DistroWatch reports that a new development version of Mandrakelinux 10.1, PPC edition, is now available. Highlights: Linux kernel 2.6.8rc2; NPTL support; X11R6.7.0, GNOME 2.6, KDE 3.2.3, etc.
Mandrakelinux 10.1 Alpha for PPC
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Eugenia Loli
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This is great news. I have a powerbook and it is running debian at the moment which runs great. However it is good to see mandrake back into it. I hope someone installs it and lets ua know what its like especially on a powerbook.
It should be ready just in time for me to choose between it, Debian and Yellow Dog (4.0) as the replacement on the first generation white ibook I just bought used for $400 (Canadian). Jaguar seems a little much for the system, even with the RAM at 384 MB. Must be the under powered video card. Anyways, I can’t wait for the fall!!
My powerbook is a Ti with G4 400mhz and 256mb of ram. Debian runs very well on it. Just some FYI
Well, I’m not sure if I would install linux on a powerbook if I ever got one. I am really partial to OS X but I do think that if I were to ever install any linux distro on a powerbook, it would be gentoo.
It’s about time that one of the few PPC linux distros came out with an up-to-date version that would run on both OldWorld and NewWorld Macs geared to desktop users. Yes, there’s Gentoo and Debian, but those require some work. And as for YDL, OldWorld Macs are out as of version 4.0, which I believe is a big mistake, but that’s just me.
I have a PowerBook G3 “Wallstreet II” with 256 MB of RAM and OS X Jaguar is the best this machine will run. Aside from that, it runs like it’s constipated. I would rather have Linux on this machine than run OS X slowly or OS 9 which is long in the tooth. This announcement is wonderful news in my book for by ‘Book. 😉
I was begining to think there wouldn’t be a new version for the ppc. I have to head over and see if I can help with the testing 🙂
Its a good news for ppc users,
but is there a version of mdk for amd64 that can be downloaded freely? I had tried all the mirrors ,however i only found one very old version of mdk-amd64,disappointedly,
Let’s make this release be the best one ever.
G3/G4 support only. I like Mandrake and I like Mac, but they’re building a distro for the last generation of Apple hardware. The developers are to be commended for resurrecting Mandrake PPC. At the same time, I can’t see how they’ll be able to keep pace with Yellow Dog unless Mandrake invests some serious time and money getting this onto the G5 with support for the Powermac.
Nevertheless: good luck Mandrake! The more Linux on PPC, the better.
airport extreme cards support? airports work but extremes dont as far as i know? well, i wouldn’t install that on my iBook anyway, i can use fink/darwinports/portage to get open source softera for OS X, and there’s even native port of KDE 🙂
As far as i know both Yellow Dog as well as Panther will still run on Old World Macs, they’re just not officially supported any more.
XPostFacto ( http://www.opendarwin.org/projects/XPostFacto/ ) might be helpful if you want to install OS X on some unsupported systems.
Given that very few Mac owners ever even open their Computer, let alone upgrade memory or processor, most pre-G3 machines would be too weak to run Mandrake anyway, so the G3/G4-only support is not a nig loss. If it strikes you, go for Gentoo.
Dose anyone try to boot it on PegasosG3/G4?
The video is 8M video(ATI Rage Pro mobile, or similar) the main bus is only 66M, and the G3 variant processor only has a 256k L2 cache, and the hd is likely slow -> poor OSX performance.
Personally, I have been running YDL 2.3 & 3.0x on my sim. spec ibook, beware of GNOME & KDE as they perform almost as poorly as OSX. I generally stick with xfce + ROX, or fluxbox(yeah, I know just a wm v. DE) when I want additional application memory plus some extra “free” CPU cycles. 5DWM looks good too(or whatever he calls it now), but I suspect that it may be as much a performance pig as GNOME & KDE are today, but I still fondly recall the Indigo Magic(SGI) Desktop, best of the time, esp. compared to Sun’s CDE + the variants that HP & IBM used on their workstations at the time(mid to late 90’s), of course running directly on an O2 helped as well.
Not all of them. The iBook G3 i am currently using has a 100 MHz system bus and 512 k L2 cache. The HD is a 20 GB IBM which doesn’t perform too bad for an older laptop HD. Mac OS X (Panther) runs great on it, only resizing windows (especially brushed metal ones) is quite laggy. But apart from that it is quite fast, starting Safari takes about 3 seconds.
What OS can you recommend for the old black PowerBooks (the one that whats-her-name in Sex and the City has)? could it bear Gentoo + GNOME? How well would OS X perform?
As for the black PowerBooks, it all depends which version of those black ones you are talking about. There were various incarnations of the PowerBook G3, the last of which (codenamed “Pismo” and incidentally dropped the “G3” from the name) was the best of those black PowerBooks. Low End Mac has more information regarding the various incarnations of the PB G3. The link is below…
http://lowendmac.com/
The one I have from my work is a PowerBook G3 series (codenamed “Wallstreet II”). It has a 300 MHz G3 processor and 256 MB RAM (that was upped by me, not originally included in the laptop). The latest that laptop will run is Jaguar (10.2), and it runs it VERY slowly. I have even applied the ATI hack to accelerate the graphics some more and it’s still slow. I’m sure that Linux would run much better on my laptop, and Mandrake is known for their user-friendliness. I just hope that this time it’s not as disappointing as their last few versions for PPC.
I think A. Coward has nailed the issue. The used white ibook (icebook?) I have is the very first line produced, so the hardware specs you mentioned are right on. It is still an awesome size and has a built in CD-RW. I really love the hardware. I think I will love it more once Linux is on it.
What’s the PPC software collection like with Mandrake? Debian has every package under the sun for PPC, can we expect something similar from our French friends?
I’m not really familiar with the amount of work required to port an existing x86 app to PPC.
I hope this works on my AIO Molar running a 400Mhz g3 with 512 meg of ram, because 10.2.8 runs pretty slow, but who knows maybe this will be slower. I will just have to wait and see.
I’ve got a PowerBook G3 Firewire (aka “Pismo”, the last black PowerBook) and have run Debian and YDL on it. It’s got 256 MB in it, and 8 MB of VRAM. If interested, see apple-history for more specs:
http://www.apple-history.com/frames/body.php?page=gallery&model=pg3…
As previous posters have pointed out, it runs OS X Panther, but it’s fairly slow — though definitely usable. I think OS X would be much happier with 512 MB memory.
I found both Gnome and KDE to be comparable with OS X speed-wise. Of course, running something like IceWM or blackbox, the PB is very fast. The only waiting around you do is when loading large programs like Mozilla.
And they charge money for this?
Come on, this is not worth the disk’s the operating system is written on.
Gnome/Kde are both memory hogs, slow, ugly and filled with useless applications that crash with SEGV errors.
Thanks for your tips. I checked LowEndMac and the thing i am going to get must be a Wallstreet or Lombard (it’s got a DVD drive and SCSI). Judging from the specs i guess i won’t dare to install OS X, but i will still afford GNOME after a memory upgrade. Compiled with -oS flag (optimized for size).
Well i’ve still got three months to worry about this.
Even on my Performa 6400, with 180 Mhz 603ev without L2 cache and only 72 MB of RAM, KDE 3.2 works, and with remote X it is even usable. So they cannot be such a huge resource hog.
Besides, not all the applications of Gnome and KDE are useless. For example, you could use Epiphany or Konqueror to visit a site teaching you the difference between “disk’s” and “disks”.
IMHO, the major advantage of Mandrake will be that, unlike Debian Stable, it contains the latest software, and that, unlike Yellow Dog 4.0, it will run on Old World macintoshes.
i forgot to mention that I am running the Ti powerbook 400mhz with 256 mb of ram with the new Debian netinstaller RC-1 for ppc. It installs the yaboot loader no problem.
I have a last-gen g3 ibook and wasn’t able to get this to run on it – it failed at the security setup screen – kept whining about how a readonly value was trying to be changed. anyone have any ideas?
spikeb
Check the YDL site. Maybe something about doing (or making sure not to do) a firmware update first?
Off-topic (with regard to Mdk)
As far as i know both Yellow Dog as well as Panther will still run on Old World Macs, they’re just not officially supported any more.
XPostFacto ( http://www.opendarwin.org/projects/XPostFacto/ ) might be helpful if you want to install OS X on some unsupported systems.
Given that very few Mac owners ever even open their Computer, let alone upgrade memory or processor, most pre-G3 machines would be too weak to run Mandrake anyway, so the G3/G4-only support is not a nig loss. If it strikes you, go for Gentoo.
I had a go with XPF but didn’t get very far. It would seem that XPF will only run on OS9.2, and I couldn’t install 9.2 on my OWPPC (5500/225). I have 9.2, but it boots and says it is “not supported” on the hardware. I did find a nice tool to “upgrade” 9.1 to 9.2, but alas I didn’t have 9.1 around. So, my machine still has 8.5 (I think) on it, and Debian.
Personally I am not happy that Mdk are not continuing their support for OWPPCs, but it doesn’t really surprise me. I’m sure a lot of 486 owners were not happy when many distros switched over to 586+ specs only.
I have used Mandrake in the past (8.2 and 9.1) and have to say that Mandrake is probably the best distro around if it comes to ease of use. Unfortunately there are not that many people really testing and what you see is that each new release is buggier then the one before. I am using Gentoo Linux now which works great if you have more time to install a working box. I hope that a lot of people will test this product as Mdk no longer supports the PPC port and it is up to us to improve things.
Christiaan: you do a good job (and he is a fellow Dutch
)