[LUAU] Minimum Macs

[Angela Kahealani]

On Monday 2004-12-13 14:27, R. Scott Belford wrote:
> Any idea on model or year that is a safe cut off for accepting Macs to
> be used with Linux would be appreciated. --scott

We can probably first eliminate the 68K Macintoshen, though there may be 
unixen for them, can they handle current tools?  I haven't persued *nix on 
68K, though it may exist (MkLinux?).

The first generation PPCs used the 601PPC chip from which we can take the 6100 
as representative... it's a NuBus PowerMac (they basically just changed the 
processor in otherwise existing designs), there WAS a MkLinux for it, it MAY 
still be worthwhile, but NuBus is probably not what you wanna be playing 
with.

So, the FIRST cutoff is: does it have a PCI bus? That probably means G3 
minimum processor is already included. I can speak from first hand experience 
that my PowerMacBeigeG3MT/266MHz works pretty nicely with YellowDogLinux, 
however, CURRENT kernels (read: secure) don't well handle the ADB keyboards.
Neither I nor TerraSoft found a solution that would get my right shift key to 
work correctly, so, I'd say that the next level of cutoff is:

It must have a PCI bus, and NO ADB port (i.e. USB).
That gets us up to the iMac. So, since

Beige = Apple Desktop Bus,
probably you want to know if it's fruity or beige.

This leaves us starting with iMacs, colored G3s, ibooks, powerbooks, G4s, and 
G5s. 

Now, I have both YDL 2.3 and YDL 3.0 for my BeigeG3MiniTower, and the 3.0 will 
install and boot unless you have only the BTO UW-SCSI card and NO IDE drive. 
The 2.3 will run on all BeigeG3s as far as I know, but if you wanted to 
install the current YDL4:
http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/support/hardware/breakdown/index.php

-- 
Copyright 2004 Angela Kahealani. All rights reserved without prejudice; 
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