A Live Linux ISO for the Mac? 74
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? (Score:4, Informative)
Most of the problems I see people still having has to do with repartitioning a dual-boot sytem.
Yellow Dog Linux. (Score:4, Informative)
There really are no problems running Linux on Mac hardware.
Re:Yellow Dog Linux. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This isn't too intelligent (Score:2, Informative)
RE: Live CDs etc (Score:1)
I have tried Mandrake PPC 9.1 on the iMac and like it alot. But as far as a live CD...Nope, never seen one.
Can anyone give me feedback on YDL 3.0 vs Mandrake 9.1?
Scott
Re:This isn't too intelligent (Score:1, Informative)
Re:This isn't too intelligent (Score:1)
I've been playing with lots of distros for PPC for a couple of years. YDL 3.0 seems buggy, Linux PPC is outdated. Mandrake is nice to my rev A iMac, but xine does not work at all. I would love to use Debian on that ma
It's possible- there used to be one! (Score:5, Informative)
I remember that one... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps, (Score:5, Informative)
All you need is Fink [sourceforge.net].
Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps, (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps, (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps, (Score:3, Informative)
Scott
Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps, (Score:5, Informative)
Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps, (Score:2, Informative)
sudo apt-get install koffice
will install all necessary KDE components and then you are up and running. Takes about 25 minutes.
Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps, (Score:2, Interesting)
the integration between KDE and OSX is absolutely beautiful.
Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps, (Score:3, Informative)
2) Make sure to do the compiles piecemeal. If a program is going to require 40 dependendts then break the whole thing down into steps.
3) As for hellish I've seen very few of their compiles fail and those that do usually work by the next update.
4) Why aren't you just using the binary fink?
Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps, (Score:3, Informative)
Works beautifully. I use it on my development box for web based image manipulation, using PHP. The PHP code is totally portable to the production Solaris box, too.
Enjoy
Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps, (Score:2)
I've tried that build and I was unable to get it to recognize any Ghostscript implementation I installed on the system. (Of course, I used fink to install the various Ghostscripts) ImageMagick needs Ghostscript for marking up a graphic with text. Maybe it's worth another try...I sort of gave up mirroring my whole web server environment under OS X, and just stay hooked up to a trusty Intel box running Linux. Unfortunately, the subtle implication here is I can't camp out at the coffee
Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps, (Score:2)
Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps, (Score:2)
Re:If you want all the KDE and Gnome apps, (Score:1)
Debian has come a long way. (Score:5, Informative)
-sonic
Re:Debian has come a long way. (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
That would be old, pre-Jobs Apple thinking, which did give them a tendency to arbitrarily clamp down on people modifying their (then) relatively closed platform, even when said clamp-down interfered with the company's interests. I don't really see that happening now. An easy, CD-bootable Linux distro would be another reason for people in a specific market to buy an
Re:Debian has come a long way. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Debian has come a long way. (Score:1)
Had a hell of a time installing it on an old beige G3, still getting nightmares at night.
On the other hand, the install on my ibook went very very smoothly.
Re:Debian has come a long way. (Score:4, Funny)
p.s. I run Madrake 9.1...:D
Re:Debian has come a long way. (Score:1)
Re:Debian has come a long way. (Score:1)
Re:Debian has come a long way. (Score:2)
At that time booting the Linux kernel off a CD would prevent the IDE bus from being seen by the kernel once it was running. The only solution at the time was to copy the kernel and bootloader onto an empty HFS partition, and boot off that via Open Firmware.
If this kernel problem hasn't been resolved as of yet, a live CD will cause problems.
Re:Debian has come a long way. (Score:3, Informative)
Bug 1: The installer used a 2.2 kernel, whereas the system I installed used a 2.4 kernel, which meant that software IDE RAID was interpreting the drive names differently (hda versus hdc). This mean a lot of (dis/en)abling drives in the bios and screwing with some grub file to make it all work. The trivial solution was to use a current 2.4 kernel in the ins
Re:Debian has come a long way. (Score:1)
I'm guessing you're talking about /etc/modules.conf. If so, then instead of editing that file, add your text to /etc/modutils/aliases, and run the command update-modules. Note the text at the top of
Re:Debian has come a long way. (Score:1)
A live CD (Score:4, Interesting)
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.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Debian is probably worth the pain.... (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, but none of us live in an ideal world. The closest we can get is a world where we get everything installed and running, and then think "hey! I should have put this/that/theother on its own partition!".
It's by tearing down and re-building what we've done that we learn how Linux (or any OS, for that matter) works.
Re:Debian is probably worth the pain.... (Score:1)
I installed Linux on my laptop. I installed it where I wanted, the way I wanted and it works pretty much as expected. There are old versions of some apps on the distro, eg Apache, which I'd like to upgrade but nobody is creating RPMs for my old version of YDL. Maybe I've misunderstoo
OS X on a G3 (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:2, Interesting)
I ran YellowDog 2.3 on it for a few days to see how it performed, and in general, it ran pretty well too.
OS X 10.2 however would not install (or maybe it would but after waiting over an hour and not getting past the first two dialogs, I gave up - I presume this was more to do with the pitiful amount of RAM more than anything e
Re:OS X on a G3 (Score:4, Informative)
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: 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.
Wallstreet is 2nd PBG3 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wallstreet is 2nd PBG3 (Score:2, Informative)
But certainly you would need to upgrade the RAM from 64 MB for OS X...
Re:OS X on a G3 (Score:1)
Think this would do the trick? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Think this would do the trick? (Score:2, Informative)
KDE and GNOME (Score:3, Informative)
do it right (Score:1)
Gentoo? (Score:5, Informative)
Here is some info [gentoo.org]
Here are the ISO's [ibiblio.org]
Re:Gentoo? (Score:3, Informative)
I documented my install [desertsol.com]
Re:Gentoo? (Score:4, Informative)
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".
Re:Gentoo? (Score:1, Informative)
Pieter, PPC gentoo team lead
Re:Gentoo? (Score:1)
Define Smart Please (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:2, Informative)
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
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 th
Well, if someone has a PPC machine left... (Score:1)
Gentoo Linux (Score:1, Flamebait)
Virtual PC (Score:1)
but I've successfully run Debian and FreeBSD from a Virtual PC image. It's like having a spare unix.
The answer is... (Score:1)
(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? (Score:1)
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 ignoran
Linux is not always the solution... (Score:1)