Slackintosh 10.1 (PowerPC Port) released
 

Hi,

Just FYI:

I continued the discontinued Slackware PPC-Port ('Slackintosh') and
i am pleased to announce 'Slackintosh 10.1'.

It doesn't include all packages from the real Slackware but there
is enough stuff to have fun (gcc, perl, X11, gimp, mozilla)...

If you own a Mac and like Slack: Give it a try.. it should work
on almost all New-World macs.

ISO image aviable from: workaround . ch (<- remove the spaces.. i'm not allowed to post URLs :-/ )

-- Adrian

That's great, would you think it will run fine on an IBook1 300 Mhz ?

I'm curious as to whether it'll work on some surplus PowerMac all-in-one's I scavenged from the dead-pile a couple months back. They're 5500/225's with tiny little 2 Gig drives and 32 megs of ram a piece, but I've got two of them, and they make quite the cute little toys.

Well, at least "Slackware does not automatically detect/configure the mouse scroll wheel" will NOT be a problem. :)

Urr, was that a April Fool trick?

Hmm. aparently not.

The link is http://workaround.ch

Will try to figure out how things works.

The release is good timing. Coincide with soon to be released Tiger. Therefore, lots of people (like me) is going to wipe clean the harddisk for Tiger, and now with Slackintosh as well. :)

Hmm... Does anyone know if the PPC 8500/120 was a "new world" Mac? This might give my old Mac something to do other than slowly munching seti@home data.

Whoops! Sorry. Just did the research I should have done before posting. No, the PPC 8500 is not a "new world" Mac. New world Macs apparently started with the iMac, which expressed in human terms would be my Mac's grandson or great-grandson. Oh well. Back to looking for aliens.

Yellow Dog Linux may not be Slackware but it is worth a go on an Old World Mac. You need YDL 3.x as 4.x support for Old World ROMs is discontinued. If you try it you'll end up with a version of Red Hat. I have it running on a 1997 Vintage G3/233 upgraded to a 466MHz, with 384MB running Apache and ProFTPD.

Regards,

dkpw

I've got to ask...what manner of speed do you get out of that machine? I ask because the machine I'm using is a 225MHz 603e with 32 (yikes) MB...

If there's any odds of it working reasonably well, I'll likely upgrade it to 128MB, and might even invest in a G3 accelerator card if I can find a cheapie on eBay.

Hi Cavalier,

It's difficult to be subjective about speed. The nearest I could equate the speed of my G3 would be another of my computers which is a PIII / 500MHz. The G3 has a 7,200 speed drive and is maxed with 384MB RAM. With this configuration it is certainly useable as a desktop machine under KDE although I personally just run it as a server with Apache and ProFTPD. So all in all it's not too bad, especially for a machine that is 8 years old. If you like the command line, the speed of your typing is the limiting factor.

The fastest OS on it and your 603e would be something like Mac OS 8.1 or 8.6. Which despite also ageing rapidly and not being based on Unix can be trimmed to be stable and reliable. Before I moved my G3 over to YDL, I ran the WebStar Server Suite which proved a reliable FTP server under OS 9.

However if you can find cheap RAM, have a fast drive for swap, and can get a cheap G3 upgrade card, YDL would definitely be worth a try. Make sure it's YDL 3.x though. 2.x was not very good, and 4.x will not work on that vintage of Mac.

Good luck,

dkpw