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The 10 Best PowerPC Linux Distros - 2023

Heh. The Debian sid screenshot is mine from a few years ago of my Mac mini G4.

AlixSPQR said:
Are any of these modern up-to-date and supported for the future?
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Most listed are. Any of the Debian based distros like Debian sid, fienix and mintppc are. Adelie was also just updated. Gentoo is still supported if you have a year to waste compiling everything from source. Also the archppc and bonslack distros still look to be up to date. Void and Ubuntu are no longer supported however.
 
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T2-sde is another one that didn't appear on that list, but it's not an easy one to set up. More like a 'built it yourself' style of thing.

Seems to be fairly current though
 
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mortlocli said:
Just came across this article, that was updated 23 Oct 2023:

www.pcwdld.com

10 Best PowerPC Linux Distros for 2025 with Installation Links!

We go through the best PowerPC Linux distros, their latest working versions, where to find them, and installation links.
www.pcwdld.com www.pcwdld.com

Glad to see MintPPC listed there.
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It is nice update. I have only one addendum.
From my point of view the best old disto of Debian is 8 - Jessie. Not 6 or 7.
Debian 8 has only one issue - Mesa for powerpc bigendian is buggy.
But it has easy workaround: simply to copy r300.dri.so ( or gfx driver according to your card ) from Debian 7 to your Debian 8 installation.
 
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Is Adelie install media even bootable? Last time I tried their beta5 the ppc64 is unbootable on a G5 quad and their ppc is unbootable on my G3/G4 computers... tried every combination of "flavor" and "desktop" and ended up with a pile of useless disks.
 
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mortlocli said:
T2-sde is another one that didn't appear on that list, but it's not an easy one to set up. More like a 'built it yourself' style of thing.

Seems to be fairly current though
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T2-SDE is very current, René Rebe devotes much of his spare time maintaining Linux support for older architectures, including PowerPC and PowerPC64. The more people that use it and support his efforts, the greater incentive he will have to polish it for the layman. He streams his efforts on YouTube if anyone is interested in following along. He also offers bounties to any other developers that want to help contribute bug fixes and patches.


T2 Package Manager and Linux Distribution

t2sde.org t2sde.org
 
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ChrisCharman said:
T2-SDE is very current, René Rebe devotes much of his spare time maintaining Linux support for older architectures, including PowerPC and PowerPC64. The more people that use it and support his efforts, the greater incentive he will have to polish it for the layman. He streams his efforts on YouTube if anyone is interested in following along. He also offers bounties to any other developers that want to help contribute bug fixes and patches.


T2 Package Manager and Linux Distribution

t2sde.org t2sde.org
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Ta very much for that info, Chris. I didn't think to check help on YouTube - Doh!!!

I kinda like the 'flying by the seat of ya pants' kinda feel of T2

Bit like FreeBSD
 
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mortlocli said:
Ta very much for that info, Chris. I didn't think to check help on YouTube - Doh!!!

I kinda like the 'flying by the seat of ya pants' kinda feel of T2

Bit like FreeBSD
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No problem. The T2-SDE build system supports cross-compilation as well as other ‘UNIX-like’ kernels such as the BSDs.
 
ChrisCharman said:
No problem. The T2-SDE build system supports cross-compilation as well as other ‘UNIX-like’ kernels such as the BSDs.
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I recall reading a little about that in their documentation- they mentioned other systems such as haiku. I thought to get a 'bare bones' type system such as haiku or tiny core would be great on my iBook ..and would be a good way to go. But my skills and know how keep hitting walls.

I think with various older (unsupported) models of PPC based machines there are different traps or particular issues in setting up a system ..depending on wot Mac you've got.

I did wonder within the macrumors PPC community we could develop groupings based on models ie iMacs, iBooks, etc that focused on 'How To's' on steps to put together systems that work on ones PPC.

It's not 'building a system from scratch', nor is it a system 'ready to go straight outta the box' - but a DIY somewhere in between kinda thing.
 
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