Looking for Linux for Macintosh

Networking/Security Forums -> Macintosh

Author: capiLocation: Portugal PostPosted: Wed Feb 25, 2004 7:31 pm    Post subject: Looking for Linux for Macintosh
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Ok, I have a friend that owns a (relatively old, I believe) Mac, mainly used by his 8-11 year old kids to play the odd game, do some drawings, basically learn about computers. He has no computer experience whatsoever and the closest I've dealt with to Mac OS was Amiga Workbench back in the days of Amiga 500 Laughing

I was looking to see if there's such a thing as a Linux port for the Mac, since I have a little bit more experience with that, also since most distros have a bunch of cool little games that the kids would enjoy. I've googled a bit and came up with a couple of sites:
Linux/mac86k
MkLinux
Yellow Dog Linux

Now, right now I don't know exactly what model my friend's Mac is - I never really looked much at it for any labels or details (for all I know the thing might have "PowerMac blabla" written in big letters on the box, but I never really looked). I'll of course try to find out more when I'm at his house again, which will probably be next week. FWIW, I do remember it runs MacOS 8.6, it's got a CD-ROM and it's got a mid-sized tower plus a monitor (as in, they're separate, not like that cute pink Mac where it's all bundled up inside the monitor box).

In the mantime, I was wondering if perhaps this information might be enough for a more avid Mac user to recognize which model this was, and if so, if anyone had any experience with Linux and Mac so that they might recommend me a very user friendly distro for this model, preferrably one that I could just burn to a CD and boot from there - I'd like to avoid having to implement dual boot on a system that I know very little about. I'm not looking for anything especially powerful/customizable, just something nice and easy that has a bunch of little games and the likes for the kids (heck, MandrakeMove would be nice enough, but AFAIK it's only available for Intel x86).

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate the help... Smile

Author: UziMonkey PostPosted: Wed Feb 25, 2004 7:41 pm    Post subject:
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I fail to see a good reason to put Linux on this machine (besides the "why not" reason). Let the kids use their machine, do they need Linux to play the odd game and draw a few pictures?

Author: capiLocation: Portugal PostPosted: Wed Feb 25, 2004 7:49 pm    Post subject:
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Mainly as a way of giving them more things to play with (and obviously learn about). There are Linux distros with a hand full of little games such as Asteroids, etc (Mandrake has a bunch of nice ones), I'd just like to see if there's something similar for them to use, if only so they'd have more games to choose from Smile

Also, this is their only household computer - Linux usually has good office applications for writing the odd letter or editing some family photos etc. Of course I'm sure there's a huge range of great software of that kind for MacOS, but besides it being a bit harder to obtain, I'm really not very familiar with the Mac to be installing new stuff on their comp, lest something went wrong.

If they had a live CD Linux, the kids could use it to play more games and, since Linux distros usually have some form of "more PC like" office apps, it would be easier for the whole household to use it for such tasks without coaching and also for the kids to get accustomed to the "PC world" out there for when they get older (not saying PCs are better or worst, just a bit more widespread).

Author: EricTheBald PostPosted: Wed Feb 25, 2004 11:03 pm    Post subject:
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YDL is not supported on Old World Macs, or at least it wasn't when I tried it a couple of years ago.

I got it to work, the biggest problem being that I had to make some guesses at what argument would make the video card in my Wallstreet PB work, and although I eventually got it right I still had to use OS9 to boot with. Or rather, I used.... IIRC... BootX, but it needed to run in OS9 to work.

Frankly, it all seemed like too much effort for not enough payoff.

Author: ComputerlinkLocation: Bayern PostPosted: Wed Aug 25, 2004 8:33 pm    Post subject:
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Mandrake Linux => mandrake.com

Wink

Author: cjiLocation: Boston PostPosted: Wed Oct 06, 2004 3:46 pm    Post subject:
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Ubuntu Linux has been in the news a lot lately as an easy to use but powerful distro (brought to you by the guys from Debian) - and there's a PPC version - http://ubuntulinux.org/

Check it out.

Author: WayOutWestLocation: Lexinton, KY PostPosted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 4:45 am    Post subject:
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cji wrote:
Ubuntu Linux has been in the news a lot lately as an easy to use but powerful distro (brought to you by the guys from Debian) - and there's a PPC version - http://ubuntulinux.org/

Check it out.


although i havent tired the PPC version,(probably the same though), i run it on a 1ghz x86 machine and its a great distro and is my main distro so far. very user intuatiave, not like ARCH or Gentoo or Slackware, with a straight forward installer its great. I recommend it highlly

os: its not from the guys who made Debian, its just Debian based i.e. it uses apt-get and debian packages.

Author: xcfxLocation: Puerto Rico PostPosted: Mon Nov 22, 2004 3:11 am    Post subject:
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Gentoo Linux has a Live CD for PowerPC; www.gentoo.org
If I'm correct the Fedora project is building a PowerPC port of their Fedora distribution.

ps: Gentoo defenetly isn't friendly to isntall but when you finally have it set up, the management is very very easy.

Author: capiLocation: Portugal PostPosted: Mon Nov 22, 2004 3:47 am    Post subject:
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Oh, wow, there've been quite some replies here. I totally forgot to check this thread Embarassed

Well, I will be looking into all the suggestions made above, thanks for all the input.

By the way, further information that I did not specify in the original post. The computer model is the following:
PowerPC
Macintosh Performa 6400/200

That's as much as I got from the case. Also, it runs MacOS 8.6.

My intention, in case I did not make it clear above, would be to get a Linux LiveCD to run on this computer. I'd be more comfortable with a LiveCD at least at first as my knowledge of the Mac world is extremely limited and I would not like to risk breaking it by installing anything on the hard drive (as in breaking the existing OS or making it non-bootable altogether).

Also, the kind of distro I was looking for was something meant for the non-experienced user. I mean, that box isn't going to be used to do any development, or even have Internet access for that matter. It's just to be used by a couple of young children, basically my aim was to get them something that had some games they could play (as the original thing has like one game if anything). That and some Office stuff would be nice of course, for their household needs (the odd letter and stuff like that). No special needs beyond that, they are not advanced computer users.

I will look into the LiveCDs mentioned above, thanks for the suggestions. Hopefully some of those will have a few games and apps that they might use.



Networking/Security Forums -> Macintosh


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