Hi all who reside here! I'm curious about some of the equipment you PPC users have to run SuSE PPC on here. I was very pleased to see that SuSE restarted the PPC development and is making it available to everyone. The next thing will be to see the boxed version on the shelves again. Hopefully OpenSuSE will help that to happen. But I digress. With the renewed interest in PPC for the public comes my renewed interest in having a PPC machine to run Linux on now. I've seen just lately the problems the owner of the G3 had and managed to get working and I know one user is working with a Pegasus machine, but I'm curious what others are using and their experiences too. Realizing that SuSE has yet to get Yast working good with PPC, both on partitioning drives and boot up, which will hopefully be working soon, what other bumps in the road have you guys/girls come up against. When you post your problems/questions to the list, could I request that you mention what unit/hardware you are using? Thanks, Rusty
BandiPat wrote:
Hi all who reside here!
I'm curious about some of the equipment you PPC users have to run SuSE PPC on here. I was very pleased to see that SuSE restarted the PPC development and is making it available to everyone. The next thing will be to see the boxed version on the shelves again. Hopefully OpenSuSE will help that to happen. But I digress.
With the renewed interest in PPC for the public comes my renewed interest in having a PPC machine to run Linux on now. I've seen just lately the problems the owner of the G3 had and managed to get working and I know one user is working with a Pegasus machine, but I'm curious what others are using and their experiences too.
Realizing that SuSE has yet to get Yast working good with PPC, both on partitioning drives and boot up, which will hopefully be working soon, what other bumps in the road have you guys/girls come up against. When you post your problems/questions to the list, could I request that you mention what unit/hardware you are using?
Thanks, Rusty
I am running a Powermac G4 Digital Audio with a stock video card and a GB of RAM. Other than the YaST partitioner issue that you already mentioned, I am having no other issues except for the overall limitations of Linux on PPC , which include - no flash player, no JAVA, and no 3D video drivers. Also at the present time, there doesn't seem to be many multimedia libraries in the repositories. I am running RealPlayer just to hear streaming audio, when I'd much prefer Amarok or Beep Media Player. Harryc --
On Tuesday 04 October 2005 09:51 am, harryc wrote: [...]
I am running a Powermac G4 Digital Audio with a stock video card and a GB of RAM. Other than the YaST partitioner issue that you already mentioned, I am having no other issues except for the overall limitations of Linux on PPC , which include - no flash player, no JAVA, and no 3D video drivers. Also at the present time, there doesn't seem to be many multimedia libraries in the repositories. I am running RealPlayer just to hear streaming audio, when I'd much prefer Amarok or Beep Media Player. Harryc -- =========
Thanks Harryc, Now this brings up some other questions for me. What video card are you using? I thought nVidia had drivers for PPC and usually the included modules for ATI in the kernel work nicely for their cards. I do know of a source for JAVA for PPC, so that's not a problem. Check Blackdown JAVA for that! I think they have a 1.3.x version ready now and the newest should be there soon. Didn't know there were no flash players for PPC. I would have thought those were provided somewhere. Wonder if they have just the stand alone version available for PPC? I know I use that as well as the plugin on x86 now and both work by setting the file associations in Konq. Probably wouldn't work in Firefox or Mozilla though. Yep, no codecs available for PPC yet for many of the multimedia things. :-( Let's hope that will be fixed soon too, but having been out of PPC for a while, I'm not sure where to turn to help that situation. Luckily RealPlayer will come to the rescue in the interim. So basically you didn't have any problems using SuSE's obscure method of booting and installing then? What about partitioning your drive and are you running a dual boot? Thanks again, this really helps! I'm like a sponge, absorbing all this new info! ;o) Rusty
BandiPat wrote:
On Tuesday 04 October 2005 09:51 am, harryc wrote: [...]
I am running a Powermac G4 Digital Audio with a stock video card and a GB of RAM. Other than the YaST partitioner issue that you already mentioned, I am having no other issues except for the overall limitations of Linux on PPC , which include - no flash player, no JAVA, and no 3D video drivers. Also at the present time, there doesn't seem to be many multimedia libraries in the repositories. I am running RealPlayer just to hear streaming audio, when I'd much prefer Amarok or Beep Media Player. Harryc --
=========
Thanks Harryc, Now this brings up some other questions for me. What video card are you using? I thought nVidia had drivers for PPC and usually the included modules for ATI in the kernel work nicely for their cards.
I do know of a source for JAVA for PPC, so that's not a problem. Check Blackdown JAVA for that! I think they have a 1.3.x version ready now and the newest should be there soon. Didn't know there were no flash players for PPC. I would have thought those were provided somewhere. Wonder if they have just the stand alone version available for PPC? I know I use that as well as the plugin on x86 now and both work by setting the file associations in Konq. Probably wouldn't work in Firefox or Mozilla though.
Yep, no codecs available for PPC yet for many of the multimedia things. :-(
Let's hope that will be fixed soon too, but having been out of PPC for a while, I'm not sure where to turn to help that situation. Luckily RealPlayer will come to the rescue in the interim. So basically you didn't have any problems using SuSE's obscure method of booting and installing then? What about partitioning your drive and are you running a dual boot?
Thanks again, this really helps! I'm like a sponge, absorbing all this new info! ;o)
Rusty
Thanks for the Blackdown JAVA tip. I should have remembered it because I've used it on x86-64 installs before. I am not totally up on 3D support for PPC, but I saw this at openSUSE.org, so I was basing my comments on it; http://www.opensuse.org/PowerPC_X11_configuration I was looking for nvidia drivers for the GF2 MX400 card in the G4. Do they exist? I could not find them at nvidia. As far a partitioning goes, I just installed over existing Ubuntu partitions. Personally, if I had to do it from scratch, I'd probably use the Ubuntu installer just to set up the partitions and yaboot, then install openSUSe 10.0. I am no expert on partitioning tools, so I am sure there are many alternate methods. Yes I am running dual boot. You need to pay attention to setting up Lilo per these instructions; http://www.opensuse.org/PPC:Boot_pmac Good luck.
On Tuesday 04 October 2005 10:36 am, harryc wrote: [...]
Thanks for the Blackdown JAVA tip. I should have remembered it because I've used it on x86-64 installs before. I am not totally up on 3D support for PPC, but I saw this at openSUSE.org, so I was basing my comments on it;
http://www.opensuse.org/PowerPC_X11_configuration
I was looking for nvidia drivers for the GF2 MX400 card in the G4. Do they exist? I could not find them at nvidia. As far a partitioning goes, I just installed over existing Ubuntu partitions. Personally, if I had to do it from scratch, I'd probably use the Ubuntu installer just to set up the partitions and yaboot, then install openSUSe 10.0. I am no expert on partitioning tools, so I am sure there are many alternate methods. Yes I am running dual boot. You need to pay attention to setting up Lilo per these instructions;
http://www.opensuse.org/PPC:Boot_pmac
Good luck. ===========
Ok, that's pretty much the same as on the x86 3d setup. We are able to use sax2 also, but I don't know if that is available on the PPC? I would think it is, but don't know at this point. Do nVidia have any PPC drivers? I know about as many Mac's have nVidia cards as they do ATI, so would think it is something nVidia supports with their proprietary drivers. As someone else mentionied, support, both 2d & 3d, are available natively in the kernel for all but the newest ATI cards and 2d for the newer ones. Don't know if ATI provides any PPC drivers either. I'll have to check on that later. Ok, sounds like you have been playing around a bit with Linux, so that gives you some help in doing things. Just a few things it seems that SuSE is lacking to get PPC back on track, so it's close and that's good. thanks, Rusty
Hello, harryc wrote:
no flash player,
There is gplflash, which is limited, but works fine for lot's of pages. It's currently not provided, as had some stabilty problems, but will be reenabled according to the bugzilla entry.
no JAVA,
There is IBM java, which lags a bit behind Sun Java, but works. Genesi (the company behind the Pegasos machines) promised to bring Sun Java to PPC this year.
and no 3D video drivers.
There is, but only for old ATI video cards (ATI Radeon 9250 and earlier).
Also at the present time, there doesn't seem to be many multimedia libraries in the repositories. I am running RealPlayer just to hear streaming audio, when I'd much prefer Amarok or Beep Media Player.
BMP is available already for both 10.0 RC1 and 10.1 Alpha1 at ftp://spike.fa.gau.hu/pub/pmppc and pmppc_a1. These are my compilations of Packman packages for PPC. Bye, Peter
Peter Czanik wrote:
Hello,
harryc wrote:
no flash player,
There is gplflash, which is limited, but works fine for lot's of pages. It's currently not provided, as had some stabilty problems, but will be reenabled according to the bugzilla entry.
no JAVA,
There is IBM java, which lags a bit behind Sun Java, but works. Genesi (the company behind the Pegasos machines) promised to bring Sun Java to PPC this year.
and no 3D video drivers.
There is, but only for old ATI video cards (ATI Radeon 9250 and earlier).
Also at the present time, there doesn't seem to be many multimedia libraries in the repositories. I am running RealPlayer just to hear streaming audio, when I'd much prefer Amarok or Beep Media Player.
BMP is available already for both 10.0 RC1 and 10.1 Alpha1 at ftp://spike.fa.gau.hu/pub/pmppc and pmppc_a1. These are my compilations of Packman packages for PPC. Bye, Peter
Thanks Peter. I'll look into IBM java, BMP, and gplflash when it is available. Harryc
participants (3)
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BandiPat
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harryc
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Peter Czanik