'm dorky enough that I like figuring this stuff out. However, I would rather have a linux system up that I know how to configure very quickly, and play around with osx when I have extra time.

Also, the truth is that this is the only mac I ever come in contact with. All my other personal machines are x86, and all the machines I use at work are x86. If I learn something new on linux on one machine, it's pertinent to all. Maybe if Apple goes ahead with it's rumored release of osx for x86 architecture, I'll change my mind. But even then, I'm not going to pay money for an OS. It's nothing personal, it simply violates my principles.

Also, don't forget that Apple funds a ppc based linux distribution. Unfortunately, last I read it's not ready for general distribution, otherwise I would use it. Nevertheless, they must see some use for the OS.

-Venkman

 

[Jasen]

I would not say "dumbing down". OS X is just a prettier version of BSD that's been optimized for PPC and has a proprietary GUI. A GUI that is quite memory and processor intensive I will add.
For a desktop computer that grandma will use, I choose OS X.
For a streamlined server only application, I would choose YDL.
For a slower, non G4 computer, I would choose YDL.
If you want to dual boot both of those on that machine I see no reason not too, but it would be somewhat redundant, both being *nix variants. Maybe you just really like linux?

Of the Linuxes available for PPC I still prefer yellow dog. Just because it's based on an older version of redhat doesn't mean it's out of date per se. And the good thing is, any components that are out of date can be easily updated. If you are dealing with precompiled binaries, you do have to find a PPC version of the binary. But if you download the source code and compile it yourself on that machine, it will compile as PPC code. Even the most current release of the linux kernel from kernel.org will compile nicely on a Mac. ________
Remember, you're unique... just like everyone else.

 

[jimoblak]

If you are a *nix purist and hate pretty OS's, you can still do anything by shell prompts in OSX.

Linux and OSX would definitely be redundant on the same computer. I was assuming you already had OSX - which should have shipped with all recent G4 laptops. If an OS purchase is in question, go for the free Linux download.

Keep in mind that if you wanted another Linux box, you could easily get an x86 box. You have a substantial piece of Mac hardware that may be best treated to Mac OS.

 

[venkman]

I can't speak to whether osx better uses hardware than linux. Given how optimized linux is, I doubt it, but would not be suprised to find out that osx, being designed with macs in mind, uses resources more efficently than linux.

I agree that osx and linux on one box is redundant. However, I do want to play with osx a bit, which is I want it there. I want linux there also, because in all likelihood (sp?) I will prefer to use that most of the time.

Given my one experience with /etc/hosts file, I do not think you can do everything from a text prompt in osx if you want to. Maybe it's a difference between bsd and linux (I've never used bsd before), but given that file exists on both systems, I think it's more likely osx's treatment of the file as compared to both straight bsd and linux that is difference.


I've been trying to install suse instead of ydl, does anyone have experience with that. A few ppl on the linux forum have posted that redhat is inferior to suse for desktop use and they've given pretty good evidence to support their case. As such I thought I'd try suse first, but it's turning into a hard time to install as compared to my redhat instalations on my x86 machines. A friend of mine did ydl and said it was easy as redhat. I might switch to ydl, but I wanted to try with suse a little more.

 

[Jasen]

Redhat may or may not be inferior to Suse, but we're talking PPC here. YDL is dedicated to the platform.. it's all they do. Suse just has some people porting their current x86 stuff to ppc code. YDL has better hardware support.
Anyway, the only difference in Linux distros anyway is which utilities they include, and which versions of said utilities. The actual core of linux, the kernel and Gnu subsystem, are pretty much identical. So saying one is superior to the other is like comparing two kinds of apples... you might like one better, but it's the same fruit.

What part of the Suse install are you stuck on exactly? ________
Remember, you're unique... just like everyone else.

 

[venkman]

Hey got suse to install. The only problem I was having was with the dual boot with osx part. Found a site on it:

http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~tkurosu/src/html/suse-v71-ppc-install.html

apparently, my problem was in my partitioning scheme. In order to install suse linux (and I assume other ppc distros also) on a new world machine you should have at least 5 partitions:
1 mac extended for osx
2 ext3 partitions for /boot and /
1 swap
and finally, the key:
1 mac standard partition.

yaboot (the boot loader) is installed on the last partition. Anyways, it appears to me that suse provides you with a better toolset than redhat, and really like yast, so I'm probably going to stick with it.

oh, as for distros, the post I saw that slammed redhat said that they had in a previous version built their tools based on an unstable development copy of a library or libraries. As a result, when a user tried to upgrade the library to a better stable version, many of the tools began failing. If your a tool based linux user (ie. started using it within the last two years, like myself), I think a problem like this would be a big deal. Granted, I've been running redhat for over a year now on my x86 machine and other than a brief time when I installed ximian-gnome, my pc has had no problems. So maybe these type of problems don't really happen in the real world all that often. anyway, like I said, I think I might like the extras suse comes with better than I like what redhat comes with.
-Venkman