August 1999
Beginner
760 pages
23h 55m
English
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Preparing to Boot LinuxPPC
To get LinuxPPC installed on your Mac, you will have to partition your hard disk, install the OS, and configure your system for dual-booting LinuxPPC. Each step will be explained in detail later.
Booting LinuxPPC was revolutionized in 1998 when Benjamin Herrenschmidt released a utility called BootX, which gave PowerMac owners easy dual-boot capability. The BootX utility runs in the Mac OS as an application and comes with an extension that runs at system startup. Prior to BootX, the only way to boot PowerMacs was to edit their Open Firmware settings, which was a tricky proposition, at best. BootX also provides basic video support for machines that don’t have video drivers.
With the BootX system, the Linux kernel is stored on the Macintosh hard disk. When the user gives the command to boot into Linux, BootX issues shutdown commands to the Mac OS. Just when the Mac is about to restart, the Mac OS is kicked out of the computer’s RAM, and Linux begins to boot.
Getting the Mac Ready for Linux
Before you can see how fast your Mac really is, you have to do some work. You’ll need a hard disk or removable disk, preferably a gigabyte or larger, that you can repartition. If you have only one hard disk, you’ll need to get either an external hard drive or additional internal drive (if your machine has room for one) or erase the internal hard disk and repartition it! Unfortunately, there isn’t any non-destructive partition software for the Macintosh.
If you have a LinuxPPC ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.