Post #191,463
1/24/05 11:39:06 PM
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Debian on PPC?
Thinking about installing Linux on my old Power Mac G4 Dual. I'd prefer Debian (or a derivative) since I'm spoiled by APT. I mainly use it for burning CDs and I figure Linux can handle that just fine.
The Sparc install a couple of months back went very smoothly. So smoothly, in fact, that I thought I had done something wrong. So I'm psyched for this one.
Has anyone else here done this? If so, any gotchas? I have SCSI drives (Ultra160) and I'm a bit concerned about support. I also have a scanner attached to the external SCSI connector but that's more of a "nice to have", not a showstopper.
Tom Sinclair
"This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here."
-- The Bursar is a man under a *lot* of stress
(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)
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Post #191,467
1/24/05 11:59:43 PM
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The older the scanner, the better the odds of support
If it's an HP, the older ones have great support. But about the time Carly took over they went Windows binary-only. No support for the standard language they had been using for years. Newer ones get supported about as quickly as developers get the hardware to reverse-engineer the protocols.
===
Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
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Post #191,495
1/25/05 9:15:26 AM
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Debian on PPC. Older G4
Many, many, many Debian developers prefer the PPC arch for development. Some OSX/Debian Dual-booting. MOST just do straight Debian. The New Debian-Installer works wonderful for most PPC. The only ones that are really having trouble at all, are the really new hardware (less than 3 months old in release) and Old-World machines. Even then workarounds exist... and most things just work. As far as Scanners there are a coupla things to look at: [link|http://www.sane-project.org/|SANE Project Home] and specifically [link|http://www.sane-project.org/sane-supported-devices.html|Supported Devices] there are two branches Stable and CVS. Stable is barely used by any distro these days, CVS is where it is at. But, if your scanner is in Stable, but not "complete" it may be in CVS. In any case you should check out both versions. I believe Debian has 1.0.13... yep. They even say: Use the CVS lists instead if you need the links. So, your choice. I went with an older Epson USB 1660, it supposedly works just like the 1650. Haven't gotten it yet from the place I bought it from. It has a tracking number from UPS, being Economy-Ground... well when it arrives, it'll show up. P.S.: I have been following Debian-Boot for quite a while. It is amazing the difference in 1 year the progress D-I has made. Shoot the PA-RISC installer even is going to the 2.6.x kernels as default and removing the 2.4.x kernel from choices. Significantly, it appears other architectures may even follow this, but still leave 2.4 for only some arches. Two arches having a big problem is MIPS-EL and M68K, the wanna-build queues are not serviced by enough processors... they are BARELY keeping up (actually not), but there seems to be resistance to allowing more machines to access the wanna-build queues. (something about archive masters being pissy or something) -- [link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg], [link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey[link|http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134485&cid=11233230|"Microsoft Security" is an even better oxymoron than "Miltary Intelligence"] No matter how much Microsoft supporters whine about how Linux and other operating systems have just as many bugs as their operating systems do, the bottom line is that the serious, gut-wrenching problems happen on Windows, not on Linux, not on Mac OS. -- [link|http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1622086,00.asp|source]
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Post #191,516
1/25/05 10:42:03 AM
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Sounds good so far
The scanner is a Umax Astra 1220S. It's not supported under OS X so I have to use [link|http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/7610|Vuescan] to use it.
Even if it isn't supported, it's no big deal. I don't scan that much and USB scanners are pretty cheap these days if I really need it.
Okay, at this point I'm even more psyched.
Tom Sinclair
"This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here."
-- The Bursar is a man under a *lot* of stress
(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)
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Post #191,524
1/25/05 11:25:26 AM
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Vuescan...
Hmm they have a Linux port. Wonder if it'll compile / run under Linux.
Happy!...Happy!...Joy!...Joy!
-- [link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg], [link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey[link|http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134485&cid=11233230|"Microsoft Security" is an even better oxymoron than "Miltary Intelligence"] No matter how much Microsoft supporters whine about how Linux and other operating systems have just as many bugs as their operating systems do, the bottom line is that the serious, gut-wrenching problems happen on Windows, not on Linux, not on Mac OS. -- [link|http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1622086,00.asp|source]
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Post #192,167
1/28/05 10:17:37 PM
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Installing now
Very sweet. Grabbed the Sarge disc 1 and I'm assuming I was using the new, friendler installer. It reminded me a bit of Red Hat's text-based install program.
Pretty sweet. It looks like it sees all my hardware, including my scanner and FireWire CDRW burner.
It even loaded in a driver for my Airport card (802.11b). *Very* nice.
I'm currently downloading about 570 MB of packages to help me get set up, which should take an hour or so. Then I'll go in, look around and see what else needs doing.
So far, though, it looks really nice.
Tom Sinclair
"This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here."
-- The Bursar is a man under a *lot* of stress
(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)
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Post #192,179
1/29/05 12:00:44 AM
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Good. AND
Told Ya!
Neener... Neener!
-- [link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg], [link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey[link|http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134485&cid=11233230|"Microsoft Security" is an even better oxymoron than "Miltary Intelligence"] No matter how much Microsoft supporters whine about how Linux and other operating systems have just as many bugs as their operating systems do, the bottom line is that the serious, gut-wrenching problems happen on Windows, not on Linux, not on Mac OS. -- [link|http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1622086,00.asp|source]
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Post #192,188
1/29/05 2:02:47 AM
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Re: Good. AND
So far, not too many hiccups. I installed the SMP kernel and now both of my G4s show up. Much easier than expected.
Having some problems with video, though. For some reason
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86
is not recognizing my video card (32MB ATI Rage) so currently I get 800x600 max resolution.
I'm continuing to research this. I've found a spec sheet so I can focus my search a little better.
Tom Sinclair
"This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here."
-- The Bursar is a man under a *lot* of stress
(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)
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Post #192,226
1/29/05 3:40:52 PM
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Which Xserver are you using?
Some times it detects the Correct "Wrong" driver...
Might also be one of the Cards that needs to be hand-massaged to get it past 800x600.
Might just ask on debian-user, debian-powerpc or even debian-x. Also, don't forget to do an Installation Report for the PPC (and your Sparc too) as they need to see the problems as well as "good" results. Even Workarounds in the Install Reports are good to see.
-- [link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg], [link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey[link|http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134485&cid=11233230|"Microsoft Security" is an even better oxymoron than "Miltary Intelligence"] No matter how much Microsoft supporters whine about how Linux and other operating systems have just as many bugs as their operating systems do, the bottom line is that the serious, gut-wrenching problems happen on Windows, not on Linux, not on Mac OS. -- [link|http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1622086,00.asp|source]
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Post #192,240
1/29/05 8:56:24 PM
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Good point
If by 'which X server' you mean the version:
tsinclai@homeg4:~$ dpkg -s xserver-xfree86
Package: xserver-xfree86
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: x11
Installed-Size: 15628
Maintainer: Debian X Strike Force <debian-x@lists.debian.org>
Architecture: powerpc
Source: xfree86
Version: 4.3.0.dfsg.1-10
I'm already thinking I may have to hand-roll the config file, so I'm still searching.
Tom Sinclair
"This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here."
-- The Bursar is a man under a *lot* of stress
(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)
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Post #192,194
1/29/05 2:18:32 AM
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Re: Installing now
It even loaded in a driver for my Airport card (802.11b). *Very* nice. \r\n\r\n How the heck? I thought the Airport cards are all based on Broadcom chipsets to which they aren't any free drivers. \r\n Steven Yap
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Post #192,217
1/29/05 10:48:54 AM
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Re: Installing now
I was watching the startup messages and it loaded a driver called 'airport' plus it let me choose between my Ethernet and wireless connection as my main network port.
Tom Sinclair
"This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here."
-- The Bursar is a man under a *lot* of stress
(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)
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Post #192,306
1/30/05 9:47:49 PM
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Still some issues
Debian PPC is nice and stable (no pun intended) but there are still a few nits:
- It sees my FireWire CDRW drive, but k3b can't burn to it. (Apparently there's an issue with the 2.6 kernel.)
- Video is still stuck at a max of 800x600, even though I know this card and monitor can do better. I'm still searching the mailing lists and usual suspects. (I found a note from our own Peter Whysall describing his own issues with a Rage 128 card. Unfortunately his solution won't work for me, if I understand correctly.)
I've been playing with some other PPC discs:
- Yellow Dog 4.0 - hangs at boot when trying to initialize my SCSI bus.
- Knoppix PPC - Not updated since 2003, but I thought it might be worth trying. No go, doesn't correctly ID my video either.
- Gentoo PPC - promising and I was going over the installation note when I suddenly remembered that I already had a job. (I'm sure Gentoo is fine for its intended audience and I've heard nothing but good things from those who use it.)
Mandrake and the *BSDs are something of a last resort for me at this point.
I did notice, however, that Ubuntu has a PPC install ISO available. I've heard raves from those here and elsewhere who've tried and it's Debian-based to boot (once again, no pun intended) so I'm going to give it a try.
Tom Sinclair
"This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here."
-- The Bursar is a man under a *lot* of stress
(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)
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Post #192,308
1/30/05 9:51:59 PM
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ICLRPD (new thread)
Created as new thread #192307 titled [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=192307|ICLRPD]
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Post #192,333
1/31/05 12:50:28 AM
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Should Mention, Ubuntu PPC works as advertised
I have given away quite a few pre-packaged ones.
Install on the ones we tried. But were all laptop (ibook, powerbook etc...)
-- [link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg], [link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey[link|http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134485&cid=11233230|"Microsoft Security" is an even better oxymoron than "Miltary Intelligence"] No matter how much Microsoft supporters whine about how Linux and other operating systems have just as many bugs as their operating systems do, the bottom line is that the serious, gut-wrenching problems happen on Windows, not on Linux, not on Mac OS. -- [link|http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1622086,00.asp|source]
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Post #192,334
1/31/05 1:26:50 AM
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Having trouble with the Warty ISO
I've downloaded copies from three separate sites, one through BitTorrent, the others with wget.
When I try to burn a CD, I get a segmentation fault. I used both Disk Utility and the command line (hdiutil).
The image seems to mount all right, though.
Tom Sinclair
"This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here."
-- The Bursar is a man under a *lot* of stress
(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)
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Post #192,442
2/1/05 5:27:06 AM
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Re: Having trouble with the Warty ISO
Known problem
Apologies for brief answer, am on 28.8K dialup :-O
[link|http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:iOwHNwPMiaUJ:www.intencha.com/adrian/burning_ubuntu_linux_iso_on_os_x.php+ubuntu+iso+ppc&hl=en|http://64.233.183.10...ntu+iso+ppc&hl=en]
Peter
[link|http://www.ubuntulinux.org|Ubuntu Linux]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
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Post #192,468
2/1/05 9:35:34 AM
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Thanks for the link
I'll give that a shot today.
Tom Sinclair
"This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here."
-- The Bursar is a man under a *lot* of stress
(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)
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Post #192,654
2/2/05 1:11:47 PM
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Got Warty installed
It detects my video and monitor correctly (without asking me anything) and it sees my SCSI drives and Airport card. So far, so good. Doesn't see my (SCSI) scanner, but that's a low priority.
I have to say, though, that after using KDE the spare elegant economy of the Gnome desktop kind of creeps me out.
Now on to CD burning!
Tom Sinclair
"This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here."
-- The Bursar is a man under a *lot* of stress
(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)
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Post #192,854
2/3/05 12:06:19 PM
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GNOME is like that.
When I moved from SuSE 9's KDE desktop to the Ubuntu desktop, it was such a shock; KDE is all shiny bubbly transparent textured stippled zillions of buttons, whereas GNOME just takes the one you were going to click anyway and throws the rest away.
This "stay out of my face" philosophy works well for me.
I'm still working out why the KDE developers think that it's more important to be able to change the contrast of one's 3D widgets than it is to provide a large icons and high-contrast theme for users with visual impairment.
Shrug, I expect.
Peter
[link|http://www.ubuntulinux.org|Ubuntu Linux]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
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Post #192,960
2/4/05 12:00:21 AM
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Yeah, I notice that
and I'm sure it's great for a lot of people.
But for me...yeesh, it's like walking through a ghost town.
I need my shiny bubbly transparent textured stippled zillions of buttons!
Maybe it's a Mac-head thing....
Tom Sinclair
"This is a lovely party," said the Bursar to a chair, "I wish I was here."
-- The Bursar is a man under a *lot* of stress
(Terry Pratchett, Lords and Ladies)
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Post #192,964
2/4/05 12:09:51 AM
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ICLRPD * 2 (new thread)
Created as new thread #192963 titled [link|/forums/render/content/show?contentid=192963|ICLRPD * 2]
===
Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
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Post #192,979
2/4/05 1:43:52 AM
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Re: Yeah, I notice that
I need my shiny bubbly transparent textured stippled zillions of buttons! No you don't, and that's the magic :-) Maybe it's a Mac-head thing.... Well, I don't know about that. I like OS X as much as the next beret-wearing turtlenecker, and I still prefer GNOME's spare elegance.
Peter
[link|http://www.ubuntulinux.org|Ubuntu Linux]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
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Post #192,985
2/4/05 2:35:42 AM
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Cow-orker asked if I was using an OSX theme
[link|http://dkime.com/screenies/screenie-20041211.png|This] is my home box, which looks pretty much like work except for different wallpaper, and the one at work doesn't have the lower panel. (The window list fits on the top panel on the larger display at work.)
Cow-orker comes over and asks if I'm running an OSX theme. I tell him No, it's a Gnome theme.
"But it looks just like OSX, it's an OSX theme!"
No, it's actually Industrial, which is the Ximian default desktop, with borders from Gorilla, a Mono theme.
"Well, they obviously copied OSX. Look how they put the start bar on the top."
...
Umm, I've been putting the panel on the top for several years, OSX isn't even the first Mac to put its menu on the top, and even Windows has let you move the start bar to any edge -- including the top -- ever since Win95. How is great blue blazes does that make this an "OSX theme"?
===
Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
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Post #192,991
2/4/05 7:01:12 AM
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Just say it's an OS/2 theme.
completely confuse him...
[link|http://forfree.sytes.net|
] Imric's Tips for Living
- Paranoia Is a Survival Trait
- Pessimists are never disappointed - but sometimes, if they are very lucky, they can be pleasantly surprised...
- Even though everyone is out to get you, it doesn't matter unless you let them win.
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Nothing is as simple as it seems in the beginning,
As hopeless as it seems in the middle,
Or as finished as it seems in the end.
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Post #192,992
2/4/05 7:02:47 AM
2/4/05 7:03:39 AM
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/ignore
[link|http://forfree.sytes.net|
] Imric's Tips for Living
- Paranoia Is a Survival Trait
- Pessimists are never disappointed - but sometimes, if they are very lucky, they can be pleasantly surprised...
- Even though everyone is out to get you, it doesn't matter unless you let them win.
|
Nothing is as simple as it seems in the beginning,
As hopeless as it seems in the middle,
Or as finished as it seems in the end.
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Edited by imric
Feb. 4, 2005, 07:03:39 AM EST
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