Highlights:
rivafb stuff should work now
this cut should build/bootstrap with no trouble
this will probably boot and work an all newworld PMACs.
BootX is included on the ISO, so you can copy the kernel + initrd over with an oldworld pmac and still boot.

The new files can be downloaded .

About a week ago, someone asked me about how good the PPC port of Gentoo was. It was the first time I ever heard of a PPC port of Gentoo , so I was pretty surprised to hear about it. In a well kept effort, 2 PPC developers, Bryon Roche and Pieter Van den Abeele, have ported the grounds of the Gentoo Linux distribution to the PPC platform. This review takes a close look at the newcomer.

Gentoo PPC developers have put a third ISO image of their Install CD up. It hopefully fixes all the problems of previous images, such as missing libraries or missing programs. You can download it at the main Gentoo PPC .

As of today, Gentoo Linux no longer uses seperate package trees for the x86 and PPC platform. They have been merged and PPC users can now use the main rsync server to keep their ebuilds up to date and thus also benefit of the latest package versions. The previous PPC rsync server now acts as a mirror to the main server. now is also the only web site available to PPC users. All of the PPC specific documentation has been merged into the main site.

This ISO should fix some known problems, like a missing /sbin/genksyms and also now takes advantage of the x86/PPC merge and thus builds against core Portage. The new files can be downloaded here.

OSNews have Daniel Robbins, project leader and chief architect of Gentoo Linux, the new popular distribution that tends to be fast and scalable. He tells us a bit more about the future of Gentoo and reports excitingly of the success of Gentoo PPC in the PPC Linux community.

Just wanted to let all the Gentoo-PPC users know that I have put online some unofficial packages and a stage 3 tarball for ppc. There are both standard packages (should work on any PowerPC) and G4 optimized packages. They are all located at .

has officially released version 1.4_rc1 of their distribution today, including a PPC version. The main new feature is the full support of gcc 3.2. The new compiler can produce faster binaries than previous gcc versions and also supports Altivec on G4 machines. Other key packages are KDE 3.0.3, KDE 3.1-beta1, KOffice 1.2, GNOME 2.0.1 (2.0.2 on the way) and Mozilla 1.0 (1.1 available for testing), Kernel 2.4.19.

The stage tarballs can be found on the usual Gentoo Linux . A 1.4_rc1 install ISO will be available later on, so far it is recommended to use the older 1.2 install ISO to install the new 1.4_rc1 stages.

has just released two full-featured LiveCDs for the PowerPC: one with KDE 3, and another with GNOME 2. Take a look at in a window via .

Included on the LiveCDs:

• Custom PPC kernel (2.4.21-r1) with G4 AltiVec support
• Latest Mac-On-Linux emulator (run MacOS X in a window)
• Gentoo Compressed Loop 2GB live filesystem
• Xfree 4.3 (DRM) with either Gnome2.2.1/Metacity/Openbox or KDE3.1.2
• A complete set of Gentoo 1.4_rc7 PPC stages (for installing Gentoo)
• HFS(+) resizing kernel/parted patch (easily make room for Gentoo)
• IPv6 support out of the box
• Latest stable Mozilla release
• Distcc-enabled gcc toolchain (for distributed PPC compiles)
• Wardriving tools (kismet and airsnort)
• Routing/advanced iptables support
• Apache 2/SSL with php
• Countless other goodies

Gentoo recently released . One includes KDE and the other includes GNOME. I tried out the KDE version.

I've always been impressed by Knoppix, a Live CD for PCs with hardware detection second to none. Unfortunatly the Gentoo live CDs offer little of that but Gentoo has always been famed for its hardcore hacker reputation. There's no network setup on booting, I had to run dhcpcd eth0 to start it manually. Hard disks arn't mounted automaticly and there is no hfs utils or hfsplus utils, but impressivly HFS+ partition mounting, reading and writing is supported by the kernel. The volume is set to zero initially but after adjusting with kmix the sound works perfectly without any of the usual endian problems.

X isn't setup either, you're dropped into a command line with instructions to run Xeasyconf, Gentoo's text menu based XF86Config file generator. It's autodetection didn't work but then neither does Yellow Dog Linux's. I was able to get X working by simply manually selecting fbdev. Running startx as instructed starts up twm, a surprise since KDE is the main feature on this CD. Use kdm to get KDE started.

It's all stock software, a standard KDE build but it's right up to date with KDE 3.1.2, Mozilla 1.3, X 4.3.0 and Linux 2.4.21. Apache 2 failed to work due to an error in the configuration file caused by missing modules. Other quibbles include the default fdisk is the dos version, use mac-fdisk and KLaptopDaemon complains that my iMac has run out of battery.

I'm impressed at the effort that must have gone into making this, a labour of love for a small audience. The lack of hardware detection means it is unlikely to convert many MacOS X users but it might intrigue them and with over a gigabyte of software compressed onto the disk there's plenty to play around with.

Copyleft (GNU FDL) Jonathan Riddell 2003