[conspire] (forw) Re: Linux Power PC question.

[Rick Moen]

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Fri, 2 Sep 2016 21:47:24 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: Jose Francisco Medeiros 
Subject: Re: Linux Power PC question.
Organization: If you lived here, you'd be $HOME already.

Quoting Jose Francisco Medeiros:

> I am on a Facebook group called Lowend Mac. Recently some one posted a
> video of 8- bit guy who stated he had trouble installing Linux on a
> Apple Powermac G5.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SqYMU81l8Y
> 
> Some one suggested RedHat Fedora, but it seems that it is being
> maintained for IBM PowerPC hardware, and I suggested Lubunu or Kubuntu
> for PPC or Yellow dog Linux.
> 
> https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community/wikis/home?lang=en#!/wiki/W51a7ffcf4dfd_4b40_9d82_446ebc23c550
> 
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCDownloads
> 
> 
> What is your opinion?

I haven't actually tried to solve this problem in well over a decade
because I haven't _seen_ a PowerPC machine in over a decade.

My very, very old, doubtless somewhat outdated text listing your choices
is here:  http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/maclinux.html#powermaclinux
It's telling that the ancillary sites linked from there have started to
fall off the Net completely, e.g., penguinppc.org was last fully
functional in 2015:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150224094308/http://penguinppc.org/

The page there that's most of interest is the distros list, the most
recent archived snapshot of which is here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150228051208/http://penguinppc.org/about-2/distributions/

Because the Apple G5 aka IBM PowerPC model 970 CPU (a variant of the IBM
POWER4) is a true 64-bit PowerPC architecture, the 64-bit distros list
is the most-relevant part.  Copying:


Distribution    Hardware           Special Notes
CRUX              G5 Mac, pSeries  CRUX/PPC
Debian            pSeries          Debian PPC
Fedora            G5 Mac, pSeries  Support dropped after Fedora 12
Gentoo            G5 Mac, pSeries	
Red Hat           iSeries, JS20, 
Enterprise Linux  pSeries

SUSE Linux        IBM POWER	
Enterprise Server  

The T2 Project    G5 Mac	
Yellow Dog Linux  G5 New World 
                  Mac, Cell	

Ubuntu            G5 Mac           No longer officially supported, but ISOs are 
                                   available.  There is a FAQ 
                                   (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCFAQ) and 
                                   forums
                                   (https://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=328).


The Ubuntu/Lubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu ISOs are now here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCDownloads
Lubuntu 14.04.5 LTS is your best bet, there.

I don't know what the 'best' PowerPC distro is at this very late date.
Taste surely has a lot to do with that.


Honestly, my _personal_ recommendation would be to give away the G5 to
someone wanting a hobby.  Seriously.  The entire PowerMac G5 series was 
discontinued for good in 2006, mostly because the performance per watt 
of power draw was too low and never going to improve.  So, this is s a
very old, slow computer -- somewhere between 10 and 13 years old, now --
with limited capabilities that draws a metric ton of power for very
little result.  Sell it for what it can draw on the open market, and get
a machine less ancient.

----- End forwarded message -----