Sorry I missed this. I don't get on the list often enough, lately.
(But I have this deja vu feeling, too.)
On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 3:30 AM, James McKenzie jjmckenzie51@earthlink.net wrote:
All:
I am looking at installing Linux on a very old piece of hardware. I've tried FC12/13/14 but the screen is 'messed up' and it only has 384MB of RAM.
Which model?
And where did you find F13 or F14 for PPC?
(I'm sure it isn't 68K because, as far as I know, there is no Fedora for that. I'm sure it isn't Intel, because the first Intel Macs had way more RAM than that from the start.)
Although, 384M is pretty tight if you're wanting to use X11 graphical desktop.
I still have F12 on this white iBook G4, sometimes I boot it for various reasons.
Also, I now have a brand new, shiny MacBookPro. Any ideas on what to install on it as far as Linux.
If you are still monitoring the list, you will have noticed that many people are using Fedora on intel Macs. I don't have an Intel Mac, so I can't say. There are apparently some (understanding?) issues with EFI, but it shouldn't be too difficult.
I'm trying to stay away from the Linux distribution that starts and ends with U as my first experience was not pleasant. I would like to stay with the RH family, if possible.
James McKenzie
Me, too.
PPC was, for a couple of years, until about a year and a half ago, a primary target, like x86 and the 64 bit release.
But, with F12, it has been dropped off the edge of the earth, so to speak. I suspect that has something to do with Sony's sudden paranoia, but I suspect it may have more to do with IBM wanting to protect (so much for them being on our side) their PPC as a "big iron" cpu. Lots of people not telling us the real reasons for things.
On the other hand, the feedback level on PPC was kind of sparse. And I can't claim that I helped much.
I am playing with Debian on x86 to get ready for the LPIC, and to get ready to replace Fedora 12 on this iBook. But when I do that, I'll probably use the Japanese "Vine" derivative of Debian. I have booted Debian and Vine on it, and it does work, within certain parameters. LXDE and XFCE (or was it XCFE?) should be much more responsive than Gnome with the RAM you have. Add RAM if you can get the total over 512M. It is a bit of a rough ride.
If you are interested in openBSD, it runs pretty nicely. Steep learning curve, and you may want to run startx from the keyboard, but that's something you can probably get used to. (BSD is not Linux, but it's pretty close, and it does have Linux emulation. Oh, I haven't tried Linux emulation on PPC, so I shouldn't say that so boldly, maybe.)
If enough people with enough time can get together, we should be able to get the secondary PPC infrastructure up for Fedora and get it up to sort of the same level as ARM support. I'm still trying to get time to figure out what I can do there.
Joel Rees