BSD on iMac G5 PPC

[Cato]

Hey guys

Allow me to apologize in advance for yet another "which BSD should I choose?" thread.

That being said, I have just dug up my old iMac G5 powerpc and I'm trying to figure out which flavour of BSD to install on it. I currently have both FreeBSD and OpenBSD running on two different machines and I like both of them a lot. Since the old iMac is the only desktop I own currently, I intend to set it up as a server which I should be able to ssh to on occasion when I need to access anything back home. I would probably also use it as a desktop when at home sometimes, so being able to run a few linux-programs would be a nice addition. Since the internet in my current apartment is being upgraded so we get static IP's and possibility of opening whichever ports we want I thought now would be the time to set up a server.

Since I sometimes work as a freelance programmer for different clients, and the server might contain code for various projects, security is of course a big priority.

So, does anyone have experience with the different BSD's on powerpc hardware? What works? What doesn't?

[shep]

I do not have any powerpc systems but recall a recent thread that may be of some help. It also makes reference to FreeBSD hardware compatibility lists. OpenBSD has a hardware compatibility list.

This may be one of those situations where both will work.

[Cato]

Cool, missed that post when looking through the forums before.

Yeah, the iMac G5 (non-iSight) is listed as supported hardware for both OpenBSD 5.0 and FreeBSD 8.0. I would still love to hear from anyone who has experience running any of them though.

[Ninguem]

The FreeBSD PowerPC group has constant references to powerpc64 on the mailing lists with the last one concerning clang. The Open BSD group doesn't seem to be as active but, the perception of such is my own; feel free to join that mailing list also.
I encourage you to do such.

FreeBSD is at 9.0 and 10.0 for active development on PowerPC. Nathan Whitehorn also works with patches for qemu regarding powerpc and FreeBSD. The OpenBSD PPC team can be a great reference.

FreeBSD has separate kernels for 32bit and 64bit Power systems; OpenBSD has a single kernel for both but with macppc and socppc ports.

[lucho]

The only 64-bit BSD that runs on the G5 is FreeBSD. I've installed FreeBSD 14.2 release, lightdm and LXDE on my iMac G5 ALS with 2 GB of RAM and they work OK. There are 3 issues:

1. If using the ATI X driver which automatically loads "radeonkms", screen goes black when X starts.
2. The luminescent screen backlight stays on even if DPMS ("xset q") says that the display is off.
3. Browsers trying to playback audio crash, although the mixer and "cat {file} > /dev/dsp" work.

Today I've learnt that there is a PowerPC clone of Firefox 128ESR called Aquafox. I'm going to install OS X Leopard and Aquafox instead. May someday FreeBSD achieves fully working state on the PPC Macs!