OS X and Linux or Unix

I am thinking about purchasing a PowerBook and I have a couple of questions:
1 - Can I wipe it clean and install Linux?

2 - If I kept it the way it is can I have a GUI interface using the Unix system? Does it have something similar to Gnome?

3 - Can I have a boot mannager for multiple OSs?

4 - I am familiar with Red Hat. Do I need to purchase a special version of it or will it install from the same CD as the Intel?

5 - Anyone out there using mostly Unix or Linux on a PowerBook?

6 - and finally is there a book that it will help me with using primarily Unix with a PowerBook.


Thanks,

1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. Yes you can, but I forgot what they are called. The documentation for the distro should tell you though.
4. I'm not sure if RedHat has a PPC version, but there is Yellow Dog, which is based off of RedHat.
5. Not I.
6. Not sure.

There are probably people using Unix quite a bit on their PB cuz it is what the OS is built on.

I use Unix on my iMac if that says anything. And if you where good with Linux, you could just use the underlying Unix, and have no trouble at all.

And any Unix book out there should have all the command references you need. If you want to know if there is a special APPLE only thing in a command just go into the manuals and all the special Apple commands are their.

As l0cke said you can, but why would you want to? OS X is a very powerful, full featured commercial Unix distribution. My favorite anyway, though I am using Suse Pro and FreeBSD on the PC right now and I've played with many more.

Take some time to get to know the OS before you shun it completely and I'm sure you'll get on very well. For instance, it takes about an hour to set up a Web host complete with PHP, MySQL and CGI. With FTP and SSH access if you want it .

Take care,

Mark.

I have a powerbook and tried Yellow Dog and Mandrake (Redhat doesn't have PPC). Both were slow and painful, with sparse support. Like someone said of Linux on PPC, "It's a niche in a niche".

Anyway, OSX rocks and has X11, bash, python, etc. It's a great console machine for managing Linux/Solaris servers. You could dual boot, however, using Apple's disk partioning tool.

This is certainly possible. It could be done straight away, although I urge you to consider a dual boot. If you have never owned a computer running OS X you may be taking it for granted.

My experience, for what it's worth, was on a G5 dual processor. I have had nothing but difficulty in trying to get Gentoo Linux on it in the first partition of the first hard drive. I had to reinstall OS X on it, but that was no problem. As I have two hard drives I also kept all my programs in the transition.

While it is feasible to run Gentoo, it is immature for a G5 system. It has no sound support, and it must be done with a working internet connection. The quickest way that it can be done takes about 3 hours. So set an entire evening aside. You'll need <a href="http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/index.xml"target="_blank">a handbook</a> to work from for Gentoo, although I'm led to believe that Yellow Dog Linux is easy to get installed. I have a copy of YDL 3, but this does not have dual processor support, so it is no good for my architecture. From what I've heard, YDL 4, which does work with G5 architecture, has a <i>lot</i> of bugs as it was rushed. Neither Gentoo or YDL has proper sound support.

Other options include Debian (codenamed Woody) and Mandrake.

There are mailing lists which you should join on the different distributions' websites, also there are a lot of irc channels which will be invaluable if you want to dip into their pools of knowledge.

I wish you better luck than I had.

Finally, don't forget there's an OS X version of Portage, Gentoo's revolutionary update system. I'm sure you'll find a lot of details <a href="http://www.google.ie/search?q=OS+X+portage&sourceid=mozilla-search&start=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial"target="_blank">here</a>. This runs within OS X and you get to run

# sudo update world

right in OS X :-D

Furthermore, there is a program you will want called <a href="http://fink.sourceforge.net/"target="_blank">Fink</a> which will download and I think compile a lot of open source software for you also.

I **hate** forums that ignore HTML. Why do they exist!! Is it something I'm doing wrong or do I have to use childish BBCode?

First off, I really enjoyed your post. It really sucks that some *nix doesn't put much consideration into running on the PPC.

Anyway, DevShed like most forums I've used does have HTML turned off; for some very good reasons. For example, it stops people including a lot of complex HTML in there posts, makes the forums look much tidier, stops people using text which is hard to read etc.

That said I have to agree that I find BBCode a little annoying at times to say the least .

Mark.

I'll add some comments for Debian Woody PPC: I've got it up and running on an old G3. Not too many packages for it, but apt-get is fantastic. Didn't bother trying to get X or anything running, but I can now use the machine to run some scientific software I use a lot.