Re: hosers-talk: Linux on PPC

["Jon Stewart" <stew1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> "Jon Stewart" sez:
> >Conclusion: prefer Linux on x86 if possible, and use it on well-supported 
> >PPC models (eg. blue and white G3, ye olde 9600).
> 
> Have you tried the alternatives for PPC?


AFAIK, there are three mainstream PPC distros: LinuxPPC, Yellow Dog Linux,
and SuSE (they just came out with 7.3). LinuxPPC is the pioneer and first 
produced BootX, which is a MacOS system extension that gets all the driver 
info out of OpenFirmware from half-booting the MacOS and then passes it 
off to Linux -- essential for Macs with poorly supported video hardware 
(like mine; my video is on the mobo, and it was common practice for most 
Macs until a few years ago). 

I'm fairly certain that YDL and SuSE just took off of LinuxPPC. 

I've heard some people say that YDL is great, but I think it's very much 
targeted at those who have pretty good hardware and know what they're 
doing. LinuxPPC is supposed to be okay and was the main choice, but I 
decided to try SuSE instead because I figured their installer would have 
the most polish and come with the most software. Also, it comes with a big 
ass manual that's fairly helpful and, of course, 60 days support. I figure 
the support I'd get from SuSE would be better than what I'd get from 
LinuxPPC or YDL, as SuSE is just a bit bigger than either one.

SuSE PPC 7.1 bundles kernels 2.4.2 and 2.2.18. When I tried installing off 
of 2.2.18, the installer came up just fine, so I decided to install 2.2.18 
and since then, everything's been good. Well, not good exactly... my enet 
cards aren't turning on using their X configuration app, but I'm going to 
try it manually when I get the chance. It is able to recognize my onboard 
enet and the PCI card that I had bought for a PC and wasn't recognized by 
the MacOS; I was pretty happy about that, especially since it's 
10/100baseT. 

SuSE PPC 7.3 just came out a couple days ago. It uses 2.4.12. I don't 
think I'm going to be in any hurry to upgrade. I want to get my autobuild 
setup working first. Then we'll see. 2.4 has better support for USB, and I 
do have a USB card, but no USB peripherals as of yet, and I'm a little 
leery of 2.4.X right now, based on the problems I had with 2.4.2 and all 
the other reported problems with 2.4.X. I think I'll wait till 2.4.20 or 
so. Who the hell changes a VM system completely and calls it a bug fix?



Jon
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