# Is anyone running the PowerPC?



## dndlnx (Jun 12, 2018)

Would FreeBSD make a good OS for an old PowerPC iMac?


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## tingo (Jun 12, 2018)

It depends. As you probably know, even FreeBSD won't make an old PowerPC iMac a faster computer.
Also, hardware support (for various hardware that might be inside a PowerPC Mac) varies. The older the Mac, the more likely it is that everything is supported.
Other things to consider: not all ports will work on the PowerPC architecture.
Lastly, the install process can be an unknown adventure, as PowerPC Macs have their own firmware (not UEFI or Bios).

That being said, FreeBSD will be (as always) a stable and solid os if you get an installation you are happy with.


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## SirDice (Jun 13, 2018)

Note that PowerPC is a Tier 2 platform. So it doesn't receive as much attention as i386/amd64.


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## v-man (Dec 25, 2018)

dndlnx said:


> Would FreeBSD make a good OS for an old PowerPC iMac?



Today I just finished installing FreeBSD on my 2004 MacMini (PowerPC of course, 1 GByte of RAM). It is now doing what it is supposed to do: reading optical disks and storing the files onto an nfs share provided by a small ARM system. I've been using Linux for 20 years, and been using it on three different PowerPC systems as well... but since Debian (and pretty much every other Linux distribution) stopped supporting PowerPC I thought I'd give BSD a shot. Failing to install it next to MacOS on the same disk I transferred MacOS onto an external (FireWire) drive, and installed FreeBSD as describe in this 2011 post in this forum.

I was disappointed to learn that apparently there are no binary packages (apart from the base system) for PowerPC... but so far everything is working ok. The compilation experience is like on MacPorts, though, where I remember having spent _days_ compiling KDE and DigiKam (about 9 years ago). I'm not going to repeat that on this machine now. I would have liked to see X and some graphical programs, but since I don't require using them, and since this machine is really slow by today's standards (browsing some websites with TenFourFox in MacOS was a pain) I think I'll stick to using the machine without a monitor attached.


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## ralphbsz (Dec 27, 2018)

v-man said:


> but since Debian (and pretty much every other Linux distribution) stopped supporting PowerPC...


That's an odd statement, given that the two world's largest supercomputers are now PowerPC machines, running Red Hat Linux.  I remember that about a year ago, SUSE also supported PowerPC.  And by "supported", I don't just mean that you can download an install package, but that you can get a paid support contract, which really means tier-1 support.

What is true: Debian no longer officially supports 32-bit PowerPC systems; Debian 8 a.k.a. jessie was the last version.  I think the same is true for Fedora; the 32-bit PowerPC only uses older versions.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Dec 27, 2018)

v-man said:


> Today I just finished installing FreeBSD on my 2004 MacMini (PowerPC of course, 1 GByte of RAM).



My niece gave me a mid-2007 MacMini a few months ago I haven't done anything with yet. It's under-powered and space is at a premium so it's been low on my priority list. I did leave it running for a month so it does work and that link to the article may be of some help when I do.

I'm more interested in the monitor than I am the Mac, thinker of low thoughts that I am.


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## v-man (Dec 27, 2018)

ralphbsz said:


> That's an odd statement, given that the two world's largest supercomputers are now PowerPC machines, running Red Hat Linux.



But these supercomputers certainly are PowerPC64 machines? I guess I should have written PowerPC (32bit), to be more specific.

If you actually care about the architecture, you might want to have a look at this PowerPC Notebook crowdfunding campaign.



Trihexagonal said:


> My niece gave me a mid-2007 MacMini a few months ago I haven't done anything with yet. [...]
> I'm more interested in the monitor than I am the Mac, thinker of low thoughts that I am.



But that Mac must be an Intel machine, possibly even a dual-core, then? That would be way faster than my 2005 PowerPC mini (@1,42 GHz). It did successfully install dvdbackup, abcde, lame, flac, and vorbis-tools, though... but compiling G++ 8.2, one of the dependencies / requirements took about 24 hours alone! My /usr/ports partition already is at 9.1G, whereas the rest of the system just uses 1.8G.

Just for fun, and to possibly try FreeBSD on my 1.0 GHz iMac too, I'm also trying to install XFCE now. But that was when I also got my first compilation failure, something to do with Cairo or Mesa... Are you also talking of an iMac, Trihexagonal, or did you mini come with a special monitor?


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## ralphbsz (Dec 27, 2018)

You are absolutely right: all of today's PowerPC machines are 64 bit (and have been for ~10 years of production), and my statement about good support applies to current machines.

Myself, I only use recent production server-class machines professionally, and only an i386 server under FreeBSD personally, so I unfortunately have no interest or need for desktop/GUI machines.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Dec 27, 2018)

It's a Mid-2007 MacMini 2.0 running some version of Lion with what I believe is a 2.0GHz Core2 Duo. They gave me the keyboard, "mouse" and a Samsung monitor, but not the root password so I could do anything with it. It didn't even have a firewall enabled.

I explained I need that do do any work as Admin on it but only got that shortly after Thanksgiving. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they just forgot I'd need the root password. (Which was her hubby's name.) I left it running to see if it was going to work, shut it down after a month and haven't fiddled with it since.

I wanted to see what all the Mac hoopla was about and thought I'd try using it before I wiped it. They're supposed to have good sound, it's sitting next to my X61 and thought I'd compare the two.

This should be it:

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/...-mac-mini-core-2-duo-and-core-duo-models.html


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