In a recent Slashdot article (and an OSNews one), someone asked if it were possible to create a fully-featured bootable Linux LiveCD for the Macintosh. Gentoo thought this was a great idea. So today, they are releasing two full-featured LiveCDs for the PowerPC: one with KDE 3, and another with GNOME 2. Screenshots here and here. To use the LiveCDs, simply boot one on your “new world” PowerPC (by pressing “C” during the machine bootup).
Gentoo Offers LiveCDs for Macs
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Finally! After spending the last week trying to get Gentoo running on my iMac… hopefully the LiveCD will have better luck getting X to work than I did.
The Gentoo desktop looks fabulous on according to the screenshots are somptuous. I hope it’s the same in reality.
Well in reality one would tweak their desktop to make it look even more fabulous. I’m a bit concerned that they seperated KDE and Gnome into 2 seperate LiveCDs. Obiously they have gtk2 libs on the KDE CD because Mozilla is running in the second screenshot. I wonder what other Gnome libs/apps are included because I’d like to have gnome-font-properties to over-ride my fonts in KDE.
I asked if there were a livecd for ppc in the comments of the review of YDL a few weeks ago. No one answered my question, but it looks like the community ran with it.
Gentoo really seems to be taking the lead with the “power user” crowd. I blame Debian’s use of prehistoric KDE versions.
Plus, you feel a lot more manly when your only installer is bash.
-Hugh
Why Mac-On-Linux? Am I missing the point. I can understand wanting to have linux running on a Mac but why would I want to have a Mac running on Linux. Particularly, since your Mac came preconfigured with OS X(assuming a recent macine). The Mac on Linux things sound like you would have to wipe your harddrive, install linux, and then OS X.
I like linux but the reason I bought a Mac was to get the well integrated package of Mac OS X.
Am I missing something?
Thanks-
Rodney
I’m remember that BeOS couldn’t boot on iMac/all Mac released after 1997 because Apple refuse to give motherboard specification to Be in order to make it boot (why they moved to PC, which was fatal)
But .. Linux can do it, and it is open source ?! or is the boot part is closed ?
Never understood.
I’m downloading…
Probably because some people prefer Linux over OS X. Hey, some people like to have choice.
The boot part of Linux has always been open. Be decided to switch to Intel processors and it was primarily a lame excuse to say that it was only Apple’s fault. If they had really wanted to support new Macs, they could have done that.
I prefer the look and feel of KDE over Aqua. But there are a few tasks that can be done better on a Mac than Linux, Photoshop is a prime example. iMovie for video editing is another.
MOL is not only great if you really prefer Linux over Mac OS X. If you have to use Linux for some reason (my university does only create Windows and Linux versions of their software), you can still use your favorite OS.
MOL does also run on machines that won’t run Mac OS X directly. On these computers, there is no alternative to MOL if you want to run Mac OS X.
But .. Linux can do it, and it is open source ?! or is the boot part is closed ?
AFAIK the new macs use openfirmware, which allows booting from hd, cd, firewire, netboot-servers,… Openfirmware is an IEEE open standard that is also used on Suns.
Just like PPC Linux, when BeOS was solely on PPC platform it was a niche market within a niche market. Be decided to switch to x86 for expansion purposes mainly.
To add to your comment, the bootloader in new world machines is yaboot which doesn’t require a MacOS installation to boot into any other OS. I believe bootX on old world machines does require a preinstalled MacOS partition and the Linux kernel be copied into that partition.
Is this a great example of why open source is great or what ?
I prefer to execute Linux under an emulator but unfortunately Gentoo doesn’t install correctly under VirtualPC 🙁
why would you run Gentoo on a MAC when OS X looks so damn good? Is your MAC really old or something?
Excellent question. And to add to your statment, I’ve found it’s more difficult to setup Gentoo on Mac hardware (due to video drivers mostly) as oppose to Gentoo on x86. So why do it?
1. Not everyone agrees that OSX is as good as you feel it is.
2. Honestly I think Apple laptops are far better than x86 laptops and would make great Linux latops, hence the desire to put Gentoo on it. Inspite of the long compile times especially on iBooks/PowerBooks due to RAM and hard drive constraints, the system you end up with is nice and tight with mostly the useful packages you want and is optimized for that particular platform.
OS X is way too slow. I’d rather live with a couple crashes with OS 9 (very rare if you know what you are doing), than look at the crappy AA and slowness in OS X.
Only to say that MOL is GREAT. Hope one day we’ll have a free and good VM for x86 as MOL is for Linux/PPC 🙂
I believe bootX on old world machines does require a preinstalled MacOS partition and the Linux kernel be copied into that partition.
Yes. And if you feel like adventurous you can install quik, that doesn’t need a MacOS partition to boot into Linux on OldWorld machines.
AFAIK the new macs use openfirmware, which allows booting from hd, cd, firewire, netboot-servers,… Openfirmware is an IEEE open standard that is also used on Suns.
The OldWorld (with one or other exception) PowerMacs also used OpenFirmware. The difference is that NewWorld’s OF is a bit more “open”, so you can boot OSes other than Classic MacOS.
Is it possible to get that OSX look on PC Gentoo, or is this Mac exclusive ?
Mac exclusive. Mac-On-Linux is the same as VMWare, can only run in the architecture of the guest OS. It is not an emulator.
Rubbish. I have an iBook 500MHz with 384MB ram and it works beautifully with OS X 10.2.6. As a new Mac user, I am impressed how everything *just works* – Sarfari is so close to Firebird (Phoenix) in features (and fast), realplayer just works, mail just works, (Windows network printing doesn’t work). As you can probably tell, I really like OS X; it is just much cleaner than say Redhat 9 (which is by far the best Linux I have used).
I guess I’m not really sure what Mac-on-Linux is and what it has to do with Gentoo running on Macs. From the MoL homepage, it says:
“Mac-on-Linux makes it possible to run Mac OS (including OS X) under Linux/ppc.”
I clicked on the Linux/ppc link but can’t tell from the page exactly what it is or what it does. And how does this relate to running Gentoo on a Mac? And more importantly, what all of this has to do with getting the Mac Gentoo OSX look working on the PC version
Hi there,
I just have a question, about the .iso-format. How can I burn this image on a CD with MacOSX?
Thnks for answering
Anton
I greatly prefer MacOS 9 to MacOSX, and I prefer KDE to OSX also.. I currently use OSX with xdarwin and some KDE apps from fink, but I’d be willing to give this livecd a shot.. it looks really damn good!
(btw, some people really, really, really, really, really hate aqua.. I love flat themes a lot better, and brushed metal varients are good too)
btw, some people really, really, really, really, really hate aqua
That’s a lot of emotion to be exhibiting over something as meaningless as the look of a GUI
I think he just means that OS X looking theme, which in that case no it’s not excluse as all. Just run a search for themes like Aqua, Liquid, and even Acua and you’ll find a variety of OS X/OS X-inspired themes.
THAT ; “HFS(+) resizing kernel/parted patch (easily make room for Gentoo) ” !
HFS+ got owned ! It means a smoothly Installation in Future.
Reasons for Linux on PPC :
– possible to boot (and install) old MacOS Versions, even when its not “allowed” from Apple for new Maschines, MOL can do ! If you need Quark or something like that….
– Performance : faster. Simply Faster. Don’t believe it ? boot gentoo !
– near to Industrie Proven and accepted Standards, more the OSX is.
– fast IBM Java Virtual Maschine (for Linux on the pSeries, runs on Linux Macs with kernel >= 2.4.20)
– Bigger Software choice
– and so on.
its great !
Gentoo occupied the leading edge for ppc.
Nice, fantastic !
Rgds, Frank
I just tried it on my iMac 700 MHz G4. Wow! So this baby is fast, just needed a nicely trim OS. Apparently it uses a newer kernel than what I’ve been using before, and this time around I was able to use fbdev for video drivers whereas I wasn’t able to before. So now I have evidence that I can get Gentoo working on this iMac, I just have to go back and do it again. I give it 2 thumbs up!
… With my 17″ LCD iMac!
I get the initial boot screen, then when I press “Enter”, it starts to load the kernel, the CD spins, the screen goes black. And stays there.
Oh, well. I have Linux running on several other computers. Someone will eventually get this figured out.
Same thing happened to me on the rc6 CD. You should try entering “live-safe” at the boot prompt instead of the default which is just “live”.
Use Disk Copy which is in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder. From the File menu, select Burn Image and then select the .iso file you want to burn.
It is also possible to use Fink to install command line tools to burn images, my preferred method.
Poor job they did! This THING won’t help Mac users like Linux, it will help them run away!
Problems:
1. the “nv” driver doen’t work on my 12″ Powerbook with a GeForce4MX. I have to use “fbdev” to get to X.
2. When people are typing “startx”, it gets them to the standard minimalistic X window manager (forget its name), instead of loading KDE for them! How stupid is that? Let alone it should have been loading into X automatically, but I will allow the technical difficulties for this architecture which is not Linux’s primary. But it should have loaded KDE!! Users need to create an .xinitrc file in there and put “exec startkde”
3. I can’t use the right click! NONE of the CTRL, ALT or Apple menu is working as a context mouse click, NOR when I just press down the mouse button for a while (another way to access a context menu). I just don’t have a right click ability!
4. NO documentation on the CD, while there is space. People need to have either find and print the documetnation, or have a second PC. This is not how things are supposed to work on a Mac where the market is different. These users are EXPECTING a few things as standard (e.g. an html file to show how to get to the internet etc) and it is just not there, *in the KDE desktop*.
5. There is 100 MB of space on the CD to add a few more third party KDE apps to show off Linux.
In o ther words, I don’t see Gentoo winning the MAc crowds with this ISO they released. It requires more effort than that it seems.
Last I checked isntalling Gentoo required a snappy net connection and I’m on dialup for the summer. I can spend the time downloading an ISO in the background but a net install would be nightmarish..
More bug report:
The Gnome’s CD is more buggy than KDE’s. Audio fails on both my G4 Macs (Cube 450 Mhz and 12″ powerbook) while the KDE CD detect the sound card correctly.
Also, after you use Xeasyconf and you use their recommended method of loading Xfree, the monitor goes black and it doesn’t load anything. You will again have to create that .xinitrc file needed and put in “exec gnome-session” and then load “startx”.
Terribly untested.
I don’t mind it of course, as I know how to fix things, but 99% of the Mac users that will try this “new Linux thing”, they don’t. This doesn’t come up as well as Gentoo would like, I bet.
I tried installing Gentoo the normal way on my iMac. No luck. I try this LiveCD and all of a sudden it works. In both cases I was using fbdev and it didn’t work in the former but did in the latter.
Regarding #2, all I did was go in rc.conf and told it to use KDM, and kde3.1.2 as my session, executing startx launched KDE.
And for what it’s worth, I plugged in my Logitech optical USB mouse prior to starting the whole process and upon entering KDE, it worked as it should, scroll wheel and right mouse button.
I realize you are being considerate of the typical “Mac user” but it’s not like they weren’t given prior warning of what they were getting into. Gentoo on Mac is just as hard as Gentoo on x86.
Doesn’t look like it, no. There’s a file on the root of the CD called live.gcloop that’s ~354 MB so I’m guessing it’s some sort of image that contains the binaries? At the very least you might be able to make use of the vmlinux kernel image in cdom:/boot. I just might do that myself if I can’t configure and compile a decent kernel of my own.
ok I just downloaded it and its very buggy
typing live at boot just crashes my mac
typing live-safe at boot will boot up linux into command-line. I tried to run Xeasyconf as instructed and it turned out ok but my mac crashes when i execute startx.
I have the powerbook G4 667mhz VGA edition.
What do you mean it crashes your mac? Is X11 crashes or the whole machine becomes unusable? if X11 crashes and gives you an error message, just use another driver. Use nano to edit your /etc/X11/XF86config-4 and tell it to use “fbdev” instead of another driver that it might be using.
Any idea how I could fix the sound problem on the Gnome CD? It says there is no /dev/mixer. I tried to create a mkdev mixer, but there is no mkdev installed.
Posted this from the Gnome CD.
I got KDE to run kind of….
I did the Xeasyconf, and then StartX… once in the X server I used one of the 3 open terminal windows to type StartKDE… interesting effect. I got KDE inside of the plain TWM windows…
I’ll try the whole editing whatever file thing now… hopefully that will work better
But hey at least its a live CD so I can make mistakes without destroying my OSX install. Especially since it syncs to my motorola now 
Vincent
“When the itching comes, I think of the linux. It helps.” – anonymous
nano -w rc.conf
Go to the line: #DISPLAYMANAGER=…
Remove the # to uncomment it and after = specify “kdm” or whichever you like.
Then at the very bottom where it says XSESSION=Gnome uncomment that line as well and replace “Gnome” with “KDE-3.1.2” save the file.
Now running “startx” should put you in KDE.
Doesn’t help that we can’t emerge from this live CD either
Funny thing started happening with this rc7 CD. I have an iMac flat panel, there’s no manual way to turn off the LCD screen (that I know of) so I have to wait 5 minutes for it to black out, and I say black out because it looks as though it just fills the screen with black and not actually power down the screen. When I leave it on over night I still get an obnoxious white glow from the screen probably from the back lighting.
But now instead of filling the screen with black it’s filling the screen with an even more obnoxious pink color. I thought the colorful bubble iMacs were girlie, this pink on white iMac combo really cramps my style.
I downloaded the KDE version via BitTorrent last night and want to try it on my fiance’s b/w G3 400. Can someone please confirm that this Live CD will not do anything to her hard drive in any way? Otherwise, I will be in deep trouble. Thanks!
Yes and no. Yes it creates a RAM disk so you can modify and save configuration files for this session until you reboot. But it technically, RAM isn’t the only medium used, the rest of the binary apps run off the CD
Your hard drive will not be affected. In fact, after playing with it a bit I booted back into OSX, nothing has changed.
It doesn’t touch the hard drive, go ahead.
This is the first ‘Live CD’ I have used, both on PC and Mac. And if they are all like this, it will be the last.
Download the KDE version and using startx doesn’t bring up KDE? Yes, I know I can change it, but since it is a ‘CD’ I have to change it every time I boot or burn another CD.
X crashed a number of times on my 15″ DVI.
I like Gentoo, but this LiveCD is pretty darn unpollished.
>I like Gentoo, but this LiveCD is pretty darn unpollished.
Exactly. Exactly what I experienced and wrote.
Is it just me, or did everyone else’s live CD not have any of the KDE control panel modules? Like configuring your network card so that Konquorer works? Hell I couldn’t even change backgrounds….
I don’t mind the not including backgrounds… thats a space saver obviously. But not including most of the control panel modules? Isn’t that a bit odd?
ifconfig eth0 $IP broadcast $BCAST netmask $NETMASK
route add -net default gw $GWAY netmask 0.0.0.0 metric 0
modify resolv.conf
See? You don’t need the Network control panel. Not sure what went wrong for you, I saw all of my control panel modules.
Keep in mind this is their first PPC LiveCD. Were you expecting something like Knoppix?
Same thing happened to me on the rc6 CD. You should try entering “live-safe” at the boot prompt instead of the default which is just “live”.
I already tried that. It tells me the label could not be found. Oh, well. I’ll wait a bit until the next version comes out.
Or better yet, maybe the KNOPPIX team will port their excellent live CD to the Mac!!!
Am I the only one here who appreciates this LiveCD?