It's that time again. I'm stuck with a bunch of older Powermac G4's that I either need to repurpose or give the heave ho. I've not tried CentOS on Mac hardware before. Would the following config be suitable for a (somewhat slow) workstation? PowerMac G4 400mhz 256mb RAM 40gig ATA disk Some sort of dual-head ATI video setup with 64mb VRAM (I've forgotten which cards they are) Cheers,
On Wed, 17 May 2006, Chris Mauritz wrote:> It's that time again. I'm stuck with a bunch of older Powermac G4's > that I either need to repurpose or give the heave ho. I've not > tried CentOS on Mac hardware before. Would the following config be > suitable for a (somewhat slow) workstation? > > PowerMac G4 > 400mhz > 256mb RAM > 40gig ATA disk > Some sort of dual-head ATI video setup with 64mb VRAM (I've > forgotten which cards they are)I once installed CentOS/PPC on an aluminum PowerBook G4. It took some doing, but once everything was in place there were only two obvious shortcomings: power management was largely nonexistent and wireless didn't work. Otherwise, it was fine. I suspect that, speed aside, your PowerMac will perform just fine. If you plan to run X, extra RAM would probably be a nice addition. -- Paul Heinlein <> heinlein at madboa.com <> www.madboa.com
On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 16:47 -0400, Chris Mauritz wrote:> It's that time again. I'm stuck with a bunch of older Powermac G4's > that I either need to repurpose or give the heave ho. I've not tried > CentOS on Mac hardware before. Would the following config be suitable > for a (somewhat slow) workstation?IMO, very useful. I had LFS 2.6.x kernel on a PC-Chips M-571 w/K6-III (380MHz), 256MB, couple of ATA HDs (1 was 10K rpm Deskstar(?)), small PCI Radeon video. Could do a complete from scratch build (utils, toolchain, kernel, all utils, ... ) ready to start BLFS (Gnome... and all the bells and whistles) in appx. 6 and 1/2 hours. Once I had X and Gnome (BLFS) and all running, I was quite happy with it. Before with same setup but w/an IBM 6x86-2 (old Cyrix-II) 300MHz, same build was appx 10 hours. So, a your MAC at 400MHz should do fine... at least for folks like me. BTW, I would be willing to take some off your hands if the price is right. I found a square foot unused in my home office that is begging to be filled with something other than empty boxes, bits of cable, old 14" monochrome monitors, ... even a 386SX in a micro-tower over there somewhere. 100 mega-byte HD, IIRC. ^^^^> > PowerMac G4 > 400mhz > 256mb RAM > 40gig ATA disk > Some sort of dual-head ATI video setup with 64mb VRAM (I've forgotten > which cards they are) > > Cheers, > > <snip sig stuff>-- Bill -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20060517/1fa17145/attachment-0002.sig>
William L. Maltby wrote:> On Wed, 2006-05-17 at 16:47 -0400, Chris Mauritz wrote: >> It's that time again. I'm stuck with a bunch of older Powermac G4's >> that I either need to repurpose or give the heave ho. I've not tried >> CentOS on Mac hardware before. Would the following config be suitable >> for a (somewhat slow) workstation? >The CentOS 4.3/ppc is not released as yet - we've run into a few issues with upstream patches and ppc-smp kernels ( upstream has no ppc distro.. ) We *should* have something out soon'ish though.> > Before with same setup but w/an IBM 6x86-2 (old Cyrix-II) 300MHz, same > build was appx 10 hours. > > So, a your MAC at 400MHz should do fine... at least for folks like me. >the G4-400Mhz will give you about the same performance level as a p-III / 800Mhz ... or thereabouts. More Ram will help ... 256megs can get very tight, very fast. the present build machine thats putting together the CentOS/ppc distro is a G4-450Mhz -- Karanbir Singh : http://www.karan.org/ : 2522219 at icq
Chris Mauritz napsal(a):> It's that time again. I'm stuck with a bunch of older Powermac G4's > that I either need to repurpose or give the heave ho. I've not tried > CentOS on Mac hardware before. Would the following config be suitable > for a (somewhat slow) workstation? > > PowerMac G4 > 400mhz > 256mb RAM > 40gig ATA disk > Some sort of dual-head ATI video setup with 64mb VRAM (I've forgotten > which cards they are) >will be fine I run CentOS 4.0beta on G3 300MHz 128 MB RAM 6G ATA HDD an it is ... good for testing ... ;-) I need more RAM -- Petr Kl?ma e-mail: qaxi at seznam.cz