(Hint: Be ready for these kinds of strange experiences with Linux from time to time.)Īfter the install, you are greeted with a login prompt, which is perfect if you want to run your Mac Mini as a server. I ended up flashing the install image to the USB drive a second time. No matter what I tried, my partition map came out all wrong. My first major issue during installation was getting my internal SSD to partition and format. The website offers an excellent step by step tutorial, including tips to make sure your hard drive is properly formatted, even in the case where you might want to still be able to boot into Mac OS X. Using a USB flash drive, as my old DVD drive in the G4 died years ago, I booted into a basic Void Linux PPC environment, typed in void-installer, and made my way through the process. You can poke through the list of available packages here. I know there were a few software packages I couldn’t find during my test run, but most things I needed are available in one form or another. The PowerPC distribution also has a quite thorough number of software packages available for install, though it appears that the number fluctuates as some package updates require fixes to be able to build properly on our old Macs. You can read about GPU compatibility with Void Linux PPC on this handy chart. I ended up going with the libc version as it avoids a couple of GPU bugs on my ancient Radeon 9200 GPU in the Mac Mini. There is one other added bonus – libc works better with some hardware drivers, especially proprietary gpu drivers. MUSL is intriguing for PowerPC users because it is newer and “cleaner”, but gnu libc is more popular and benefits from years of optimization. These are the libraries that serve as the common foundation for many core Linux software packages across various distributions. Performance, while not blazing fast, is quite solid.Īnother area that makes Void Linux unique is that it supports both musl and gnu libc implementations of the standard shared Linux library. The most recent kernel version is 5.9.16_1, which is so cool to run recent Linux kernels on such old hardware.Īs I highlighted in my brief look at MacBuntu several weeks back, you can make a strong argument that older machines should stick with software from its period just for speed alone, but it is cool to be able to use more recent Linux kernels, desktop environments, and other open source applications on your ancient Mac. For example, when the newest XFCE4 desktop environment was released on December 22, I was able to update to the latest and greatest XFCE4 as of January 1. However, packages are frequently updated. In the larger picture, Void Linux stands out due to its own package management system called xbps, and per the main distribution website, it emphasizes stability over a rolling release. The main target and energy around the distribution focuses on newer PowerPC machines, including Raptor’s Blackbird line of motherboards and machines, but our older PowerPC Macs are supported, including install instructions and well-organized tips and tricks to get started. The distribution is not official but driven by a dedicated group of developers using Void Linux as its base. Void Linux PPC is an up to date, community-led Linux-based OS. Say hello to Void Linux for PPC, pictured above running on my Mac Mini G4. Wouldn’t it be nice to tinker with modern up to date software in a more secure operating system? Of course, it’s not the end of the world to use dated but perfectly functional software to write our papers, design websites, create graphics, and so on, but getting our PowerPC Macs online in a secure and functional way with the complexity of the modern web gets trickier each year.ĭon’t forget that Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) received its last security update… a long time ago. We can count on one hand, maybe two, the amount of software packages that are still being actively maintained and updated for our hardware, including the valuable TenFourFox. As our Power Mac G5s and other PowerPC Macs age rapidly, our machines are trapped in time.
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