PowerPC server distro

Basu · 2008-07-08 01:05:11

I have an old G4 PowerMac. I'm thinking of turning it into a headless server/ backup control. Though I'd like to be able to use it as a desktop in a pinch. I'm looking for a fast, stable Linux distro. It should have a full complement of server software as well as good support for USB hard drives (though I think that's probably baked into the kernel now). I've been thinking about Yellow Dog Linux since that's the only one I know of that is geared towards PowerPC and I would prefer that to one of the general purpose linux distros. Any ideas would be helpful,
Basu

tigrmesh · 2008-07-08 03:10:50

I've heard good things about both Debian stable and FreeBSD for servers. Both are available for PowerPC.

KyKo · 2008-07-08 04:43:39

I second Debian. You can't go wrong with Debian on a server.

Stythys · 2008-07-08 05:52:00

archppc ftw

Zeist · 2008-07-08 10:13:12

Slackintosh is pretty cool for macs, I've found it pretty solid and it literally has years and years of development.

Arch PPC may be nice, but the updates seem to be coming a bit slow. It should be quite nice however as after all it is arch and a lot of programs are at least buildable for ppc.

BSD is solid for servers, and these days FreeBSD isn't that hard to maintain on a server so that is a very valid option.

Also, am I the only one who really doesn't like apt to the degree where I'd much rather try to run some other distro rather than have to wrestle with apt? I guess it is a bit off topic and as such I apologize, but I'm just saying that I'd much rather have Ports or SBO than apt and as such that would be a rather important decision when it comes to a system that I'd have to maintain.

Last edited by Zeist (2008-07-08 10:16:33)

ornitorrincos · 2008-07-08 11:02:11

would you even prefer rpm rather than using apt?

Zeist · 2008-07-09 17:09:58

ornitorrincos wrote:

would you even prefer rpm rather than using apt?

That's pretty much where I pass my limit for apt dislike as even though maintenance through apt a pain having to do upgrades of rpm-installed software tends to be an even bigger pain. In my opinion rpm works fine if you just install stuff and never upgrade anything, but upgrades do break things far more often than apt does. So no, compared to rpm I'd much rather have apt.

Misfit138 · 2008-07-09 17:41:29

Interesting. For all the years of RPM-hating that I have heard, I never really ran into any issues with it when I used PCLos. (Which uses apt as an RPM wrapper.)
These days, it seems like RPM is not much more than a package format; a compressed image of a fake root, with all software and metadata contained within.
The wrappers like apt, yum, urpmi, smart, yast, zypper, whatever, all seem to do the dependency tracking and resolution. Am I wrong in saying this? What am I missing?
As for the OP, I was going to say Debian, but that Slackintosh thingy really caught me eye..........

Zeist · 2008-07-09 18:23:13

Misfit138 wrote:

Interesting. For all the years of RPM-hating that I have heard, I never really ran into any issues with it when I used PCLos. (Which uses apt as an RPM wrapper.)
These days, it seems like RPM is not much more than a package format; a compressed image of a fake root, with all software and metadata contained within.
The wrappers like apt, yum, urpmi, smart, yast, zypper, whatever, all seem to do the dependency tracking and resolution. Am I wrong in saying this? What am I missing?
As for the OP, I was going to say Debian, but that Slackintosh thingy really caught me eye..........

The thing is, manually tracking down packages as rpms for dependencies is sometimes a real nightmare. It didn't use to be a problem to do it manually, but sometime along the way dependencies on various versions of things have started making it so that doing a upgrades of major components of software in your system manually through rpm packages takes quite a bit of work and black magic. In some cases so much that rather than making major system upgrades every now and then it generally takes less time to re-install the system again than getting everything working again after upgrading... which means that in some environments it just isn't worth bothering with most major upgrades.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-07-08 01:05:11

PowerPC server distro

#2 2008-07-08 03:10:50

Re: PowerPC server distro

#3 2008-07-08 04:43:39

Re: PowerPC server distro

#4 2008-07-08 05:52:00

Re: PowerPC server distro

#5 2008-07-08 10:13:12

Re: PowerPC server distro

#6 2008-07-08 11:02:11

Re: PowerPC server distro

#7 2008-07-09 17:09:58

Re: PowerPC server distro

#8 2008-07-09 17:41:29

Re: PowerPC server distro

#9 2008-07-09 18:23:13

Re: PowerPC server distro

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