Good edit, but I made it slightly neater by removing the (or macOS) from the Mac OS operating systems header as it is rather irrelevant to the PowerPC versions of Mac OS, since the new name has only been around for a year, long after the PowerPC years. And I made the notice about Ubuntu being dropped on PPC smaller, but made it red to catch attention.
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Operating Systems for PowerPC Macs
- Thread starter AmazingHenry
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Is MorphOS a linux distro? Because I don't really think it belongs in a category all by itself... MorphOS is a single OS, not a group of OSes.
No, not even close. It roots back to the Commodore Amiga and is definitely its own thing.
I think you just single-postedly insulted both MorphOS users and Linux hippies, er, users. Yeah, users....
@Lastic
Hi... Hope my mail found you well, and as an update to all those interested in installing AOSC OS on their PowerPC Macs, I will be around to try and help you guys. I'm currently in contact with Lastic and hopefully that could help him with the installation.
[doublepost=1499328166][/doublepost]Well, I thought I'd share what I sent to him anyways.
(Beware... I could be a bit wordy)
... We are having issue with keeping up with the development - as the only owner of a development-capable machine (PowerMac G5 Quad in this case, let's face it, there's little point compiling packages on an iBook or an emulator - and the G5 is simply too heavy to carry on a plane back home), I'm solely responsible for this port of AOSC OS. However, leaving the United States for the summer (from college) means that I would not have the chance to access that machine, and hence no updates could be made to the port. Just wanted to make this point clear first of all - but yes, this port will continue to be worked on as I return to school.
Currently AOSC OS is usable on both PPC and PPC64 platforms and tested on my (and couple of my friends') iBook G4 and PowerMac G5 - however not without their own shares of issues...
- Firefox is not exactly reliable on PPC64 - I'm currently relying on Pale Moon. There isn't much hope of newer Firefox versions being ported onto this platform either - as they moved to the Little Endian only Skia library - which I can't really see myself porting to big endian.
- Mesa/OpenGL applications could show wrong colours on these platforms as the RGBA serial could not be translated correctly as it currently stands - and this will be fixed soon.
- If you are running an ATi-based Mac, you could very well be limited to 2D acceleration... The upstream has very little interest in fixing it.
- Kernel updates will not be as frequent as other ports, sometimes newer version simply won't boot (without any configuration changes).
- And as stated above, I could not maintain these two ports until I return to school - which will be September. But for the meanwhile I can try my best with helping you and your friends - big fan of PowerPC Macs (and personal devices of this architecture in general) myself, I do hope to keep them running.
But all that said if you want to install AOSC OS, please go on to https://github.com/AOSC-Dev/aosc-os/wiki and check the PowerPC installation documentation there first. If you needed any additional help please feel free to contact me.
P.S. I do check mail daily, but often once a day... If you needed urgent help, please hop onto our IRC channel at #aosc and @JeffBai.
P.P.S. Please by all means speak English in our IRC channel, we will realize that you are a foreigner and that is totally fine - most of us are proficient with English. As for how to use it, grab a copy of XChat and it should be straight forward enough - if not, go to our homepage and click on the "IRC Channel" link.
P.P.P.S. I would recommend running LXDE/XFCE on G4s and LXDE/XFCE/MATE on G5s - don't even try KDE and GNOME, not worth the time - even though they are available for download from the repository.
Hi... Hope my mail found you well, and as an update to all those interested in installing AOSC OS on their PowerPC Macs, I will be around to try and help you guys. I'm currently in contact with Lastic and hopefully that could help him with the installation.
[doublepost=1499328166][/doublepost]Well, I thought I'd share what I sent to him anyways.
(Beware... I could be a bit wordy)
... We are having issue with keeping up with the development - as the only owner of a development-capable machine (PowerMac G5 Quad in this case, let's face it, there's little point compiling packages on an iBook or an emulator - and the G5 is simply too heavy to carry on a plane back home), I'm solely responsible for this port of AOSC OS. However, leaving the United States for the summer (from college) means that I would not have the chance to access that machine, and hence no updates could be made to the port. Just wanted to make this point clear first of all - but yes, this port will continue to be worked on as I return to school.
Currently AOSC OS is usable on both PPC and PPC64 platforms and tested on my (and couple of my friends') iBook G4 and PowerMac G5 - however not without their own shares of issues...
- Firefox is not exactly reliable on PPC64 - I'm currently relying on Pale Moon. There isn't much hope of newer Firefox versions being ported onto this platform either - as they moved to the Little Endian only Skia library - which I can't really see myself porting to big endian.
- Mesa/OpenGL applications could show wrong colours on these platforms as the RGBA serial could not be translated correctly as it currently stands - and this will be fixed soon.
- If you are running an ATi-based Mac, you could very well be limited to 2D acceleration... The upstream has very little interest in fixing it.
- Kernel updates will not be as frequent as other ports, sometimes newer version simply won't boot (without any configuration changes).
- And as stated above, I could not maintain these two ports until I return to school - which will be September. But for the meanwhile I can try my best with helping you and your friends - big fan of PowerPC Macs (and personal devices of this architecture in general) myself, I do hope to keep them running.
But all that said if you want to install AOSC OS, please go on to https://github.com/AOSC-Dev/aosc-os/wiki and check the PowerPC installation documentation there first. If you needed any additional help please feel free to contact me.
P.S. I do check mail daily, but often once a day... If you needed urgent help, please hop onto our IRC channel at #aosc and @JeffBai.
P.P.S. Please by all means speak English in our IRC channel, we will realize that you are a foreigner and that is totally fine - most of us are proficient with English. As for how to use it, grab a copy of XChat and it should be straight forward enough - if not, go to our homepage and click on the "IRC Channel" link.
P.P.P.S. I would recommend running LXDE/XFCE on G4s and LXDE/XFCE/MATE on G5s - don't even try KDE and GNOME, not worth the time - even though they are available for download from the repository.
@JeffBai
First and foremost a big thank you for wanting to help, had I known that you were already a forum member I wouldn't have tried to reach you at all kind of email addresses
I've got 2 x 12" Powerbook G4's 1,5 Ghz, the one with the SSD runs Leopard and is my main PPC machine.
The other has a HDD and is the one who ran so warm during untarring the image that it shutdown, fan had been blazing for like 30 minutes.
Also got a PowerMac G5 but I'm messing with Fedora 25 Server on it currently.
Since we are in different timezones, I suggest I check wether you're online at IRC
( my first IRC experience altough I'm a computer user from back in the 8086 CP/M days )
or otherwise mail you via gmail.
My goal is to get a working install which I can then document in layman terms so others on the forum might benefit .
I will create a seperate thread for this so we don't clutter this one.
In light of the current PPC Only Challenge , I thought this was a good moment for me to continue debugging.
I understand you're limited in resources and time , so no pressure, I have patience .
Just the fact that you and your colleagues at least still have an interest in PPC is a blessing to this forum.
First and foremost a big thank you for wanting to help, had I known that you were already a forum member I wouldn't have tried to reach you at all kind of email addresses
I've got 2 x 12" Powerbook G4's 1,5 Ghz, the one with the SSD runs Leopard and is my main PPC machine.
The other has a HDD and is the one who ran so warm during untarring the image that it shutdown, fan had been blazing for like 30 minutes.
Also got a PowerMac G5 but I'm messing with Fedora 25 Server on it currently.
Since we are in different timezones, I suggest I check wether you're online at IRC
( my first IRC experience altough I'm a computer user from back in the 8086 CP/M days )
or otherwise mail you via gmail.
My goal is to get a working install which I can then document in layman terms so others on the forum might benefit .
I will create a seperate thread for this so we don't clutter this one.
In light of the current PPC Only Challenge , I thought this was a good moment for me to continue debugging.
I understand you're limited in resources and time , so no pressure, I have patience .
Just the fact that you and your colleagues at least still have an interest in PPC is a blessing to this forum.
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Out of all those Linux distros, what do you guys recommend for my iMac G4 700MHz? Definitely a lightweight, minimal distro would be the best as it's only 700MHz. And MorphOS definitely isn't for me, I tried the trial.
Also, I'm new to Linux, and I've never really used it before. A distro that's not too complicated would be nice.
Also, I'm new to Linux, and I've never really used it before. A distro that's not too complicated would be nice.
Out of all those Linux distros, what do you guys recommend for my iMac G4 700MHz? Definitely a lightweight, minimal distro would be the best as it's only 700MHz. And MorphOS definitely isn't for me, I tried the trial.
Also, I'm new to Linux, and I've never really used it before. A distro that's not too complicated would be nice.
Lubuntu.
That's what I'm going to do on my 800MHz iMac G4 and Power Mac G5. Reports say it's less resource intensive than Mint.
I would recommend 12.04 (Precise Pangolin) for you, since yours is a 700 MHz from 2002.
I’d correct the “requires G4” to “G4 867 or faster” , this way members know their (for example)400mhz G4 can’t boot Leopard natively.
EDIT: Mobile view didn't show the wiki symbol, edited.
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Ok. Just keep in mind that Leopard can boot on any G4, so perhaps it's best to say that alongside the official requirement.
To assist developers and general legacy PowerPC Mac OS support, I think it would be interesting to see the Mac OS X / Mac OS 9 category split up such as;
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah to 10.2 Jaguar
Mac OS 9.0 - 9.2.2
Mac OS 8.0 - 8.6
System 7.5 - 7.6.1
Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah to 10.2 Jaguar
Mac OS 9.0 - 9.2.2
Mac OS 8.0 - 8.6
System 7.5 - 7.6.1
Also only some parts of it is Open Source. They also suck as they don't allow you to transfer your accounts cross devices like Windows does and even Linspire! On top of that you have to install the OS to get the program to buy it? That means I can't just have some one buy it for me as a gift for my birthday!
@JeffBai
First and foremost a big thank you for wanting to help, had I known that you were already a forum member I wouldn't have tried to reach you at all kind of email addresses
I've got 2 x 12" Powerbook G4's 1,5 Ghz, the one with the SSD runs Leopard and is my main PPC machine.
The other has a HDD and is the one who ran so warm during untarring the image that it shutdown, fan had been blazing for like 30 minutes.
Also got a PowerMac G5 but I'm messing with Fedora 25 Server on it currently.
Since we are in different timezones, I suggest I check wether you're online at IRC
( my first IRC experience altough I'm a computer user from back in the 8086 CP/M days )
or otherwise mail you via gmail.
My goal is to get a working install which I can then document in layman terms so others on the forum might benefit .
I will create a seperate thread for this so we don't clutter this one.
In light of the current PPC Only Challenge , I thought this was a good moment for me to continue debugging.
I understand you're limited in resources and time , so no pressure, I have patience .
Just the fact that you and your colleagues at least still have an interest in PPC is a blessing to this forum.
I am downloading it right now. There seems to be no images on the site any more. According to the web sites own documentation there should be live CD's. It then mentions that the tar files are universal, but then contridicts this by saying they are just the root file system? On top of that it is a Chinese distro in English and with things like Deepin and Kylin brings in questions, like if the distro is safe to use with the war going on. AT least with Deepin they have are fully up front about it. I am just concerend if it is a Red Star 2 in arch cloaths. You say you need a G5, why do you need that computer? Can't you guys just use the Suse build service as it also supports PowerPC according to Bryan Lunduke from the Suse Board? Also can't you just buy and Amiga X1000 and run it in Be mode? There are also the G5 servers too. Also you could use a POWER 5,6, or 7 server to compile the code on. It also seems no one else has realy heard of this distro. That bring up the question of why. There is a wikipida page, but is only in what is I think short hand Manderin and that is weird as most distros get coverage. Even Phenoix OS has been covered by the main linux press........Just opened the tar file, it is a root file system. I hope I am not coming off rude as I only got text.
I think that PPC should be supported. I don't hate X86, I HATE what it has done and stands for. It stands for Intel takeing over the PC industry and contoling every one like little puppets. I hate IME and I hate all the onboard DRM for there stupid 4k crap. I don't use 1080p let alone 4k because Blu-rays suck with there DRM! I hate how Intel kills every competitor with law suits or illegal monopolistic practices! I hate how ugly computers have gotten. I hate being forced off of the hardware I payed for just like Windows does! Firefox should not treat it's users like crap, nether should VLC. At least there is NetBSD that does not abuse there users. The future is not Linux it is NetBSD. EVen FreeBSD 11 droped the Intel IA64 platform. At least in FreeBSD users can complain and be heard unlike the linux community that has been bought and paid for by Intel.
Well I just wanted to report on some other OS's I have tried on PowerPC. I just picked up another G5 system and dragged my eMac out of the attic to play with.
I am not trying to share the drive with OSX so I and doing a clean wipe and starting from scratch.
OpenBSD 6.2 works and installs with out drama. The CDrom iso is bootable. The installer sets up the partitions and the bootloader works fine.It seems rock solid. On the Duel CPU G5 it installs OK but there may be issues with the SATA driver OR my drive may be dying. Running 'blogbench' causes the drive to error out. It works fine on the G4 eMac. When I get some spare time I'll swap in a new HD and try again on the G5.
Both machines also have Radeon grafix and the driver has some sort of issue. I can lock out the radeon driver at boot and bypass. (boot -c, disable radeondrm, quit). I emailed in the dmesg of both machines with the report of the radeon driver hanging. I forgot to see if there is a closed source driver with 'fw_update'. The biggest drawback with OpenBSD on the G5 is that they only support 32bit so its kinda a waste on the G5.
NetBSD 7.1 is broken for PowerPC imo. You have to do some crazy stuff with the OSX disk utility and pdisk to get the drive setup. The install CDrom is not bootable. After all that the kernal panics on both machines. Has anyone done a fresh install from scratch lately?
FreeBSD
11.1 panics on the G5. I will try it on the eMac soon. I was really hoping it would run on the G5 since its a full 64bit OS.
EDIT:
FreeBSD 11.1 runs good on the G4 emac. The CD boots normally and the installer does fine setting up the partitions and making the HD bootable. The biggest drawback I see is they don't have pre-built binary packages like OpenBSD for the PPC. If your on a higher end machine thats not a big deal because the PORTS system is very good. You just let it build what you want from source. Its very simple. My little eMac has been working on "make xorg" for 24 hours now lol.
EDIT II:
Its been over 24 hours and the little eMac is still working on "make xorg". Its having to build tons of depends like perl, python, window managers, grafix libs, etc etc etc.
I did manage to get NetBSD 7.1 installed on my ibook. The installer is very much broken but with this how-to I was able to get it installed and booted.
https://wiki.netbsd.org/tutorials/how_to_install_netbsd_on_a_power_macintosh_g4___40__grey__41__/
Some details have changed since that was written but it gives you a good outline of what needs to be done.
I am not trying to share the drive with OSX so I and doing a clean wipe and starting from scratch.
OpenBSD 6.2 works and installs with out drama. The CDrom iso is bootable. The installer sets up the partitions and the bootloader works fine.It seems rock solid. On the Duel CPU G5 it installs OK but there may be issues with the SATA driver OR my drive may be dying. Running 'blogbench' causes the drive to error out. It works fine on the G4 eMac. When I get some spare time I'll swap in a new HD and try again on the G5.
Both machines also have Radeon grafix and the driver has some sort of issue. I can lock out the radeon driver at boot and bypass. (boot -c, disable radeondrm, quit). I emailed in the dmesg of both machines with the report of the radeon driver hanging. I forgot to see if there is a closed source driver with 'fw_update'. The biggest drawback with OpenBSD on the G5 is that they only support 32bit so its kinda a waste on the G5.
NetBSD 7.1 is broken for PowerPC imo. You have to do some crazy stuff with the OSX disk utility and pdisk to get the drive setup. The install CDrom is not bootable. After all that the kernal panics on both machines. Has anyone done a fresh install from scratch lately?
FreeBSD
11.1 panics on the G5. I will try it on the eMac soon. I was really hoping it would run on the G5 since its a full 64bit OS.
EDIT:
FreeBSD 11.1 runs good on the G4 emac. The CD boots normally and the installer does fine setting up the partitions and making the HD bootable. The biggest drawback I see is they don't have pre-built binary packages like OpenBSD for the PPC. If your on a higher end machine thats not a big deal because the PORTS system is very good. You just let it build what you want from source. Its very simple. My little eMac has been working on "make xorg" for 24 hours now lol.
EDIT II:
Its been over 24 hours and the little eMac is still working on "make xorg". Its having to build tons of depends like perl, python, window managers, grafix libs, etc etc etc.
I did manage to get NetBSD 7.1 installed on my ibook. The installer is very much broken but with this how-to I was able to get it installed and booted.
https://wiki.netbsd.org/tutorials/how_to_install_netbsd_on_a_power_macintosh_g4___40__grey__41__/
Some details have changed since that was written but it gives you a good outline of what needs to be done.
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Might be tempted to try NetBSD, I had previously installed FreeBSD and OpenBSD but how is the web browsing experience nowadays ?
I don't know. Looks like they have an up todate version of firefox if thats what you use.
http://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/www/firefox/README.html
Just remember your going to have to build it. Not complicated (just cd to the directory and type 'make install clean') but on a lower end machine its going to take a long time.
The little eMac was still building Xorg on FreeBSD when I left for work today. So thats 2+ days of compiling lol
At least Open and Net have X pre-built for you.
No worries, I have experience with compiling from source, been there with FreeBSD 9 on a PB G4 12" and still doing it in OS X 10.5.8.
What browsers are working on OpenBSD 6.2 , NetSurf , Xombrero , Midori ? Firefox is no longer in the packages on OpenBSD if I'm correct.
On x86 FF 56 runs fine. Its what I run.
I have not gotten OpenBSD running right on my G5 yet so I will prob never test FF on it. . I ran in to a new problem with CPU0 overheating now. I ordered a new battery for the mother board (was dead) and when that shows up I will try doing the fan calibration. (I hope thats all it is.. any tips? Air cooled DP). Once cooling is sorted this system will prob be put on the back burner until I get time to figure out why FreeBSD panics. I want to get something on there thats 64bit and can use all 8gigs of ram.
I just picked up a G4 macmini... so my next BSD project will be getting NetBSD running on that and replacing my boring x86 OpenBSD router.
Is boot failing in a kernal panic? This is the issue I had on my G4 macmini
http://gnats.netbsd.org/49907
So burned a CD with the ofwboot.elf in the root directory (its on the install CD under macppc/installation/)
The other issue I had (which I had last time i messed with a mini) is that "CD" and "HD" are flipped in openfirmware. So to boot the installer from the CDROM you do 'boot hd:,ofwboot.xcf netbsd.macppc'. To boot from the 4th partition of the HARDDRIVE using ofwboot off the CDROM its 'boot hd:,owfboot.elf cd:4,/netbsd"
The netbsd guide I linked above has open firmware commands that don't autoboot because out of the box it doesn't work so they had you type "boot" from openfirmwhere each time because autoboot would hang. I found another writeup that had the commands to get autoboot working. (The space in front of "screen" needs to be there.
setenv boot-command " screen" output boot
setenv auto-boot? true
reset-all
Also the display would blank out at boot. I found that if I use the DVI to VGA converter dongle and used a VGA monitor I didn't loose the screen.
Totally user friendly!
View attachment 734112
Is boot failing in a kernal panic? This is the issue I had on my G4 macmini
http://gnats.netbsd.org/49907
So burned a CD with the ofwboot.elf in the root directory (its on the install CD under macppc/installation/)
The other issue I had (which I had last time i messed with a mini) is that "CD" and "HD" are flipped in openfirmware. So to boot the installer from the CDROM you do 'boot hd:,ofwboot.xcf netbsd.macppc'. To boot from the 4th partition of the HARDDRIVE using ofwboot off the CDROM its 'boot hd:,owfboot.elf cd:4,/netbsd"
The netbsd guide I linked above has open firmware commands that don't autoboot because out of the box it doesn't work so they had you type "boot" from openfirmwhere each time because autoboot would hang. I found another writeup that had the commands to get autoboot working. (The space in front of "screen" needs to be there.
setenv boot-command " screen" output boot
setenv auto-boot? true
reset-all
Also the display would blank out at boot. I found that if I use the DVI to VGA converter dongle and used a VGA monitor I didn't loose the screen.
Totally user friendly!
I don't have any experience installing BSD's on a desktop machine, been installing OpenBSD since 5.6 on Powerbook G4's until 6.0 because there was no usable web-browser left and tangled with FreeBSD 9 once but indeed compiling everything from source just takes ages.
My NetBSD cdrom not booting is probably due to the machine , it has a tricky cdrom drive.
I followed all the steps last night until I had to hformat my HFS partition and realised I had entered length (size) 32 instead of 32m so I had a 16 Kb partition which is too small even for hformat.
Restarted the partitioning and set installs of NetBSD this morning on my iBook and have now left for work , to be continued this evening
and the NetBSD 7.1 saga continues
- PB G4 12" 1.5Ghz with tricky CDROM won't boot from the CD
- PB G4 12" 1.5Ghz with working CDROM won't boot neither so it must be something with OpenFirmware
- PB G4 12" 1.33Ghz boots, I could get the install done but once I wanted to boot into the kernel on the HD , it gave me a kernel panic
- iBook G4 12" install finished, tried to compile Firefox 56 from source and after 2 days of compiling and installing dependencies ... it failed. Firefox 52 seems to be in the binary packages but I can't get pkg_add to work yet to install it
So only the language packs were in the binaries of NetBSD 7.1 so I tried to compile Firefox 52 from source but it failed after 2 days ,also tried to compile Midori from source but failed also after 2 days so here ends my NetBSD saga on the iBook G4.
This is the same issue why I stopped using OpenBSD after 5.9-6.0 on PPC since the web-browsers were starting to get outdated.
This is the same issue why I stopped using OpenBSD after 5.9-6.0 on PPC since the web-browsers were starting to get outdated.