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Apple Businesses Software Linux

Mandrake 9.1 (Bamboo) Out For PPC 57

Posted by timothy from the bondi-blue-gets-new-blood dept.
sonatinas writes "Well, Mandrake 9.1 is out for PPC processors and a nifty utility included is the Mac-on-Linux feature where you can run mac os 9/x in a window at native speed." MoL is one thing that has impressed me for years about YellowDog Linux, too.
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Mandrake 9.1 (Bamboo) Out For PPC More

Mandrake 9.1 (Bamboo) Out For PPC

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  • Linux-On-Mac? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 12, 2003 @12:33PM (#5716537)
    Is there a Linux-On-Mac program that would allow me to run linux-ppc in a virtual machine at near-full speed on my mac?

    -andrew
    • Ooh! I like this idea. Not sure how I'd even BEGIN to write it, though.

      -fred

      • Re:Linux-On-Mac? (Score:4, Funny)

        by b_pretender ( 105284 ) on Saturday April 12, 2003 @05:07PM (#5717649)
        I'm not sure how to write it either, but I'm certain that one would start writing it using Objective-C and applescripts.
        • I'm certain that one would start writing it using Objective-C and applescripts.

          I highly doubt that. Cocoa is a fairly high-level framework, and AppleScript is even higher. You'd more than likely need to work directly with Mach, using C or even PPC assembler.
        • I'm not sure how to write it either, but I'm certain that one would start writing it using Objective-C and applescripts.

          Really? I'd have thought that hypercard would do the trick.

      • Re:Linux-On-Mac? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Jim Buzbee ( 517 )
        Look into User Mode Linux. It allows a linux kernel to run in user-space with all of the "normal" associated user-space programs. Right now, it only runs on Linux, but I've seen a comment from the developer that it could be ported to other architectures including OSX.

    • Re:Linux-On-Mac? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by physicsnerd ( 607860 ) on Saturday April 12, 2003 @01:54PM (#5716844)
      I guess my 1st question is why do you want to do this? While I'm not aware of any program that does this (unless virtual PC will do it), most any linux program can be run on OSX with a recompile. I have several custom linux programs running on my powerbook right now. Didn't have a single problem porting any of them. They're all fairly simple programs for school, but it still was really easy. If there's anything that you really need linux for you can always do a dual boot. If have a certain task you want to accomplish post a reply and I'll see if I can help.
      • I guess my 1st question is why do you want to do this? While I'm not aware of any program that does this (unless virtual PC will do it), most any linux program can be run on OSX with a recompile.

        True, but for developers simply running the app is not always the point. If you're developing a portable app, you often want to be sure it builds correctly against a particular version of a particular distribution. Being able to run an arbitrary number of different Linux distributions in a "sandboxed" environmen

    • Re:Linux-On-Mac? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by joelhayhurst ( 655022 ) on Saturday April 12, 2003 @02:31PM (#5716995)

      Not sure if you can do that, but by using Fink [sourceforge.net] and Apple X11 [apple.com] you can run a ton of stuff, including a complete KDE 3.1 implementation inside Aqua. Here's a screenshot [purdue.edu] of what it can look like.

      I know this wasn't what you were asking for, but if you didn't know about this stuff, hopefully you can find it helpful.

    • The only solution is to run Virtual PC with Red Hat Linux. This will run slow because it does it through x86 emulation not native ppc. . Generally, emulators are only use if the application does not have native linux support and thus you have to run another OS. But there are few apps that run only linux and not on MacOSX. With the Fink [sourceforge.net] project andXdarwin [xdarwin.org] or OroborOSX [sourceforge.net], a lot of linux/unix apps have been successfully ported to MacOSX and are fully functional. ex. Kde, Open Office, Gimp, and MatLab

  • Why run Linux on a Mac? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 12, 2003 @01:34PM (#5716792)
    I don't understand why anyone would bother running Linux on a Mac. For $99 you can purchase Mac OS X and get real live tech support for problems that (probably won't) pop up. There's a lot of technical reasons you should run Mac OS instead of Linux.
    1. PowerPC hardware, PowerPC operating system

      Linux has its origins on IA32, Intel's 32-bit architecture. Every platform Linux has migrated to since then has been beset with porting problems-- Linux runs 32% more efficiently on Intel than PowerPC. This is very telling as PowerPC is in general much faster per clock than Intel. Somewhere in the translation from PowerPC to IA32 something got lost.

      Mac OS is 100% native for PowerPC. The Mach kernel has been optimized for the G3, G4, and 970 since Apple began writing the operating system back in 1996. Why choose a hacked and kludged OS from another platform when you can have an environment tailor-made for the system you'll be running it on? Mac OS certainly isn't plagued by same driver problems Linux is (in)famous for.

    2. Control over the source code

      In Linux, the development model is highly irrational: anyone is allowed to submit patches, and one man (Linus Torvalds) sorts through gigabyte after gigabyte of amateurish code, attempting to integrate it into the kernel. Apple's model is much more modern and decisive: the code for the low levels of Mac OS is available for anyone to download and modify, while the more complex parts of the system (QuickTime and OpenGL) are kept closed-source so those that know better-- the Apple programmers-- are the only ones allowed to tinker.

      The results because of these differing development models are clear. Apple released a major update to the OS once a year, and releases about five minor updates to the OS, as well as several dozen security patches and driver updates, in the interim. Since March of 2001 we've gone from 10.0 to 10.2.5! Linux is still stuck at some sort of bizarre "in-between" 2.5 kernel patch and won't move on to 2.6 until well after Apple has released Mac OS 10.3.

      It's not hard to see the difference here is a bunch of kids playing with source code instead of doing their homework vs. highly qualified professionals pushing their skills to the limits. The Mac OS user benefits.

    3. Graphical user interfaces

      I don't even think I have to touch on this. While Linux offers several GUIs from GNOME, KDE, and Enlightenment, Apple offers only one. But here we have a case of quality vs. quantity. Apple controls the GUI for its operating system while anyone can hack and modify the various Linux GUIs as they please. This has led to a lack of desktop standards and a whole lot of bickering and flame wars over human interface guidelines. Most of the GUIs for Linux are simply poor knock-offs of the Windows 95 interface.

      Apple's Aqua and QuickTime graphical interfaces are faster, more elegant, and very consistent. A Mac user can sit down at any Mac and (assuming someone hasn't installed Linux) get right to work. With Linux, it's hit or miss as to whether the user will know what to do when he logs in! Getting work done is the most important aspect of a computer. After all, it is just a tool. Linux fails in this area miserably-- you're forced to edit and tinker and kludge and hack to make things perfect. A Mac allowes you to just sit down and roll up your sleeves and get some work done. I don't have time to play at my job.

    4. Software!

      I've used Linux before and the headache of downloading drivers and libraries and making sure the versions all sync up are too mucvh to handle, especiallly considering one has to compile these applications. On a Mac, I mount a disk image and drag the .app file to /Applications, and I'm done. Hell, most software for Mac even installs it there for you. To put this in perspective, let's look at a recent task I performed under both Linux 2.4 and Mac OS 10.2.

      Sendmail and sshd were both cracked recently and needed updated. The guys who code these programs were on

    • So, how many virtual machines running OSX, OS9, and/or OS8 can you run simulatenous without MOL? OSX is pretty sweet, but right now, there's no tool that can do that which runs natively.
      • This is why I am working on porting MOL to OS X-- much like Virtual PC for Windows, MOL4OSX will allow running Mac OS 7, 8, or 9 under Mac OS X for those that need older versions of Mac OS for appplication compatibilty. I am well into the project and expect a stable release by this August.
        • Please make sure we can run the BSD's too (NetBSD and OpenBSD). I would love to see MOL4OSX. I'd also love to see MOL working under NetBSD and OpenBSD too. I know there's been work on it in the NetBSD field.

          I personally use something besides OS X on my rev d imac because OS X is a bit of a dog on this older machine. I use OS X on it ocassionally but spend most time in Linux or OpenBSD because they are much more repsonsive to the point of making me want to use this machine.

          • Please make sure we can run the BSD's too (NetBSD and OpenBSD). I would love to see MOL4OSX. I'd also love to see MOL working under NetBSD and OpenBSD too. I know there's been work on it in the NetBSD field.

            Right now the priorities are

            1. Mac OS 10.2 and greater
            2. FreeBSD 4.4 and greater
            3. NetBSD 1.3 and OpenBSD 3.2
    • I don't understand why anyone would bother running Linux on a Mac.

      Then you've never tried to run OS X on a 1999 issue Powerbook.

      Back under your bridge, troll.

      --saint
      • Then you've never tried to run OS X on a 1999 issue Powerbook. Well, I've run OS X on a 1998 issue PowerBook, and so have many others. It wasn't as unusable as you imply.

        • Re:Why run Linux on a Mac? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by saintlupus ( 227599 ) on Saturday April 12, 2003 @03:23PM (#5717172)
          Well, I've run OS X on a 1998 issue PowerBook, and so have many others. It wasn't as unusable as you imply.

          I found it pretty torturous -- not so much because of the age of the processor, I don't think, but because the (Lombard?) I was using had such an anemic video subsystem. Running OS X 10.2 was not a pleasant experience, especially next to the Quicksilver I've got on my desk at work.

          (YDL, on the other hand, flew like a bat out of hell, especially running Windowmaker. I can't wait until the 3.0 box sets ship.)

          Also, my response was probably a little short because I'm sick of the "why run Linux when you can run OS X" question that comes up _every_ time the PPC port of Linux is mentioned. OS X is not going to run at all on my 7200/90, or to my satisfaction on the Lombard, and so I'm glad stuff like Bamboo is available as an alternative.

          --saint
          • because the (Lombard?) I was using had such an anemic video subsystem. Running OS X 10.2 was not a pleasant experience

            I have a 9560/350 running Mac OS 10.1.5, and although video performance isn't the greatest, and overall system performance can't touch today's systems, I can't complain. It's an unsupported install and it runs as fast as the first generation G4s do.

            especially next to the Quicksilver I've got on my desk at work.

            Well, geez, I'd hope so.

            d. OS X is not going to run at all on my 7200/90,
      • My exeriances on older G3 or higher macs has been that OS X will run okay if you feed it a lot of RAM.
    • The sad thing is that even though it's an obvious troll, half of his point have real substance behind them.

    • Chomp Chomp Chomp (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Vagary ( 21383 ) <jawarren AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday April 12, 2003 @04:57PM (#5717608) Journal

      I don't know what this flashy thing wiggling in the water is, but it certainly looks tastier than work...

      1. This is your only good point Apple are certainly masters of the PowerPC. However as ESR is fond to remind us, very little of the Linux experience is actually from the kernel: you could easily build a free desktop on Darwin.
        • I think applications perhaps benefit from open source even more than systems. Non-programmers can be much more active participants in the bug fixing process and the ease of evaluating competing applicatiosn should lead to faster evolution.
        • I agree that Linus' approach doesn't scale, however that's what keeps Linux modular and non-monolithic.
        • By now everyone who uses a computer should know better than to compare version numbers between programs. Unless, of course, you want to compare MacOS 2.x with Linux, Apache, etc.
      3. My efficiency increases when moving from a non-customised Mac or Windows GUI to my Sawfish/Gnome desktop as much as moving from DOS to ksh. I use my computer enough that I'm willing to put in the time to learning new features. If someone else is using it, they can use a simpler (or their own!) environment.
      4. apt-get fucked
        E: Invalid operation fucked

    • I have been a long time PC user who really likes the Windows XP interface and platform. I code Java for a living mostly on Windows machines, and deploy on IBM AIX. I have been running a small business Linux server for about three years.

      When I first saw the 800Mhz TiBooks, it was love at first sight. I rationalized that since they were running OS X and now Unix based, it was time for me to give it a chance. I used the OS for 9 months and found it to be very frustrating, and I am an adaptable guy. I even att

      • not being able to create a directory in the save as dialog was paralyzing

        Not to discount your other complaints, but there's a "New Folder" button in every Save dialog.

        Are there any major OS X performance hits when running MOL?
      • It doesn't sound like you looked very far before giving up on certain things. Learning a new platform requires investing time.

        1. You can create a directory under every save dialog by expanding it and selecting the New Folder button.

        2. Look on VersionTracker.com for WinZip alternatives: here [versiontracker.com]

        3. Java 1.4...obviously no longer a problem. They were slow in releasing it but once released it has worked flawlessly for me.

        4. TextPad? Again I'd point you towards VersionTracker to find NUMBEROUS, more robus
      • I soon realized that the Mac had horrible file management support. The Finder in OS X is a joke (I hear it was better in OS 9)

        true.

        and not being able to create a directory in the save as dialog was paralyzing.

        every save dialog has a 'New Folder' button, its just not there in the default simple save dialog, you have to click on the little down arrow widget and then its there...

        My favorite IDE (intelliJ Idea) had moved on to JDK 1.4 and Apple was languishing far behind in their delivery of a current

      • The lack of a start menu and context menus are a throwback.

        Um, there are context menus, just control-click, or hold down your mouse button for a few seconds, or use a multi-button mouse and right-click

        Want a start menu? Just drag your Applications folder into the dock. Now if you click-and-hold on that folder, you'll get a pop-out list of all the files and folders in "Applications." It gives you almost the same functionality as the start menu in XP and it's much easier to organize by making new folders

      • So you went to these Apple Store sessions and the Mac geniuses weren't able to point you to Stuffit (which comes pre-installed on Macs) as a Winzip replacement (get Stuffit Deluxe for the context menus) and BBEdit (Lite) as a (free) Textpad replacement? Dear lord ... please, please - do yourself a favor and look harder next time!!
    • >Linux runs 32% more efficiently on Intel than PowerPC. >This is very telling as PowerPC is in general much faster >per clock than Intel. Somewhere in the translation from >PowerPC to IA32 something got lost. Yes, linux is x86 biased, and that's not strange considering most are running linux on x86 hardware. Another major reason is that gcc generates poor code for everything but CISC platforms, even though it's better with version 3. and hopefully it will become even better in the future. >
    • Personally, I found that being able to write a Word report on X that everybody of my non-geek folks could read and modify without any complaint and doing UNIX specific stuff make me use OS X over Linux.

      But it is always a personnal choice...

    • I'll give my reason for not running OSX on my B&W G3. It simply does not run. 'Huh?' I hear you say. For some reason OSX does not run on this G3. I'm assuming it's the RAM. I have ~750Mb (not Apple RAM). OS9 and Mandrake Linux run OK. OSX crashes a couple of minutes (on a good day) after I boot. I'm not about to fork USD $100 for 128Mb RAM from Apple and then pay another $100 for the OS. I don't need to. I'd like to run X, but really can't justify the spending.
      • I'm not about to fork USD $100 for 128Mb RAM from Apple

        OS X is definitely picky about RAM timing tolerances, but that's a quality issue, not a brand name issue. You don't need to buy your RAM from Apple. Just avoid the ultra-cheap stuff from Jim-Bob's House 'o RAM, and buy quality RAM from any decent vendor, such as Crucial or Micron.

  • Re: Linux-On-Mac? (Score:2, Informative)

    by adlr ( 102739 )
    hi, i'm the one that posted the original linux-on-mac post. the reason i'd want to do this is to develop a kernel module for my work, while still running mac os x for everything else.

    -andrew

    • Re: Linux-On-Mac? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      MoL does allow you to run linux as one of the virtual sessions. So you could run Linux and inside of MoL run another linux and OSX.

  • Why Linux on PPC? (Score:4, Informative)

    by ubiquitin ( 28396 ) on Saturday April 12, 2003 @04:09PM (#5717396) Homepage Journal
    Well, since some Anonymous Jackass Coward already gave a bunch of reasons here why not to run Linux on PowerPC hardware, I thought it would be appropriate to give some solid reasons why it makes sense to do so. Mind you that I'm not advocating this for every person in every circumstance, but the point needs to be made that there are circumstances in which Linux on PPC can make a lot of sense.

    >Somewhere in the translation from PowerPC to IA32 something got lost.
    Absolutely not. About a year ago, performance for desktop applications under Yellow Dog linux on my 400mghz TiBook had the same "feel" as 1Ghz Athlon. I'm referring to the speed of calling up windows in apps like Evolution and Mozilla. Unfortunately, I don't have anything quantitative, but I preferred working on my tibook because things were snappier. (Also, the TiBook had 8MB of video RAM and the Athlon had around 32MB of vRAM in a nVidia graphics card: both were using appropriate XFree86 builds.)

    >MacOS kernel has been optimized for the G3, G4, and 970 since Apple began writing the operating system back in 1996. Yada Yada Yada.
    Well, as much as the kernel has been all optimized, the overhead of the double-buffered and heavily anti-aliased aqua-goodness takes it all away. Seriously. You can easily turn off XFree86 in Linux. Turning off the MacOSX GUI is poorly documented. Why Apple doesn't do this for tuning MacOSX servers is beyond me.

    >Control over the source code
    OK Linux users have source code to everything. On the other hand, Apple lets you have at the Darwin source but apparently has no plans to open source pretty much anything GUI, including the quartzwm that they ship with X11. Think about it. Even if you want to run X apps on MacOSX, you're stuck with an apple-only window manager layer. The mailing lists are full of complaints about quartzwm which only Apple can now fix. If you want to be able to customize your machine, there is remains no better choice than Linux.

    As far as updates go, once set up, apt-get works great even for PPC builds! Also, the config, make, make install worked for everything I tried, with the exception of drivers and other hardware-focused code.

    The biggest reason in my mind is security. While security through obscurity isn't the best option from an absolute standpoint, it is practically very useful. The number of script-kiddie hacks exploting PPC buffer overflows is effectively zero. MandrakePPC and Yellow Dog aren't for everyone, but I'm glad they exist and hope that they can attract enough of a following to justify sticking around.

    • Re:Why Linux on PPC? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Paladeen ( 8688 )
      Even if you want to run X apps on MacOSX, you're stuck with an apple-only window manager layer. The mailing lists are full of complaints about quartzwm which only Apple can now fix.

      It's perfectly possible to run some other X11 WM than Apple's. The quartz-wm is only one of many possible window managers you could be running in OS X. In fact, people were running X-Windows on OS X long before Apple got involved.

  • Does anyone know how easy it is to dual-boot Bamboo (or other PPC-Linux distros) with OS X? I've seen a few (older) faq's about dual-booting with Debian and Gentoo, but both required a fresh reinstall of OS X as well as linux, which would be a real pain. I know from my experience in x86-land that Mandrake made dual-boot installations nice and easy, but i couldn't find any details on their site about PPC installations; for most details about anything it just refers the reader to the x86 info for details, f

    • Re:Dual Boot Installation (Score:5, Informative)

      by ubiquitin ( 28396 ) on Saturday April 12, 2003 @06:21PM (#5718053) Homepage Journal
      Once you have both partitions set up, holding down option when booting will bring up OpenFirmware and will let you boot into Linux or OSX. Check the Yellow Dog [yellowdoglinux.com] site for details.
    • If you have some free (unpartitioned) space or another drive then you can just install to that. There is no way to resize the partitions right now so you would have to start over if you had no free space to work with.

      Setup yaboot during the install. It is basically lilo for PPC. This assumes New World machine. You could use BootX for dualbooting on Old World. You would need a OS9 or older install to put BootX on.
  • Obviously, Linux has some advantages over Mac OS X (and vice versa, of course).
    Therefore, I'm thinking of installing Linux on an external FireWire hard disk. My question is, is Mandrake a superior distribution to, say, Yellow Dog? What about the others?
    • To my knowledge, the PPC distros of Linux cannot boot off of a firewire or usb drive. I know this was the case for a while, but Yellow Dog Linux 3 or Mandrake 9.1 may have fixed this.

      Anyway, I use YDL on most of my boxes, its easily configured and has support for my hardware. It's basically RedHat 8 or 9 for the PPC architecture, so if you like RH, there you go. And there's always plenty of people willing to help in their IRC channel, which can be a big help.

      I suggest checking out PenguinPPC.org [penguinppc.org] for mor

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