Linux on and Oldworld Mac.


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Thread: Linux on and Oldworld Mac.

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
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    Manchester, England
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    Linux on and Oldworld Mac.

    Right, I currently have several Mac's I currently use.

    One of which is a Power Macintosh 7200/90, and its currently running Mac OS 8.6 and being used as a Web/File Server, which is good and stable but getting long in the tooth and nothing supports it anymore after all it was released in 1999.

    So I am wondering if anyone on here has ever installed Linux onto a PowerPC machine. Or if they know of any Linux distro that can be installed onto an OldWorld Mac with a Graphical install with a lowish amount of memory? Something like the equivilent of Vector Linux on the x86 platform?

    Specs of the Machine are as follows: 90Mhz PowerPC 601 CPU, 64Mb FPRAM, 10Gb SCSI HD, ATi Rage Pro 16Mb GFX Card.

    Ta

    Craig
    Main Computer: Apple eMac 1Ghz PowerPC G4, 512Mb RAM, 80Gb HDD, Superdrive, ATi Radeon 7500, Mac OSX 10.4.5 Tiger.

    Apple Power Macintosh Beige G3, 266MHz PowerPC G3 CPU, 128Mb SDRAM, 10Gb ATA HDD, 2mb ATi Rage Graphics Card, Mac OS 9.2.2 and Yellow Dog Linux 3.0.1 Sirius.

    Registered Linux user number 314012

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Oct 2002
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    Illinois
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    you will need a very small install of macos 8 will be fine, and as minimal as possible to run a program called BootX for you, then i would just install debian, if its that low on specs and is used as a server you really have no need to waste memory on a graphical environment

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jul 2005
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    180
    My Old PowerPC 2600/?? was able to run a Redhat based system, and Windowmaker for a desktop. It ran fairly well actually. I got it on the internet with mozilla, and got it to play some mp3s with XMMS. If I can get it to work on a 2600, your 7200 should do fine. Go read up, and see if there are any howtos for that model of Mac. The hardest part I had with getting Linux on a Mac was finding someone with the Mac utilities to get the file system made

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jul 2002
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    Brockville, Ontario, Canada
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    I have no experience with Macs or Yellow Dog Linux. That said, I THINK Yellow Dog Linux is one of the few, classic PowerMac distros. It appears that Oregon State still has version 2.3 available, which (from what I can see) was a mid-2002 release - a close vintage to your hardware. The site also seems to have updates for at least some packages.

    ftp://ftp.oregonstate.edu/pub/ydl/
    http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/resour..._mirrors.shtml

    Good luck,
    Rick D.

  5. #5
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    wouldnt that defeat the purpose of upgrading to linux, why run old software

  6. #6
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    Apr 2001
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    Nashville, TN
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    Debian works just fine on that platform, and it's updated
    Registered Linux user #230403! Since March 2001! YAY.

    Try doing a forum search or a google search before asking a question. And please don't use HELP! in the topic of your post... it's so lame... Please don't PM me for help-- post a question in the forum instead.

  7. #7
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    /me is planning a Debian install on an old 8500/180 that I've been given I'll let you know how it goes.
    mrBen "Carpe Aptenodytes"

    Linux User #216794

    My blog page

    3rd year running - get yourself to LugRadio Live 7th-8th July 2007, Wolverhampton, UK. The premier FLOSS community event.

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by mrBen
    /me is planning a Debian install on an old 8500/180 that I've been given I'll let you know how it goes.
    I attempted to do that on a very similar machine but never succeeded. Partly because I think I had a damaged install of OS 8 and then couldn't get it to boot from the cd, adn well now box is in pieces:P

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
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    Manchester, England
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    I decided to give up on the install on the Power Mac 7200/90, it was just too old to run anything better than OS 9 even then it was slow.

    I've now turned my attention to a Power Mac G3 266Mhz, recently purchased on eBay for 99p or $1.70.

    I'm now currently faffing about to get YDL running on it aswell as Mac OS X 10.2 .
    Main Computer: Apple eMac 1Ghz PowerPC G4, 512Mb RAM, 80Gb HDD, Superdrive, ATi Radeon 7500, Mac OSX 10.4.5 Tiger.

    Apple Power Macintosh Beige G3, 266MHz PowerPC G3 CPU, 128Mb SDRAM, 10Gb ATA HDD, 2mb ATi Rage Graphics Card, Mac OS 9.2.2 and Yellow Dog Linux 3.0.1 Sirius.

    Registered Linux user number 314012

  10. #10
    Join Date
    Nov 2003
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    Phoenix, AZ, USA
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    i remember back when i was hunting around for a distro to use on my imac G233, i ran into debian ppc. it had some mighty useful documentation on how to install on new and old world macs

    http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/

    btw: if you imac 266 anything like my imac 233, then you're going to have a little difficulty getting your xserver to work if you use debian ppc. what i did was google someone else's xorg.config file and used it.

    i ended up using fedora core 4 ppc because of the awesome hardware detection and setup for the new world macs.
    BEHOLD!!! MY AWESOME HUMILITY!
    Ex Linux, Scientia

    i use:
    centos 5.2 on 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 (filer/print server)
    ubuntu 8.10 on 1.6 GHz Celeron M (personal laptop)

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