This is an operating system question, but it is with the intent of using R on that operating system. I have an ibook G4 Power PC that I am going to install linux on. Is there a better, worse, or perhaps easier (I am a linux newby migrating from mac) distribution that I should look at. I appreciate your help. I didn't post this in the sig-mac because I don't know if it fits there better than anywhere else. thanks -- Stephen Sefick Research Scientist Southeastern Natural Sciences Academy Let's not spend our time and resources thinking about things that are so little or so large that all they really do for us is puff us up and make us feel like gods. We are mammals, and have not exhausted the annoying little problems of being mammals. -K. Mullis
Yes, I'd install the OS X Leopard (10.5.4) distribution on it :-)-O el On 12 Sep 2008, at 22:30 , stephen sefick wrote:> This is an operating system question, but it is with the intent of > using R on that operating system. I have an ibook G4 Power PC that I > am going to install linux on. Is there a better, worse, or perhaps > easier (I am a linux newby migrating from mac) distribution that I > should look at. I appreciate your help. I didn't post this in the > sig-mac because I don't know if it fits there better than anywhere > else. > thanks > > -- > Stephen Sefick
On 12 September 2008 at 16:30, stephen sefick wrote:
| This is an operating system question, but it is with the intent of
| using R on that operating system. I have an ibook G4 Power PC that I
| am going to install linux on. Is there a better, worse, or perhaps
| easier (I am a linux newby migrating from mac) distribution that I
| should look at. I appreciate your help. I didn't post this in the
| sig-mac because I don't know if it fits there better than anywhere
| else.
Maybe this helps:
http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/inst/install
http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/inst/pmac
You'd get the usual Debian support of R, five or six dozen CRAN packages,
ESS, Ra, Ggobi, littler, MPI support, and much much more.
Some people like Debian, some people hate it. Your mileage may vary. I have
never own a powerpc so take it with a grain of salt. But as a general
statement, the Debian installer has gotten rather nice under the competitive
pressure from some of the other distros :) And 20,000 packages is a nice pool
to draw from.
Dirk
--
Three out of two people have difficulties with fractions.
To Stephen's credit, Apple will no longer support PowerPC chips (such as his G4) in the next operating system (Snow Leopard), so some sort of switchover will be necessary in order to maintain SOME sort of state-of-the-art software packaging for PPC-based Mac users in the near future. Also, it is important to note that Leopard on a G4 iBook would probably run disgustingly (read: unusably) slow unless the memory is upgraded: It shipped with 256MB of RAM (and that money would be better saved for a new computer), and Leopard (on my Macbook Pro) is currently using about 700MB for the operating system. Switching to linux and X-windows allows for an old system to be, in a word, functional. While I love MacOSX and use it on the computers of mine which can run it usefully (G5 tower, PowerBook G4 w/2GB of ram), I've been much happier with Linux on my older macs. The machine on my desk is a G4 iMac with 256MB of RAM which has no trouble fitting mixed models in R while I browse the web on Firefox 3 while the computer itself serves 80% of the Psychology Department's web surveys. Under Leopard, these programs would not even run simultaneously, let alone usably. Further, while some amount of hand-compiling is necessary (Debian Linux provides almost all of the software I would need), it's also quite helpful--using Simon Urbanek's R optimization flags for G5 and G4 (see https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-mac/2005-February/001641.html ) and my own version of ATLAS, the performance of R on that machine is comparable to the unoptimized internal-BLAS no-effort-necessary .pkg from CRAN running on a G4 with 2GB of RAM and 1.5 times the processor speed under Leopard. Sure, it took a whole night to compile/optimize ATLAS and most of the next day to compile R with those flags, but to a grad student like myself, that's vastly superior to waiting twice as long for my analyses to run...or to the impossibly high cost of a new computer. --Adam On Fri, 12 Sep 2008, Doran, Harold wrote:> Are you aware that a BSD unix OS runs on the mac already? > > > -----Original Message----- > From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org on behalf of Dr Eberhard W Lisse > Sent: Fri 9/12/2008 4:38 PM > To: stephen sefick > Cc: R-help Mailing List; Dr Eberhard W Lisse > Subject: Re: [R] Power PC with a linux distribution and R > > Yes, > > I'd install the OS X Leopard (10.5.4) distribution on it :-)-O > > el > > On 12 Sep 2008, at 22:30 , stephen sefick wrote: > >> This is an operating system question, but it is with the intent of >> using R on that operating system. I have an ibook G4 Power PC that I >> am going to install linux on. Is there a better, worse, or perhaps >> easier (I am a linux newby migrating from mac) distribution that I >> should look at. I appreciate your help. I didn't post this in the >> sig-mac because I don't know if it fits there better than anywhere >> else. >> thanks >> >> -- >> Stephen Sefick > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >
Adam, I (or rather the kids and the wife) got two iMinis and one iBook with G4. They all run 10.5.4 happily on their 1GB of RAM... greetings, el On 12 Sep 2008, at 23:43 , Adam D. I. Kramer wrote:> To Stephen's credit, Apple will no longer support PowerPC chips > (such as his > G4) in the next operating system (Snow Leopard), so some sort of > switchover > will be necessary in order to maintain SOME sort of state-of-the-art > software packaging for PPC-based Mac users in the near future. > > Also, it is important to note that Leopard on a G4 iBook would > probably run > disgustingly (read: unusably) slow unless the memory is upgraded: It > shipped > with 256MB of RAM (and that money would be better saved for a new > computer), > and Leopard (on my Macbook Pro) is currently using about 700MB for the > operating system. Switching to linux and X-windows allows for an old > system > to be, in a word, functional.
Hi El, As does my PowerBook G4 with 2GB of RAM. The iBook shipped with 256MB, however, which Leopard does not run well on. My point was more that Linux was superior to MacOS in the case of very low memory...not that the chip was somehow the problem. ...but now I am solidly off-topic! Cheers, Adam On Sat, 13 Sep 2008, Dr Eberhard W Lisse wrote:> Adam, > > I (or rather the kids and the wife) got two iMinis and one iBook > with G4. They all run 10.5.4 happily on their 1GB of RAM... > > greetings, el > > On 12 Sep 2008, at 23:43 , Adam D. I. Kramer wrote: > >> To Stephen's credit, Apple will no longer support PowerPC chips (such as >> his >> G4) in the next operating system (Snow Leopard), so some sort of switchover >> will be necessary in order to maintain SOME sort of state-of-the-art >> software packaging for PPC-based Mac users in the near future. >> >> Also, it is important to note that Leopard on a G4 iBook would probably run >> disgustingly (read: unusably) slow unless the memory is upgraded: It >> shipped >> with 256MB of RAM (and that money would be better saved for a new >> computer), >> and Leopard (on my Macbook Pro) is currently using about 700MB for the >> operating system. Switching to linux and X-windows allows for an old system >> to be, in a word, functional. > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:30:46 -0400 > From: "stephen sefick" > Subject: [R] Power PC with a linux distribution and R > > This is an operating system question, but it is with the intent of > using R on that operating system. I have an ibook G4 Power PC that I > am going to install linux on. Is there a better, worse, or perhaps > easier (I am a linux newby migrating from mac) distribution that I > should look at. I appreciate your help. I didn't post this in the > sig-mac because I don't know if it fits there better than anywhere > else. > thanksI have an iBook G4 (1 GHz, 1.25 GB RAM) that's running Debian. Debian's installer is pretty friendly. For me, the most difficult part of the installation was getting 3-button mouse emulation to work with the iBook's 1-button keypad. Beyond that, the installation and setup was easy. Why did I install Debian on an iBook? Curiosity more than anything else. I've worked with Redhat-based linux distibutions for years, and I wanted to see what Debian was like. One thing you might want to keep in mind -- some of Debian's PPC packages are a little on the old side (for example, R 2.4.0). That may or may not be an issue for you. On Mac OS, you may want to try running R in an X11 xterm (as opposed to running R.app); that's essentially what you'll see under Linux.. Steve