Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 8th Jun 2009 11:49 UTC
Linux "CRUX PPC 2.5 is now available. Supports Apple 32bit "NewWorld" G3/G4 and Apple 64bit G5, Genesi PegasosII and Efika, Acube Sam440ep, IBM RS/6000 CHRP32 (604e), YDL Powerstation, IBM Intellistation POWER, and IBM pSeries RS64/POWERn. CRUX PPC 2.5 is released as two different installation ISO: 32bit and 64bit. The 32bit version is based on a single lib toolchain instead the 64bit one comes with a multilib toolchain. These two versions share the same ports tree. To increase CRUX PPC usability on pSeries, starting from 2.5 we do provide ports for some IBM utils."
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Linux on PPC
by WereCatf on Mon 8th Jun 2009 12:54 UTC
WereCatf
Member since:
2006-02-15

I have tried OpenSuSE and Gentoo on my iMac G5 and I must say that the experience was quite painful. OpenSUSE on PPC sucks bollocks totally: it doesn't ship with all the necessary repositories, it's unstable, I never got Totem to support divx-video at all no matter what I did (spent hours in IRC channel too), and there just was generally many apps missing.

Gentoo was more stable, but of course it's a hassle to install and keep maintained, and my iMac is so slow that it's just not a feasible option. But even then, there was several apps that don't support PPC and if I added the ~PPC keyword to the package file and tried compiling it either failed, or if it did it was very unstable.

I might try Crux PPC, but if that too doesn't seem to run well then I won't bother trying to run Linux on my Mac anymore.

perfect timing!
by Adurbe on Mon 8th Jun 2009 14:05 UTC
Adurbe
Member since:
2005-07-06

I just got given a G3 iMac (didnt have the heart to bin it!) and needed a modernish PPC distro to chuck on it

Seems like this is the toy to try :-)