A Live Linux ISO for the Mac?

An anonymous reader asks: "My iBook is the strongest of my laptops, but it's not running my favorite OS. Knoppix and the various other live ISOs are nice for x86 machines, but (though OS X is nice, and I'm not disparaging it) it would be nice to have all the apps that come with KDE and GNOME, and to have them all available through a nice fluxbox or windowmaker desktop). I've seen smart people nearly cry trying to install Debian on their Macs, but then I've seen smart people nearly cry trying to install Debian in the first place. Knoppix has certainly made it easier to put Debian on x86 machines, but does such a thing exist for Macs? Mac OS X is a very pretty thing, and Apple has supported some great free software projects through it, it's just that on an older iBook (and older iMacs, even more so), a low-key GNU/Linux desktop moves more responsively, and has everything I need. If I could easily run a nice GNU system on them, old iMacs would be worth a lot more to me.".

Is installing really that hard?

Nowadays if you want to turn any older USB mac into a single booting Linux machine I would suggest that no hair pulling is necessary.

Most of the problems I see people still having has to do with repartitioning a dual-boot sytem.

Yellow Dog Linux.

Yellow Dog Linux [yellowdoglinux.com] home page, here's a review on OS News [osnews.com].

There really are no problems running Linux on Mac hardware. :)

Re:Yellow Dog Linux.

The poster isn't asking about Linux in general on Mac hardware- read it again. The poster is asking about a *live* distro for the Mac. If you don't know what a live CD distro is, it's the kind where you toss in a CD, and it boots a full Linux install. Sets up a RAM disk, perhaps a folder on your Mac OS HFS+ or Windows harddrive and is a usable system without having to do an install. Examples are Knoppix- like he mentioned, or DemoLinux.

It's possible- there used to be one!

I don't know if there are any Live distros for the Mac anymore... There used to be a version for LinuxPPC though, a release or two their most current release (which isn't all that current anyway). I am not sure if it was on a bootable CD- I think it was a 100-200 MB file you downloaded and double clicked "Boot LinuxPPC Live" and bam, you were in. No need for a CD, although that was prolly doable too.

I remember that one...

It was a demo and you couldn't save a state. Once you quit, any changes you made were lost.

If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps,

and you even want to run WindowMaker or Fluxbox, you don't need Linux.

All you need is Fink [sourceforge.net].

Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps,

...and doing it that way, you have those apps available in your normal MacOS environment. I haven't seen Knoppix, but I believe it works the way the old LinuxPPC LiveCD worked -- you rebooted from it into a normal Linux environment, minus your Windows/Mac apps. Especially given the hassles of HFS+ in Linux, simply running those X11 apps in OS X seems a lot closer to what the questioner wants.

Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps,

there are still some programs, like ImageMagick, that are total hair-pullers under OS X and fink doesn't make it easy either, cuz fink unstable is earlier than current distro of xyz app...

Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps,

KDE binaries are available via Fink.

Debian has come a long way.

Debian isn't really as hard as the poster says. While it may take a little trial and error, and you might have to rtfm Debian has in fact come a long way. I got my iBook online with debian, everything working, in the space of one weekend. The trick is researching what drivers you need and compiling a kernel (like the benh fork) before you try futzing with things. While there are a few random quirks with getting linux up in general, like how do you right/middle click, etc...They can be easily solved by doing a 30second google. But I have to say Apple has a history of not liking people doing strange things to their macs, if a live CD came out that made installing linux as easy as installing MacOS X then it would draw some negative attention from Apple I think. On the otherhand when my ibook suffered a logicboard melt down (semi-common occurence on my model) I sent in my ibook with debian still on the drive, and it came back fixed, good as new, with the boot loader still functioning and debian still on the drive.

-sonic

Re:Debian has come a long way.

if the debain install is easy now. I would hate to see what is was like before, the only way it could possibly get harder is if two guy's with baseball bats started kicking the shit out of you when you tried to install it.

p.s. I run Madrake 9.1...:D

A live CD

If a live CD came out that made installing linux as easy as installing MacOS X then it would draw some negative attention from Apple I think.

Why? Apple makes pretty close to 100% of their profits on hardware sales. Software is just a way to sell hardare. They have had no objections to the Unix crowd that likes the iBook/Linux combination. Linux customers are customers that pay them lots of money and then they don't even have to support. Its hard to see Apple's downside.

Debian is probably worth the pain....

I'm running YDL on my 500Mhz iBook . Easy to install, easy to configure, all up quite good. Hardware support is fine. I haven't got the modem working yet but I believe others have.

But Debian's package management is absolutely superb. The Debian install is a little tricky and I believe there are a few quirks to the iBook setup. It'll probably take a few days before you have all the hardware working properly.

Ease of installation is probably somewhat overrated. Ideally you only install the operating system once. Day to day use of the installed OS and particularly package managaement, upgrades etc are much more important, and in my opinion Debian is the clear winner here.

OS X on a G3

I'm running OS 10.2.6 on my G3 and it runs pretty damned well, all things considered. Granted I have 1 gigabyte of SDRAM and fairly fast 7200 rpm ATA/133 drives but I'm impressed with the speed on my "lowly" 400 mhz G3 Power Mac tower. I think OS X can run adequately on any 300mhz+ G3 (iMac, iBook or Power Mac). Granted you don't want to play graphics-intensive games on it, but you wouldn't be interested in Linux (or to an extent Macs) if you wanted to play games anyway.

In summation, has the original poster even tried to run OS X on the iBook? I'd give it whirl before dismissing it as a possibility.

Re:OS X on a G3

OS X generally needs at bare minimum 128 megs of RAM. I'd go at least 256 megs if I were you.

According to Everymac.com [everymac.com] your Powerbook is an original Powerbook G3 (see bolded quote below) and therefore isn't supported in OS 10.2. However, you might try checking with XLR8yourmac.com [xlr8yourmac.com] because there are "hacks" available that enable "unsupported" Macs (old clones/beige, etc.) to run OS 10.2.

From Apple's OS X Requirements Page [apple.com] Quoted here:

Mac OS X Version 10.2 requires a Power Mac G3, G4, G4 Cube; iMac; PowerBook G3, G4; iBook; or eMac computer; at least 128MB of physical RAM and a built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card.

Mac OS X does not support the original PowerBook G3 or processor upgrade cards. Verify your hardware is supported from the list below

As with processor upgrades cards, this particular Powerbook, while officially unsupported, can probably be made to run OS 10.2 with a little ingeniunity and research. This page [216.239.39.100] (cached, since the site seems to be down right now) might help you out.

Also you might want to upgrade the processor to a G4 in that Powerbook and gain OS 10.2 support, not to mention an extreme increase in speed (+Altivec support!) by buying one of these Crescendo G3 or G4 upgrade cards [sonnettech.com]. I've personally bought stuff from Sonnet and can very much recommend them. I buy all my Mac stuff generally from the fantastic (and fast/cheap/honest) Macsales.com [macsales.com] but you can find Sonnet Mac upgrade peripherals at just about any Mac reseller. If you do upgrade the Powerbook, be sure to pick up some RAM (I'd max it out to 512 megs if I were you) while you're at it. OWC/Macsales have very reliable and extremely cheap RAM. Just make sure to get the right kind by checking with one of the sites I provided.

Good luck.

Think this would do the trick?

I Googled for... livecd ppc linux http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/ gentoo/experimental/ppc/livecd/nostages/gentoo-ppc -1.4_rc6-120403.iso

KDE and GNOME

use fink [sourceforge.net] if you want to install these, combine it with the apple X11 [apple.com] distro and you have one smoothe integration of GNOME (my favorite) and 10.2

do it right

drop your pants and go to http://slackintosh.exploits.org [exploits.org], yes you have to roll your own iso, BUT it's slackware for ppc! (i use it on my ibook 600) otherwise check out gentoo or yellow dog for out-of-the-box goodness. dont forget to install pmud [sourceforge.net] for all your apple power management needs.

Gentoo?

I'm not sure if this has everything you are looking for but, Gentoo [gentoo.org] has live CD's for PPC.

Here is some info [gentoo.org]

Here are the ISO's [ibiblio.org]

Re:Gentoo?

Gentoo currently has the closest to what you are looking for ATM, though it really isn't all that close. It is a "live" system, but minimal at best. Just enough to get an install going pretty much.
I ditched OSX on my iBook in favor of Gentoo about 6 months ago and haven't looked back. Gentoo does a lot of stuff with the Live CD's on x86, and I really don't know why, but the interest just doesn't seem to be there. Hit the various #gentoo (especially #gentoo-ppc)forums on Freenode and try to rustle up some people. I'm sure they will have good answers as to why it hasn't really been done, but I expect most of them will be along the lines of "Nobody wants to".

Define Smart Please

If I can help an endearing woman watercolor artist/housewife, back in the late 1990's while working for Apple Enterprise Tech Support get Openstep 4.2 on a Toshiba Laptop with all the bells and whistles any 'smart' person with IT knowledge of hardware, device drivers and basic understandings of BIOS within the x86 realm should sure as hell know how to get Debian to install.

God how hard is it to download the disk images, burn them and boot off of CD? It's self explanatory.

And yes no distro seems to match even NeXTSTEP/Openstep's Installation process that now is part of OS X--that's a credit to the brilliance of the folks I as a peon was lucky to have bagels and cream cheese or playing foosball with (EOF Team were awesome players by the way)--but damn if you can't handle that for sure what hope is there for the general consumer to be able to install, outside of the RedHat world or SUSE world?

I'm trying to figure out what's stopping you from downloading the latest Trolltech source, compiling it for OS X and using OS X's xfree86's Quartz optimized X Server, then either compile KDE from source yourself by changing some of the configuration flags, or seeing if there are available packages already via Fink.

Not hard at all

Debian is really a lot easier to install on an ibook than it is on x86 hardware. There's no fuss setting up XF86 or finding out about device drivers; all hardware is well known.
Install Debian, grab the latest benh kernel if your ibook is less than a year old (I don't know whether older ones need it too), compile with the .config which comes with BenH's patch, and on you go.

If you fail to get it right, a question on the debian-powerpc list is bound to get an answer within a few hours; the ibook is one of the most used ppc computers it seems.

Well, if someone has a PPC machine left...

You get me a PPC, and i'll consider porting a few Morphix modules to it. Problem with Mac's is that they are so damn expensive, but it would make an interesting challenge, as livecd ppc booting was certainly possible last time i checked. Oh well, shouldn't offer this, as before i know it i'll actually be forced into making one... Cheers, Alex de Landgraaf www.morphix.org

Gentoo Linux

Gentoo [gentoo.org] has a PPC Live CD that will boot on any G3 or G4 Mac... the purpose of their live cd is more for installation purposes though than anything else, there's no X.

Virtual PC

Okay, it's not live...

but I've successfully run Debian and FreeBSD from a Virtual PC image. It's like having a spare unix.

The answer is...

No, I will not. :-)

(If you don't understand this, you obviously don't know who I am.... Those who do will laugh. Those who don't will read my bio and then laugh. )

Why laptops?

This may be a stupid question, but why is all of the discussion being had about laptops as opposed to the other apple proucts (i.e. my DP 867 tower)? Is there something specific about running linux distros on an ibook that is that much different than a tower? Or is it just that its so stinking cool to have an apple laptop running linux?

I only ask because I am seeing a ton of discussion concentrated on the laptops, when I would think the same information should work on a tower.

Please forgive my ignorance.

Linux is not always the solution...

I am running OSX 10.2.6 on a fairly modest PowerMac G4 500MHz, 256MB SDRAM, and I'd say that it performs fairly well. One thing, however, is that the Aqua GUI isn't as resposive as I'd like it to be on the lowly ATI Rage128 video card in the machine. Nonetheless, I really do not see the point of running even a Live Linux ISO, as OSX is quite sufficient in the *nix department. And now that the X11 beta is out, I really wouldn't see much use of running Linux on a Mac either. There are many options available that do not require Linux in my opinion, and X11 is one of them.

Re:This isn't too intelligent

Your subject line describes the contents of your post perfectly. He's asking for a LIVE CD distribution, like Knoppix, except for PPC. Is that so hard to understand?

Re:This isn't too intelligent

Yeah I'd say the poster doesn't know many smart people. First time I ever installed Debian it went perfectly, no problems whatsoever. And learning how to use apt took maybe another 5 minutes at the most.