Subject: Re: Linux On the PowerPC
From: James Zuelow (e5z8652@zuelow.net)
Date: Sun Feb 15 2004 - 18:13:29 AKST
On Sun, 15 Feb 2004 14:59:46 -0900
"W.D.McKinney" <deem@wdm.com> wrote:
>
> Might want to try this on some of you Macs eh ?
>
> http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-pmac.html?ca=dgr-lnxw01LinuxMac
>
> Have fun!
>
> Dee
Not a lot of PowerPC boxes running showing up on Fridays in Anchortowne? Contrary to the author's opinion, Debian on Macs is cool. Debian runs on my IBM PowerPC workstations that don't even support NetBSD. :) Haven't tried YellowDog, Mandrake or SuSE on them though - too lazy to download the isos.
Sigh - yet another reviewer who thinks tabbing to "desktop environment" and hitting the space bar is too difficult when installing Debian. IMHO it is easier to set up X on a Mac than the x86 port. Debian does require that you answer a few questions using a curses interface and know what video card you've got, but that information is just an alt-F2 and `dmesg` away. There ARE some X oddities that I've noticed, such as the screen on a G3 All-in-one being very very dark with a 2.4 kernel but normal with a 2.2 kernel. But I don't think that has as much to do with Debian as with the kernel itself.
Add to that the author's strange comment about the installer not being able to redo a step, and I get the impression this was a deadline in search of an article, and he quickly rushed through it. Last December we did a Debian install on a PowerMac down here at JLUG, and did the disk-partitioning step several times just to get keyboard time using mac-fdisk. All you have to do is re-select the install step you want to do over.
Interesting. At least people are thinking about Linux on PowerPCs.
Cheers,
James
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2a23 : Sun Feb 15 2004 - 18:13:42 AKST