powerbook

mdirolf · 2004-07-18 20:57:03

Im going away to college next year and am thinking about getting a 12 inch powerbook to use as my computer at school. There are only two things holding me back.
1) is it possible to install arch on a G4 or not? because i dont think i could go back to any other distro after using arch and pacman
2) im not sure if the 1.33 ghz G4 will be able to handle Doom 3 when it comes out for the mac.

IVe never used a mac before but they look so good that i am really thinking of getting one. What are your opinions / answers to my two concerns? (aka convince me to either get / not get the mac)

Thanks for your input,
Mike

luigi · 2004-07-18 21:15:22

mdirolf wrote:

Im going away to college next year and am thinking about getting a 12 inch powerbook to use as my computer at school. There are only two things holding me back.
1) is it possible to install arch on a G4 or not? because i dont think i could go back to any other distro after using arch and pacman
2) im not sure if the 1.33 ghz G4 will be able to handle Doom 3 when it comes out for the mac.
IVe never used a mac before but they look so good that i am really thinking of getting one. What are your opinions / answers to my two concerns? (aka convince me to either get / not get the mac)
Thanks for your input,
Mike

1) Nope. Arch packages are built for i686 processors and only for i686 processors. I honestly don't see any reason to install Linux on a Mac, as it already is Unix (BSD) based.
2) Don't know anything about requirements for games. A Mac/gaming forum would probably be a better place to ask.

mdirolf · 2004-07-19 01:19:33

does that mean i can run linux apps on the os x?

luigi · 2004-07-19 02:48:29

mdirolf wrote:

does that mean i can run linux apps on the os x?

Not necessarily, but it means that Mac OSX is a Unix-derivative system, just like Linux. Its based on FreeBSD.

What exact Linux apps are you looking for? Mac offers X11 support and you'll have to do some research on what apps are available for it. If you really feel that you need to run Linux on a Powerbook, there's Yellow Dog Linux or Gentoo for the Power PC, but they're not as well developed as PC-based distros.

Again, in my opinion, if you're going to get an Apple laptop, you want it for Mac OS X, which is an excellent OS. If you want to run Linux, and particularly Arch, get an i686 (PC) laptop. Personally, the reasons I would want to use a Powerbook and MacOS X are totally separate from the reasons I like to play with Arch and other Linuxes on my PC.

sarah31 · 2004-07-19 04:35:25

htttp://www.macnn.com

1. no

2. there is no reason that a g4 1.33 ghz should not be able to handle doom. i wouldn't doubt that my first generation 867 MHz 12" PB could handle doom 3.

you can use alot of open source applications in OS X you can either compile them your self or use fink (look up fink on freshmeat.net) the downloads section of the apple osx web page has a list of all sorts of apps already prebuilt for OS X including open source apps.

version tracker OS X is also good for tracking all sorts of prebuilt open source packages or free/shareware and demos and so forth.

topito · 2004-07-19 07:26:39

1) No, but you can try gentoo or even better debian on it. Debian runs perfect there, but... with some problems, for example there is not sleep support yet, that's why I only use OSX there, that is a real cool OS.

2) mmm, I have a 833ghz and I hope it will be able to handle it

The powerbook is the best laptop I had, but not the best to run linux cos there are some things that do not work and maybe never will work like: tvout (nvidia do not want to realease ppc drivers), sleep support (again nvidia), the new airport doesn't work too, and I think that's all, but the sleep support is really important for a laptop. When I bought it I installed a debian, it run cool but after spending some days using OSX I will never install a linux there again unless sleeps is working...

sweiss · 2004-07-19 08:01:43

If I remember correctly, Doom 3 requires a 2ghz CPU minimum.

It is about to be quite a resource-intensive game.

topito · 2004-07-19 08:05:14

the ghz of an apple and a PC are different, well, not different but for example my G4 833 feels faster than most of the P4 laptops i have used.

tmadhavan · 2004-07-19 09:31:05

sweiss wrote:

If I remember correctly, Doom 3 requires a 2ghz CPU minimum.
It is about to be quite a resource-intensive game.

topito wrote:

2) mmm, I have a 833ghz

No problems there then...

topito · 2004-07-19 09:46:49

hehehehehe

LavaPunk · 2004-07-23 15:45:11

If you really feel you must run arch you could look into porting arch to ppc.

Doom should have no problem running on your ppc as long as you have enough ram IMO. I suspect it will run on my g4 1.3ghz 384ram and nvidia 5900 ultra. But we will see, maybe they will even do a nice job on the linux binaries...

dp · 2004-07-23 16:18:57

LavaPunk wrote:

If you really feel you must run arch you could look into porting arch to ppc.
.

i'm the first to support you - but unfortunately i have no mac hardware :-( anyone to sponsor? :-)

tehdely · 2004-07-23 18:11:09

I have a similar dillemma. After fighting with PC hardware for the last time, I've decided that my next machine is going to be a Mac (like all my machines before except for the black-hole of money that is this shitbox), but I will feel deprived of my beloved Arch!

Of course, OS X is a fine OS... I run it on one of my Macs and I have access to all the *NIX software I need, plus the world's greatest GUI. I would, however, love to be able to run Arch Linux on PPC. I think if there's enough interest we should start work on a PPC tree. I think it will be a while before there is a critical mass of interested users, however. Arch is still a young and growing distribution.

topito · 2004-07-23 20:23:05

Well, if someone explains how to start I can try to make a AL ppc port, but I have no idea how to start, I mean, at least boot it to start compiling and all this stuff...

tehdely · 2004-07-23 20:55:09

topito wrote:

Well, if someone explains how to start I can try to make a AL ppc port, but I have no idea how to start, I mean, at least boot it to start compiling and all this stuff...

The biggest work in making a port to any architecture is getting unstable, current, and extra to build cleanly. You're going to have to tweak several packages, I'm sure. A lot of this work has already been done for other PPC ports, so familiarity with Gentoo or Debian PPC (the two leading distros on PPC AFAIK) is useful. Once the tweaking's done, you should be able to just run makeworld on your abs tree and have a set of PPC-binary repositories.

As for making a bootable working distro, once again I suggest you look at Gentoo or Debian. Things are quite different on PPC.

sarah31 · 2004-07-24 00:57:51

install a ppc linux on your box (say crux for example) compile pacman and install then start building your base and installing it to your shadow root partition.

that is really a basic short description of the way i would do it. just don't ask me to do it because my mac is for OS X only

topito · 2004-07-24 20:16:03

The problem is that if I have to hack some packages will take forever cos I'm not a guru :? ... sure that using some gentoo ppc sources could help maybe

kth5 · 2005-01-03 19:00:35

i was thinking about waking up this thread would be a wise idea but here i am.

i have several oldworld powermacs around here including one PowerMacintosh server. right now it's running Debian Sarge but soon enough got tired of the dpkg screwing things up all the time or software being far too old in woody. after that i've been building lots of stuff manually including patches etc but that merely bypasses the packagemanagement and leaves a mess after a while.

anyhow, i am now trying to build pacman and then will go on trying to get current to compile for PPC. i honestly lack the time to acomplish this in the near future but if anybody wants to mess with it he/she can get a SSH account on the machine as i don't use it for any other purpose than experimentation.

here are the machine's specs:

Power Macintosh Server (aka Beige-Tower) / OldWorld
G3 PowerPC @ 350Mhz (1MB backside cache)
128MB RAM (i can upgrade to a max of 396)
18.6GB SCSI HDD
10Mbit Onboard LAN
8x Plextor CD Writer SCSI (backups possible)

Arch Linux

#1 2004-07-18 20:57:03

powerbook

#2 2004-07-18 21:15:22

Re: powerbook

#3 2004-07-19 01:19:33

Re: powerbook

#4 2004-07-19 02:48:29

Re: powerbook

#5 2004-07-19 04:35:25

Re: powerbook

#6 2004-07-19 07:26:39

Re: powerbook

#7 2004-07-19 08:01:43

Re: powerbook

#8 2004-07-19 08:05:14

Re: powerbook

#9 2004-07-19 09:31:05

Re: powerbook

#10 2004-07-19 09:46:49

Re: powerbook

#11 2004-07-23 15:45:11

Re: powerbook

#12 2004-07-23 16:18:57

Re: powerbook

#13 2004-07-23 18:11:09

Re: powerbook

#14 2004-07-23 20:23:05

Re: powerbook

#15 2004-07-23 20:55:09

Re: powerbook

#16 2004-07-24 00:57:51

Re: powerbook

#17 2004-07-24 20:16:03

Re: powerbook

#18 2005-01-03 19:00:35

Re: powerbook

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