The penguin has landed
So, I got my old/new iMac yesterday. I figured I’d try installing Gentoo on it, and if that didn’t work, try an easier install like Ubuntu or Yellow Dog. As it happens, the install worked fine. I did a minimal install, compiled the kernel, etc… and to my surprise, ended up with a working Linux system. :-) (I expected it to be crazy difficult, but it wasn’t so bad.)
I recommend trying this; it’s a great learning experience when you don’t know much about what makes Linux tick. I learned a lot, anyway.
Although the PPC version is not “official” (it’s supported by the community), it appears to be up-to-date and the installation went well. Granted, there were a few parts in the handbook that worked a bit differently in the newest version of Gentoo, but nothing I couldn’t figure out. Overall, the manual did an excellent job of guiding me through all the steps (many of which I had never done before, like setting up a file system from the command line, or preparing and compiling a kernel).
Now I just need to find a way to set the text mode to something lower than 128×48, and I’m golden… =)