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 TEST CENTER SuSE puts Linux on your Mac today By P.J. Connolly, InfoWorld Test Center January 12, 2001 SuSE's Linux 7.0 for PowerPC offers ease of installation, support for IBM and other systems, and just might make waiting for Mac OS X unnecessary
Unfortunately, one of Linux's major marketing setbacks is that it's still considered a fringe system. Although it's easy to assume that all Linux action takes place on Intel-based machines, that is not the case. In fact, a small but growing number of vendors are committed to supporting Linux on PowerPC (PPC) machines. The most familiar player in this market is probably IBM, which is pitching its AIX 5L as the next-generation OS for its RS/6000 customers, but vendors such as Linux giant SuSE and TerraSoft aren't letting this race go on without them. Last November, SuSE released its Linux 7.0 for the PowerPC platform, a high-quality distribution that earned a score of Very Good in our testing. In fact, we found the product to be superior in some ways to SuSE's parallel offering for Intel platforms. It's all about the hardware One of the most difficult decisions vendors make regarding any OS port is which hardware to support. In the case of Linux-on-Intel vs. Linux-on-PPC, there lies an odd duality. On Intel systems, just about any box will do, and your biggest problems will likely concern device-driver support. A narrower range of hardware is supported with the PPC, but because the supported configurations are common ones, you're much less likely to run into device-driver problems and your installation will therefore go much more smoothly. Some of these support differences stem from product cycles and the highly competitive nature of the Linux market. We confirmed this suspicion when we compared our experiences with SuSE's Linux 7.0 for PowerPC with our recent adventures installing SuSE's Linux 7.0 for Intel. During the Intel installs, we had problems with network and video drivers, whereas our installation on a "beige" Apple Power Macintosh G3 came off hitch-free. The biggest difference between the success and failure of the respective installations was that the distribution for Intel contained a new release (Version 4.0) of the XFree86 X Window System software, whereas the distribution for PPC incorporated XFree86 version 4.01. Although SuSE's list of supported PowerPC machines meets the eyes with as many "not supported" entries as those that are "supported," the rules are pretty straightforward. The updated list is available on SuSE's Web site, but we'll summarize them here: There's no support for Amiga's PPC family -- which we can live with -- but all the crucial Umax PPC machines are supported. A handful of IBM's PowerPC offerings are also supported, and the only other vendor mentioned is Apple. But not every PowerPC-based Macintosh is supported. If you have a G3 or G4, you're probably OK unless you ran out and bought a G4 Cube (which won't be supported until later this quarter) at Apple's recent fire sale. iMacs and iBooks are also good candidates for SuSE Linux 7.0, but forget about anything using NuBus, which means most of the original Power Macintoshes, many Performa models, and the Workgroup Server family. And even within the supported list of models, there's a huge difference in how you're going to be able to boot the system. These limitations mostly hinge on Macintosh's hardware infrastructure. Older G3s, roughly defined by the beige plastic case and the lack of USB ports, must boot from within the Mac OS. For the newer "fruit-flavor" G3s, SuSE documents the detailed steps for modifying the firmware to permit a true dual-booting capability. Although it's always better to install Linux to a new hard disk, you can always back up your existing Mac OS environment, repartition your hard disk to make room for the Linux partitions -- which can't coexist with Mac OS -- reinstall the Mac OS, and restore from your backup before getting started. Kind of a drag, yes, but possible. We did it. That peaceful, easy feeling SuSE's Linux 7.0 for PPC's install used the same YaST2 (Yet another Setup Tool) utility we saw during our SuSE Linux installations, but with much happier results. Because we used a beige G3, we had to manually install the loader data and the Mac OS program that loads Linux onto a small HFS (Macintosh Hierarchical File System) partition. Two mouse clicks later, and with no hair-pulling frustration involved, we were running Linux and X Window and accessing all of the data we'd left on our Mac's main HFS partition. The Mac on Linux (MoL) environment allows users to run a fully networked Mac OS environment within Linux, a great way to provide training wheels for new users. How does this product compare or relate to Macintosh OS X? We recently looked at the Mac OS X Public Beta release and were very impressed (see "Mac OS X delivers clean, refreshing Aqua.") There are two main differences between Mac OS X and SuSE's product: SuSE for Linux 7.0 is already shipping and the Mac OS X does not ship until March 24, 2001; and of course SuSE's product is Linux whereas the Mac OS X is built around BSD. Battle it out among yourselves, but we're giving the nod to SuSE because of its sheer volume of packaged tools and its thorough documentation. (We admit to finding a few spots where the text reverted to German, one in a key passage describing the partitioning scheme, so we're very glad that our limited foreign-language skills haven't totally lapsed). Overall, the SuSE Linux 7.0 for PowerPC earns a Very Good score thanks to its top-notch contents, simple installation, and dynamite overall usefulness. One of the readiest environments for a solution such as this is the education system, where a number of schools have a large investment in Macintosh hardware but are facing a growing demand to support Linux. Because academic budgets are notoriously tight, this may prove a successful way for campus IT managers to make better use of their existing equipment. Return to Test Center In Focus Enterprise operating systems P.J. Connolly (pj_connolly@infoworld.com) is a Senior Analyst in the Test Center who has believed for more than 15 years that platform-agnostic people have never used a Mac.
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