BSD that works properly on an old PowerMac G3 reddit / BSD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- swapdroprol · 2015-09-24 12:45 I've got an old blue and white PowerMac G3 floating around that I've had since new. It's got a 400MHz CPU, 20Gb disk and 512Mb of RAM in it. It was previously my email and admin machine which it works fine for but with the decline of certain SSL/TLS configurations, it's going to be a lemon on OSX in the near future. It is still running 10.4 to give you an idea... However I refuse to throw it away because it cost me a bloody fortune and still works fine. So... it's going to be repurposed as a dedicated AFP/netatalk server for a couple of newer macs and have a couple of 500gb firewire disks chained off it to run as a cheap NAS. So Q: Does anyone know which BSD is likely to take best to this machine and not poke me in the eye too much? Electricity is included in my rent so I can drink as much of it as I like before anyone says to throw it out because of the power consumption. Also if it blows up there's a healthy stock of replacement ones in the UK for about 20 quid so I can just swap the exploded hardware out. **Edit: so disaster zone...definition of a bad weekend 3 days later...** OpenBSD works fine on a G3 powermac. Good job OpenBSD team. However the fucking power supply exploded (capacitor) nearly causing an underpants accident when I turned it on yesterday morning. So this morning I went to the tip to drop the dead machine off and pick up a cheap PC desktop as a replacement (HP Elite 8000) from a nice person on gumtree (2.4GHz Core 2 duo, 4Gb RAM, 160Gb disk, DVDRW = £50!). This has enough space inside it for a 500Gb disk I have lying around that was going to go in a firewire external box. So I took it to bits, pulled the DVD drive out and when I pulled the SATA connector off the DVD drive it left the connector data pins inside the SATA plug which I was going to use for the second drive. Argh, so useless DVD drive (not a biggy as it can boot of USB which is what I was going to do anyway) . Finally got all that sorted with a new SATA cable for the second drive that cost a small fortune this morning from PC World, our local rip off merchants. So I go to turn on the iMac to grab an ISO image for a USB stick and PHUT goes the 2008 iMac. Dead as a dodo as well. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu... So to the wife's cranky old MacBook, wrote a USB stick and booted OpenBSD on the machine finally and am writing this from my new OpenBSD desktop in Chromium. Nowhere where I thought I was going to be but I'm a sudden BSD desktop user. Also discovering the value of portable data, the hard way. Restoring 20 years of data slowly from Apple specific crap onto OpenBSD is not fun. Never going to use any Apple kit or software ever again. The only thing I haven't worked out how to sort hardware-wise is an HP 2540 printer which may just go in the bin anyway as I have an old HP laser floating around that will probably just work. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- veritasserum · 2015-09-24 13:23 FreeBSD - strong possibility: https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/ppc.html NetBSD - see also: ~~https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/ppc.html~~ https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/macppc/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gumnos · 2015-09-24 14:27 I've run OpenBSD on my iBook G3 with no notable trouble (other than the failing hardware hinge that cuts off power to the backlight—something the OS can't accept blame for) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- swapdroprol · 2015-09-24 14:41 Thanks - that's a green light to have a go with that. Much appreciated. How quick is it on OpenBSD? I have a green one OS9 lying around as well (I seem to collect old crap). ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MidnightCommando · 2015-09-24 14:46 I've run OpenBSD on one, it worked perfectly. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- gumnos · 2015-09-24 15:13 Mine has 1.5gb of RAM and was responsive enough for my experimentation, but I didn't push it very hard let alone run any benchmarks on it. The one-button mouse in X was the most annoying aspect. If I were to drag the laptop out again, I'd get an external mouse for it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jlisic · 2015-09-24 16:50 I have used one for a firewall running OpenBSD, I did not try X. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zoogyonthehump · 2015-09-24 17:21 So did I, great firewall for a number of years. The machine never broke down, had to toss it out recently. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- m1ss1ontomars2k4 · 2015-09-24 22:45 You linked to the same thing twice. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- veritasserum · 2015-09-24 23:29 Corrected. Thanks. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [deleted] · 2015-09-25 02:28 [deleted] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Nanuq · 2015-09-25 02:28 OpenBSD seconded. Running on a variety of architectures, including macppc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MidnightCommando · 2015-09-25 04:41 X11 worked amazingly with e17, with openbox+cairo-dock, with Xfce. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- josh64 · 2015-09-25 08:09 FreeBSD works great on ppc macs, but you need to compile everything from source. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- veritasserum · 2015-09-25 14:10 Good to know. I've used it for 20 years in various production settings. Although the initial install is done from a DVD, I do all subsequent upgrades using makeworld compilations. I would imagine this might be kind of slow on an old PPC, but I'm sure its doable.