PowerPC still lives in Fedora
For the 0.5 percent of the folks who to which this tidbit pertains — that would be the Linux-on-PowerPC crowd . . . er, group . . . er, trio — the Fedora Project released the alpha version of its Fedora 17 PowerPC version. The release notes are here.
Many long-time readers of this blog who are not family (and even those who are) know that I’ve always had a soft spot for older Macintosh hardware, and those of you who admit to knowing me for a long time know that I’ve had several PowerPC machines running various distros, mostly Debian and Fedora, but a couple of OpenSUSE boxes, too (while it lasted, the G4 tower ran great on OpenSUSE’s PPC version before they gave it the heave-ho). I even mourned briefly against the demise of the PowerPC architecture, but I understand that if 0.5 percent of the Linux community is using a particular architecture, it’s a good idea to probably put resources elsewhere.
So it became Debian who kept the flame alive, until Fedora picked it up again. Thanks, Fedora, and now I’ll try this on the eMac that’s collecting dust in the corner.
(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and develops business software at Redwood Digital Research, a consultancy that provides FOSS solutions in the small business and home office environment.)
Larry the Free Software Guy is still trying to jump start zombies.
Maybe some of your old iron will end up like this:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57411871-1/crave-visits-the-cray-1-a-true-museum-piece/?tag=txt;title
I can beat that: There’s a place up the road on Highway 9 about six miles from here called the Digibarn, where Bruce Damer has collected a lot of hardware. He’s got a Cray-1. I’ve been in it.
You really feel the relative slowness of Fedora vs. Debian on an old PowerPC Mac. At least I did on a G4.
Well, that’s interesting. I hadn’t noticed much of a difference in the past, and the only benchmark I have is Debian vs. Fedora on G3 (a pair of indigo iMacs — I can’t remember what version of Debian but it was Fedora 9 PPC).
I really loved YellowDog Linux. Had it running on a PowerMac 8500 with a dual 604e card in 2003. I just refused to let my trusty old grrrrl fade away. I tried Ubuntu 8.04(?) on my PowerBook G4, but WOW that turkey ran hot and would shut down for fear of becoming a pile of liquid aluminum goo. So I guess that’s all of us then
peace,
sean
I really loved YellowDog Linux. Had it running on a PowerMac 8500 with a dual 604e card in 2003. I just refused to let my trusty old grrrrl fade away. I tried Ubuntu 8.04(?) on my PowerBook G4, but WOW that turkey ran hot and would shut down for fear of becoming a pile of liquid aluminum goo. So I guess that’s all of us then