Linux on PowerPC [LWN.net]

Linux on PowerPC

Posted Jul 16, 2010 22:42 UTC (Fri) by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
In reply to: Linux on PowerPC by giraffedata
Parent article: Linux on PowerPC

When looking at this from a CentOS point of view, the RHEL PowerPC port is not meant for Macintosh systems. It is 64 bit for IBM pSeries systems which are a completely different beast.

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Linux on PowerPC

Posted Jul 16, 2010 23:13 UTC (Fri) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]

The userspace should match up pretty well, especially for the G5s. The most significant problem would be supporting the kernel.

RHEL 6 on the PowerPC?

Posted Jul 17, 2010 17:34 UTC (Sat) by dowdle (subscriber, #659) [Link]

Someone just asked about PowerPC support on the RHEL6 beta mailing list and I replied back with a subscriber link to this article. I assumed that the PowerPC would not be supported in RHEL 6 but it appears that is not the case as they have come out with a PPC release of RHEL 6 beta.

As mentioned it is only for server hardware, primarily the IBM pSeries.

See this post for more info:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/rhelv6-beta-list/2010-July/msg00118.html

RHEL 6 on the PowerPC?

Posted Jul 17, 2010 18:06 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

Well, I'm confused about the multiple faces of PowerPC. If it takes different code to run on a Macintosh and an IBM System P, how come the distributions (and kernel arch) have always just been called "powerpc" instead of "macintosh" and "ibmp"?

Or is Red Hat just making a statement about what it's willing to fix problems on?

(BTW, IBM renamed the product line in question from "eServer pSeries" to "System P" in 2005, reflecting its admission that the four series of eServer were really separate product lines. In 2000, IBM created the eServer brand in an attempt to present the image that its four lines of computers (previously called System/390, AS/400, RS-6000 and NetVista or something for the x86 machines) were really just one.)

RHEL 6 on the PowerPC?

Posted Jul 18, 2010 1:03 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Red Hat supports certain set of packages in a server product for PPC and does not have a PPC client release for RHEL 6. The demand for client PPC systems were already low in previous releases and has gone down even further recently.