“What some people may not realize is that Linux for the
PowerPC chip, usually on a Macintosh platform, is not far behind
[Intel-based Linux] and has experienced similar growth in the last
few years since its first inception as MkLinux back in 1996.
Today, PowerPC users can choose among the original MkLinux package,
which still offers its Mach kernel version of Linux, or the PowerPC
and Yellow Dog packages with their monolithic RPM-based
distributions. New distributions on the PowerPC chip horizon
include SuSE, a popular German-based package; TurboLinux, popular
in Asia; and RockLinux, billed as a “power user”
distribution.”
“One of the highly touted features of the LinuxPPC 2000 release
is its user-friendly graphical installation environment. The
installation CD is meant to boot your system and load whatever it
needs onto the Macintosh in order to start installing Linux. These
components will vary from system to system, depending on whether or
not the “Open Firmware” of the computer involved is
well-supported, or if the system boots better using the included
BootX utility that operates somewhat like LILO on Intel-based
machines. Due to oddities in the Open Firmware implementation on
the Wallstreet PowerBook G3, it commonly uses BootX in order to
load Linux, and the installer realizes this. Once any Macintosh
portion of the installation is done, the computer reboots and
continues with the Linux installation process.”
“If you’re not an old hand at Linux installation, that is, if
the concept of the user-friendly installation interface is a
selling point for you, accept the fact that the initial default
desktop environment for the LinuxPPC installation will be GNOME.
This was a little disheartening to me, since I’m a KDE fan and I
wanted to set up KDE as my desktop environment. You are able to do
that, but let the installation install GNOME as the default at
first. Problems have been reported and experienced in getting KDE
to run right after installation, because the installer apparently
doesn’t install the QT1x libraries that KDE needs. It’s a simple
matter, upon reboot, to go into GNOME, install the libraries via
the RPM program if needed, then go into KDE. Once there, you can
modify and customize things easily. The good news is the
installation procedure, if allowed to install the defaults, solved
all the previous installation problems I’d had with Xconfig in the
past.”