I'm very unfamiliar w/ the PPC architecture, but a friend has a laptop
he'd like me to install a Linux distro onto. Debian offers a powerpc
version on the downloads page. Can I expect this to contain all the
same packages as the i386 version?

Are there any other distros I should investigate for Linux on PPC? My
friend has never used Linux, and would like to use the laptop mainly for
internet and email.

Thanks

-Rob


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On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 10:09:42PM -0500, Rob Owens wrote:
> I'm very unfamiliar w/ the PPC architecture, but a friend has a laptop
> he'd like me to install a Linux distro onto. Debian offers a powerpc
> version on the downloads page. Can I expect this to contain all the
> same packages as the i386 version?

Barring a few packages, which may be i386 only or which may not work
with PowerPC systems, you can expect the same list of packages as on
x86 for PowerPC.

Extra info: There is a system for "architecture qualification", based
on which release managers decide whether an architecture will be
supported for a release or not. See
http://release.debian.org/squeeze/arch_qualify.html for details.

> Are there any other distros I should investigate for Linux on PPC? My
> friend has never used Linux, and would like to use the laptop mainly for
> internet and email.

I swear by Debian. But I believe Fedora has support for
PowerPC. Ubuntu has dropped official support, but you might still be
able to use it. You can find a list here, with more details.

http://penguinppc.org/about/distributions.php

HTH.

Kumar
--
I've seen people with new children before, they go from ultra happy to
looking like something out of a zombie film in about a week.
-- Alan Cox about Linus after his 2nd daughter

On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 10:09:42PM -0500, Rob Owens wrote:

> I'm very unfamiliar w/ the PPC architecture, but a friend has a laptop

> he'd like me to install a Linux distro onto. *Debian offers a powerpc

> version on the downloads page. *Can I expect this to contain all the

> same packages as the i386 version?

I've used the PPC version of Debian on an old Mac G4 desktop.* Can't vouch for the wireless-related items, but putting that G4 side by side with an old HP i386 desktop, everything in Debian looked the same to me so I would assume you can expect similar results.* I installed from the dvd iso downloaded via jigdo if that matters.


OpenSUSE supports PPC also, and is actually the first distro I tried on that G4 before smartening up and going with Debian.*

Mark

On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 09:10:58PM -0800, Mark wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 10:09:42PM -0500, Rob Owens wrote:
> > I'm very unfamiliar w/ the PPC architecture, but a friend has a laptop
> > he'd like me to install a Linux distro onto. Debian offers a powerpc
> > version on the downloads page. Can I expect this to contain all the
> > same packages as the i386 version?
>
> I've used the PPC version of Debian on an old Mac G4 desktop. Can't vouch
> for the wireless-related items, but putting that G4 side by side with an old
> HP i386 desktop, everything in Debian looked the same to me so I would
> assume you can expect similar results.

I think the real difference is with things (like flash) that are
proprietary and are supported in debian through either non-free or not
at all. There you will find the real differences IMVHO. It's been a
couple of years since I had debian running on a couple of ppc iMacs,
and it certainly worked just fine for most things, but the lack of
flash was a killer for my kids (I try to teach them, but there's
only so much one can do...)

A