Live CD for PPC?

An anonymous reader writes "After reading this article, I was pretty excited about trying an Ubuntu live CD on my Mac, because I've heard a lot about the distro. But it turns out the only live CD is for x86. Looking around for PPC live CD's that support modern hardware (like a G5) and demo modern versions of KDE and Gnome has proven fruitless so far. Does Slashdot know of any current projects that have released or are working on releasing a nice PPC live CD?"

Gentoo

[Halo1]

See here [gentoo.org]. I've used a Gentoo live cd a while on my iBook G3 and it worked fine (and no, you don't have to compile anything to start a nice X-environment).

Construct your own

[Tr0mBoNe-]

If you have the time, do what I did. Put Gentoo on the system by a normal install method. you can make it like a 4 gig partition and then export the system as an image. It will definitly fit on a DVD, and a CD if you go min.

I do this at school here because all the computers the kids have are the same... so I just get a perfectly working system on mine, and then create a liveCD from it for the other computers. It makes data recovery in the user support center a sinch.

And a live CD for gentoo PPC is in the works. Should be out with the 2004.4 version release.

Mac Live CD's

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried 3 and at this moment, only the Gentoo version works. It is not nearly as autoconfiguring as Knoppix is on the PC. First, I found this site which is a compilation of most of the Linux Live distributions around:
http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd. php
Then, by sorting on the right most column and scrolling down to PowerPC I found 3 PPC Live distributions:

A. Knoppix PPC
http://debian.tu-bs.de/knoppix/powerPC/
B. Knoppix-MiB
http://www.bouissou.net/knoppix-mib/d oc-html/Knopp ix-Mib.html
http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/k-mi b-ppc/ - somewhat active mail archives for MiB
C. Gentoo LiveCD
http://www.gentoo.org
http://www.metadist ribution.org/gentoo/experimenta l/2004.0/32bit/livecd/kde-gnome/ - location of the ISO I used
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=132 301 - the discussion that told me where to get it and good tips on getting it working
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewforum.php?f= 24 - the full Gentoo PPC forum
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-ppc-faq .xml - good Gentoo PPC FAQ's

A. Knoppix PPC - Nothing much seems to be going on with 'A'.

B. Knoppix-MiB - I had previously tried 'B' and while it worked ok on my iMac, I was looking for something for my iBook that I could bring to Linux meetings. At one time this version also worked on my iBook, but it no longer does - I don't know why. Apple has had several software releases since I last used it including one major one which made patches to Open Firmware. Others have also reported problems with the alpha 2e Knoppix full version - particularly on iBooks. Knoppix MiB has not released any further full versions but have released some Xtest versions designed to resolve these issues and get their autoconfiguration process tested. I tested the latest of these (pre10) and they are on the right track as my iBook gets further along in the process and no longer crashes and shuts off. Update 3/11 - their latest Xtest version is now pre12 which I am downloading today.

C. Gentoo LiveCD - The problem with Gentoo in the past was that it really never worked very well as a GUI Live CD before - was primarily an installer. Now, however, they do have an experimental version which is apparently designed to be a more full blown GUI Live CD ala Knoppix. It is not yet very autoconfiguring for the GUI and this is what was giving me some problems until I saw some helpful comments at a Gentoo PPC forum. Following are the details that finally got the GUI going.

1. Download the G3G4 ISO :
http://www.metadistribution.org/gentoo/experime nta l/2004.0/32bit/livecd/kde-gnome/g3g4.iso dated 11-Feb-2004 (664M)
2. Boot the CD by holding down the 'c' key while restarting.
3. When asked use 'root' as the user with no password
4. Once the kernel is up, type ' Xeasyconf ' - note upper case 'X'
-Let Xeasyconf attempt to figure out your settings
-My iBook has an ATI RageM3 video but the ATI Rage choice did not work for the iBook - it almost did, had problems with Horizontal sync.
-Use the Framebuffer choice for the iBook. Use the autoconfigured settings for everything else.
5. At this point typing startx brings up a black screen with 3 working Xwindows terminal windows and Xclock
6. Instead of doing step 5, type ' nano /etc/rc.conf ' . This allows you to change environment variables - For Gnome, edit out the comment symbol (#) in 2 places and use 'gdm' and 'Gnome'
- If you prefer KDE, edit out the comment symbol (#) in 2 places and use 'kdm' and 'kde-3.2.0'
- Save the changes
7. - To get a LAN working assuming a dhcp network
- for ethernet - type 'dhcpcd eth0'
- for airport - type 'dhcpcd eth1'
8. Type ' startx '
9. To end and restart in OSX type 'shutdown -r now'

The Gentoo environment is very Mac like and smooth looking. The kde environment has more tools. Some apps work, some dont

Ubuntu straight-to-disk worked fine for me..

[torpor]

or at least the one on the PPC Ubuntu CD I downloaded after that same article .. and I used it to install Ubuntu on a spare partition on my aging tiBooks' disk, and its a dual-boot fantasy machine, finally.

linux+OSX, easy as pie. But maybe I skipped the "LiveCD"-ness of it?

can't say i like the debian'ness, but its nice to have linux on PPC, and have it be at least as smooth an install as OSX is ...

Boot CD

[kfs27]

there is a simple shareware called BootCD that will take any OSX box and make a bootable CD from the OS and u can choose what apps you want to be included on the disc then burn it.

Takes about 10 minutes to boot depending on the speed of the machine but it's a great way to diagnose machines if you don't have a spare firewire drive laying around.

Re:Boot CD

[NatasRevol]

Generally, OS X is very backward compatible with all previous hardware. If you use a commercially bought copy of OS X and updated it on the newest hardware, instead of a CD that came with a specific, especially new, model of i/PowerMac/book, you can be pretty sure that it will run on most any supported hardware.

Makes it nice and relatively quick when you're re-imaging hundreds of different models of older Macs.

Gentoo Torrents

[anourkey]

Gentoo seems to have an Xlivecd posted on their torrent site near the bottom.
http://tracker.netdomination.org [netdomination.org]

Debian sarge

[joelhayhurst]

There is a Live CD net install for Debian sarge ("testing"). It uses the new installer and is very nice. I have it as a dual-boot on my PowerBook.

Debian net installer page [debian.org]

Re:Mac Live CD's

[Anonymous Coward]

http://homepage.mac.com/bner/iblog/B1570693677/C12 71976503/E1995539341/ [mac.com] I knew that looked familiar.

LWN have a PowerPC distribution summary up today

[Anonymous Coward]

Find it at:

http://lwn.net/Articles/108720/

It's subscriber-only content this week but should be available to all next week (I think...)

Re:Gentoo

[Ilgaz]

It says on url you referenced: "G5 fans run full speed".

A G5 machines 9 fans running full speed is easily louder than most vacuum cleaners.

So, G5 owners, I wouldn't suggest.

CRUX PPC

[carboncopy79]

Anybody tried CRUX PPC [sunsite.dk]?

It is small and neat. BSD like /etc/rc.d scripts. The ISO disk is only about 280Mbyte

Rock Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

There's also Rock Linux for PPC,

http://www.rocklinux.org/powerpc.html [rocklinux.org]

with a Live CD for PPC here

http://www.rocklinux.org/149.html [rocklinux.org]

Regards, Walter.