New Patches Let iMac G5 Boot Linux 105
An anonymous reader writes "Apple enthusiasts and Linux geeks allied and the result is the announcement of a set of patches (still in test stage) that allows iMac G5 owners to (at least) boot Linux on their toys."
Another Linux victory (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Another Linux victory (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Another Linux victory (Score:2, Insightful)
Hence, symbolic victory....
Re:Another Linux victory (Score:1)
Re:Another Linux victory (Score:1)
Re:Great. (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Great. (Score:2)
Re:Great. (Score:2)
And build your own is always cheaper than buying from a brand vendor, so please don't compare the two.
Re:Great. (Score:2)
$549 for the 1GHz, this is the Civic, not the Accord. Now go to Dell's site and configure an equivalent machine with XP Pro. Come back with a price, I'm interested.
Re:Great. (Score:2)
Re:Great. (Score:2)
Don't confuse render-clusters with home PC's. In the former the CPU clock is very important. In the latter the User performance and the software productivity is more important.
iLife on a 1 GHz G4 is plenty fast for most home users. Altivec makes a big difference. Besides, you've gone $50 over the Apple price, and you have a 15" vs. 17" monitor on the Dell. And you didn't mention if your PC has firewire, modem, ethernet, a decent software pac
Redundant (Score:5, Insightful)
1. There is no need for linux when you have Mac OS X. With its Unix-underpinnings yoiu can do basically everything on Mac OS X that you can use linux for.
2. Some people like Apple hardware (even though it might be more expensive compared to x86) but for (e.g.) political reasons prefer to use linux.
Read my lips. This is redundant. These arguments has been posted thousands of times at Slahsdot's Apple-section.
Please moderators. Take this into consideration when you moderate. I am tired of people telling the world that 'I can use Photoshop and Word on the same OS/computer as I write shell scripts and run Apache' and I am even more tired of when these postings are moderated insightful.
They are no more insightful than someone explaining that if you spend the same money you would get a faster computer today compared with a year ago.
What is the FHS? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:What is the FHS? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What is the FHS? (Score:1)
Re:Redundant (Score:5, Insightful)
Only thing I see at first glance, that OS-X is not conforming to the FHS is, that it mounts external media in
Re:Redundant (Score:2)
And every Linux machine I've ever used, mounts external media in /mnt instead of /media.
Re:Redundant (Score:1)
A lot do, but there are exeptions, Suse mounts external media in
Re:Redundant (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Redundant (Score:1)
The default filesystem of Mac OS X, HFS+ (Mac OS Extended format), is case-insensitive but case-preserving. Although it preserves the case of files written to it, it does not recognize the difference between uppercase and lowercase....Note that while most UNIX-based operating systems are case-sensitive, Windows is case-insensitive (and
Re:Redundant (Score:1)
Sorry.
CyberDave
Re:Redundant (Score:4, Insightful)
Software should not care about how you have your filesystem laid out. If it does, this is a bug, and should be fixed.
If I want locally installed software to go under
Re:Redundant (Score:4, Insightful)
We're talking about Macs here. Raise your standards.
Re:Redundant (Score:2)
And before you ask; yes, I've tried NeoOffice and NeoOffice/J, and neither of them work acceptably.
Re:Redundant (Score:2)
Can you run a native version of OpenOffice.org on Linux without dealing with X11?
Re:Redundant (Score:2, Interesting)
On Linux, you can double-click documents and they'll open.
So the native version of OS X, the kind you can install from a binary and double-click documents to open them, DOES NOT EXIST.
Launching OOO on Mac (Score:3, Informative)
Look for an app called Start OpenOffice.org that comes with the Mac package. It works great.
Re:Launching OOO on Mac (Score:2)
Re:Launching OOO on Mac (Score:2)
Re:Redundant (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, you have to have X11 installed, but all those other steps are long gone. No need for fink, no need to explicitly start X11 etc etc. Double clicking a document to open it also works just fine.
Re:Redundant (Score:2)
System Preferences (on the dock) -> Accounts -> (your account) -> Startup Items
2) Any file can be associated with the open command if you switch the bar at the top from "show recommended" to "show all"
__________
So in other words the standard OpenOffice binary does support double clicking to open documents provided you tell OSX that's what you want to do using the standard tools to do so.
Re:Redundant (Score:2)
Well, if you are willing to pay, and don't mind having to put up with software that is way better than OpenOffice, you can get Microsoft Office 2004. :-)
Re:Redundant (Score:1)
MacOS X is horribly non-free. Sure, the kernel is open source, and so are most of the userland unix-things, but that's about it.
Apart from that, MacOS requires 5 fucking gigabytes of disk space to install. Compare to e.g. Debian, which requires about 150 meg.
I know what I prefer.
Re:Redundant (Score:1)
Re:Redundant (Score:1)
If I install a 150MB OS plus a 3MB media player, I can use the rest of the hard disk for media files.
If I install a 5G OS instead, that leaves almost 5G less space for media files. Do you know how many
Re:Redundant (Score:1)
Re:Redundant (Score:1)
That said, yes, I do think it's important for an operating system not to take too much space, even if disk space costs nothing these days. The more disk space is used up by the OS, the less space you have for other things. Useful things.
An operating system is necessary bloat. It shouldn't be too bloaty.
Re:Redundant (Score:1)
Real advantages over using Linux on Macs? (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't mean to troll or hurt anyone's feelings :) But the obivious question; what are the advantages of running Linux on Mac hardware?
As far as I've read, Linux can be run on iBooks but the hardware support is seriously lacking, which disables some important functions like power saving.. I doubt that Apple has yet documents available on controlling G5's fan system, enabling driver writing?
Again, as far as I've read different articles and reviews about OS X, it seems like heaven on earth for most Linux us
Re:Real advantages over using Linux on Macs? (Score:1, Insightful)
Of course being a linux user, I'd also prefer cheaper ahrdware, so unless you already had PPC hardware, I'm not sure why people would buy soem to put Linux on when x86 is here and cheaper.
Re:Real advantages over using Linux on Macs? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Real advantages over using Linux on Macs? (Score:1)
I'm sure you'll love it -- after all, because they hate the interface you use, it should be changed!
The better advice being, buy a cheap laptop and hate away; but only change your own stuff.
Mind you, I may just be bitter from having people install stuff on my boxes. Now I don't let anyone near 'em. Problem resolved.
Re:Real advantages over using Linux on Macs? (Score:2)
Re:Real advantages over using Linux on Macs? (Score:2)
Re:Real advantages over using Linux on Macs? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes.
You can run X11 in two different modes on MacOS X - full-screen or rootless. If you run it full-screen, you can switch from X11 to Aqua and back with a simple keyboard or mouse command. I surf with Safari and use iTunes and the Apple DVD player, but all my work is done purely on the X11 side, which just looks
Re:Real advantages over using Linux on Macs? (Score:2)
Re:Real advantages over using Linux on Macs? (Score:2)
It's always nice to see great journalism like this on Slashdot.
P.S.:
It's hard to find anything cheaper AND better than the current iBooks or even PowerBooks (you can always get less for less mony, though)
Re:Real advantages over using Linux on Macs? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's nice hardware, and I got my iBook for a better price than I could find an equivalent x86 laptop for.
I got firewire, long battery life, 12" screen (I wanted something small I could lug around easily), as much RAM and HDD, all for less than the closest x86 laptop. It's also hellishly attractive.
Oh, and the suspend/resume stuff is far faster than on all of the Linux/x86 laptops I've seen.
As far as I've read, Linux can be run on iBooks but the hardware support is seriously lacking, which disables some important functions like power saving..
Only the latest iBooks have "seriously lacking" hardware support, and even that is close to being fixed. (IIRC the latest benh kernels can enable power-saving).
My iBook was bought at the start of last year.
After 12 months on OSX I decided to switch back to Debian, mostly just because I prefer GNOME, and it was what I used everywhere else. It also gave a much-desired speed boost
The only thing that doesn't work is the modem, and that's just because it's a software modem and I don't want to use the (buggy, non-open-source) driver.
Overall, it was worth it, the biggest thing I lost was the ability to use WINE to play Windows games!
I use it! (Score:2)
Apple makes REALLY solid workstation/server-class desktops. My G3 circa 1999 has 64-bit PCI slots, shipped with Ultra2Wide SCSI hardware, and a 66MHz PCI slot (double-speed). You can't find reasonably-priced PC hardware like that, it's just not available.
Now we all know that OS X is really cool, but it packs some serious overhead for the graphics and sound systems, and while it's perfectly acceptable for a desktop OS (or a server if you're running it on newer meta
Re:I use it! (Score:2)
Concerning Portage on OS X (Score:2)
for some things, portage on OS X is great, CLI tools seem to work (and look) fantastic. I still get a lot of collissions when trying to install stuff though. I hope it gets better, and that I get better at understanding the direction it's moving so I can test and sub
Re:Concerning Portage on OS X (Score:2)
Darwinports is a BSD ports system
LInux portage is a port of BSD ports system to Linux
Gentoo for OSX portage is a port of the Gentoo portage (i.e. linux system) to OSX
I.E. its a double port of the BSD ports system. What I'm trying to figure out is if you like portage then what is missing with darwinports. For example you talked about firefox (which doesn't seem available at all) but:
port install mozilla -- X11 for OSX
port install mozilla +aqua -- aqua ver
Re:Real advantages over using Linux on Macs? (Score:3, Insightful)
You've gotta remember that linux is NOT OSX. Just because OSX has a Unix (BSD) subsystem doesn't make it the same as linux. If you're programming in OSX and using certain Uni
Re:Real advantages over using Linux on Macs? (Score:3, Informative)
This now works with a patch from BenH [crashing.org], probably going into 2.6.11 (not a typo).
I doubt that Apple has yet documents available on controlling G5's fan system, enabling driver writing?
It works since a long time [bkbits.net].
Re:Real advantages over using Linux on Macs? (Score:2)
Screw G5 or X86.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Even slicker is to use the old neXt packed binaries and compile for both X86 AND G5. I figure Jobs came up with it, why not use it
And why do this? Best of both worlds. There's a lot of software that is only MS NT X86 binary structure.. this beast could run it.
oh, and this beast could bootstrap all those X86-only pci cards that you cant use in the Mac.
Re:Screw G5 or X86.... (Score:3, Informative)
Second, if there was a hybrid G5-P4 or whatever, if it wasn't running Windows, it wouldn't run Windows apps, except through something like WINE. WINE is great, but not so great that I would bet the farm on it, especially in an exotic hybrid box, where most of your users will want to run fairly intense apps like SoftImage and such, or 3
Re:Screw G5 or X86.... (Score:2)
Correct, but note that Alpha-based TURBOChannel machines apparently had a MIPS emulator in the firmware, to handle the MIPS machine language firmware on TURBOChannel cards; it presumably also emulated whatever environment that firmware depended on, if there was any such environment. It might be possible to do the same for non-x86 machines and PCI card
SCO (Score:2)
The x86 vendor that went in hybrid CPU directions was SCO (now this was in the early 90's when SCO was in the business of making operating systems not suing people). They did some excellent work on hybrid 486/i860 systems.
But those CPU's were different enough that there were big advantages (i860 could barely multitask but was built from the ground up for vector math....) What do you see as the advantage the x86 brings to the G5 or vice versa to make it worth the management cost?
Re:SCO (Score:2)
Actually, I think the fact that there's just soo much non-portable binary software on the X86 (mainly in windows). To run 2 cpu's with portability between them, and teh ability to run otherwise binaries I could see as a very valuable hardware proj
Re:SCO (Score:2)
Re:SCO (Score:2)
For certain reasons, I doubt that. I can see a blend from the WINE projects and individualised hacking. For an example, LK-2.6 can natively read and overwrite files, but not create new ones, or increase the size of files.
To counteract that, somebody wrote a NTFS.drv => ntfs native kernelmode driver. This resulted in full read/write operation that Windows usually uses,
Re:SCO (Score:2)
Re:SCO (Score:1)
Couldn't you shove wine off onto the x86 processor, and all the rest onto the G5? Because you wouldn't have an OS and God knows what else running on the x86, wine would be a lot faster than on a real PC... no? Or have I no idea what I'm talking about?
Re:SCO (Score:2)
Actually the problem would reside on how the busses are determined. My idea would be to run Windows on the X86, but then you'd have to make windows understand it's a host OS (not going to happen) on a XEN-like system manager. You'd end up with memory contention and sporadic bus function.
The possible answer is to run something you can hack (linux, BSD) and have it
Why? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
maybe.. just maybe.. some people prefer linux to os x.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:2)
maybe they just wanted to run linux on a g5 cpu in the first place when they were shopping for a computer to have the features to fit their needs. when you run linux you can have such freedoms when choosing platform.
what's foolish about that - buying the best looking hardware with the price tag that happens to suit them for a job that the hardware can do.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
There! I just started a war between Mac zealots and Gentoo zealots. The End is coming.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been doing a bit of clustering, and have been using the OSCAR system for building clusters. OSCAR is build using RPM-based distros (primarily RedHat). There are some folks porting OSCAR to Debian, but it's not there yet. Apple's got some pretty good tools that can be used for clustering, but nothing I've been able to get my hands on yet does all the stuff OSCAR does.
So since YDL is an RPM-based distro, there is a hope that OSCAR could be used with YDL. It doesn't work now, but it would probably be easier to do than try to port everything over to OS X right off the bat.
Now I will say I didn't like YDL on the G5 AT ALL. I told a co-worker it was like being a kid and taking apart your favorite Tonka truck to "improve" it. I ended up with something different, but I really wanted my old truck back. Also, there are some things that OS X is slower than Linux for (eg - run openssl speed on a dual G5 vs. a single Xeon - the Xeon will be multiple times as fast).
OS X is a fantastic operating system. The developers package is incredible, Fink rocks, and having X11 inside is cool as heck. I'm saving up to buy a G5 for my next personal machine. However, it's not perfect (no OS is). I can fully understand folks wanting to get a working Linux install running on Apple hardware.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
In all fairness, openssl has many hand written assembler routines for x86.
Re:Why? (Score:2)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because Linux runs circles around OSX in terms of speed. Especially for servers. OSX's file IO and network IO in particular have too much overhead.
The same holds true for the desktop. Linux is much snappier on the desktop than OSX.
Re:Why? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:1)
That's nice, because it allows me to switch to different hardware without having to learn a new user interface or operating system.
I recently bought a 12" PowerBook G4. Obviously I installed Debian on the thing, otherwise there wouldn't be a point.
Nice. (Score:1)
Re:Nice. (Score:2)
Re:Nice. (Score:1)
SUPER DEATH PUSH REPLY!
Fedora Core 3 testing for PPC could use this? (Score:4, Interesting)
I recently read Colin Charles' blog and came across his announcement of FC3 for PPC is in testing [fedoraproject.org]. He notes [bytebot.net] that "the release is known to not boot on G5's, and we are working on re-building another tree, which we can push out soon", would this new Linux kernel patch help with this?
The answer to why run linux on this (Score:2, Interesting)
However, there is a good reason to run linux. OS X is (currently) a 32 bit OS. Many of the apps can't see all the memory. PPC linux is 64 bit.
that having been said, I'm only just now finding a need
Re:The answer to why run linux on this (Score:3, Insightful)
And that objection will vanish in about six months, more or less.