Linux on PowerPC [LWN.net]

Linux on PowerPC

Posted Jul 15, 2010 9:58 UTC (Thu) by alexbk (subscriber, #37839)
Parent article: Linux on PowerPC

Perhaps it should be noted that Apple's OS X is nowhere near unsupported on PPC: security updates for 10.5 are still produced, and latest versions of iTunes and Safari are still available. 10.6 is Intel only.

While Apple does not have an official support policy with expiration dates (I find it rather weird that nobody is bothered by this), the unofficial rule seems to be that version n stops being supported (as in "security updates quietly stop flowing in") shortly after version n+2 is released. 10.7 is not even pre-announced yet.

I find OS X a more realistic choice for extending the life of Apple's PPC hardware: to keep Linux running on such hardware you need to do continuous beta (and sometimes alpha) testing as my experience with Fedora PPC shows. Needless to say, hardware support is far better in OS X too.

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Linux on PowerPC

Posted Jul 15, 2010 10:50 UTC (Thu) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> Perhaps it should be noted that Apple's OS X is nowhere near unsupported on PPC: security updates for 10.5 are still produced, [...] 10.6 is Intel only.

Except it is practically impossible to find 10.5 or a 10.5 upgrade to buy. While 10.5 (the last PPC version) is quickly becoming a minimum requirement for running third party software.

So it does not look like well supported to me.