State of Gentoo on OS X? Intel Macs?

Message

tallest · Post by **tallest** » Thu Jan 26, 2006 4:25 pm

Hello,

I've tried Gentoo on OS X before, but with little success. It's been so long that I was wondering what the state of Gentoo on Mac OS X is today. Are ther a significant number of ebuilds availible for it? Is it useful? What is your opinion (informed or uninformed)?

I would use it primarily to get a functioning LaTeX package in OS X and perhaps update vim and a few other CLI apps. Would you reccomend Gentoo for my purposes?

Finally, will Gentoo support the new Macintels in OS X (I would need it for my new MacBook, when it comes)?

Thanks very much,
Aaron

jdgill0 · Post by **jdgill0** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 3:49 pm

tallest,

Do you mean that you have tried Gentoo on an Apple G4 or G5 in the past, as opposed to trying Gentoo on OSX? I don't have any first hand knowledge about Gentoo (or even GNU/Linux) on Apple G4 or G5 computers. However, I can say the new Apple computers run on Intel chips, as you mentioned, as opposed to IBM Risc chips (i.e the G4 and G5). These chipsets are totally different. There are a couple differences that I know about between Apple's Intel chips and the common Intel chips. One is the OSX boot process looks for a hardware check to insure it is running on an "authorized" Intel chip, i.e. one that is intended to be running OSX -- Apple's way of controlling what computers we install OSX on. Two, I seem to recall the Intel based OSX machines may use Intel's new bios replacement. I can't recall the name of Intel's bios replacement, but it replaces the typical bios that is found in x86 motherboards. I am not sure what the current state of the Linux Kernel's support of this "new bios." Otherwise, the Intel based OSX machines are using the same Intel chips that everyone else is using. So there should be zero difference in running Gentoo (or GNU/Linux in general) on Apple's new computers and any other x86 based computer. Hence, whether or not Gentoo supports these Apple machines depends I would guess on Grub's and the kernel's support of the bios replacement.

tallest · Post by **tallest** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 5:31 pm

I've tried Gentoo for ppc on my iBook before, and everything worked great, but that's not what I'm talking about now. I'm wondering how well Gentoo portage for OS X works, and from reading some gentoo docs, It seems that it's still in its infancy. Most sites I read give no way to properly install it, saying that the installer that exists now is very old and buggy.

Has anyone else had a better experience with gentoo portage in OS X?

Aaron

jdgill0 · Post by **jdgill0** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 6:07 pm

tallest,

Ahhh, sorry about that. I wasn't reading what you posted all that carefully I guess. I didn't pay attention to the "portage on OSX" that carefully, doh

I can't say anything in that regards.

neonblind · Post by **neonblind** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 11:30 am

been wondering about that myself. I'm expecting my Macbook Pro to arrive within the next two weeks and I'd love to see gentoo running along with MacOSX on this machine. The Wiki isn't really clear about the current state. Though, I've read that the Intel chip shouldn't cause any trouble. Some say that you could use Pentium-M, others Pentium-4 for your CFLAGS.

Has anyone tried that on the new imac?

antiflag1980 · Post by **antiflag1980** » Thu Feb 09, 2006 8:43 am

I was wondering if this project would be revived also. I can't wait to see a new keword on packages.gentoo.org, I guess it would be "x86 macos" seeing as how the old one is "ppc macos". I think things would work a lot better just because the x86 arch is way better supported than ppc as far as linux goes because there are more users. I also think it would be cool to see portage simply for darwin, to see what gentoo is like just using a different kernel.

Cenrim · Post by **Cenrim** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 6:56 pm

portage for Darwin is firstly one thing: exhausting!

tried it before the first succesful receive of data using bcm43xx, but gave up.. to much manual adding of keywords and only one "VT" - w/o X... no way

Aonoa · Post by **Aonoa** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 12:34 pm

I'm also interested in seeing this project revived. I recently got my MacBook Pro and would like to have Portage on it, instead of Fink or Darwinports.

tallest · Post by **tallest** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 3:09 pm

Exactly why I want to use portage on OS X, but I'll be without my MacBook for a little while due to some dead pixels. Does anyone know if there's anything mere mortals like us can do to help?

Thanks,
Aaron

Aonoa · Post by **Aonoa** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 9:25 pm

You'll be without it due to dead pixels... you've sent it back? I didn't think you could get a new one without dead pixels.. I thought apple allows at least a couple of dead pixels on their LCD's. It can't be repaired unless a bit of "massaging" works, try rubbing the spot or spots for a minute or so. If it goes away, then hooray but don't count on it.

tallest · Post by **tallest** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 12:08 am

Yeah, I tried the "gentle massaging" and the epileptic videos and none of it worked. When I called Apple it had 28 contiguous dead pixels and they immediately offered a replacement (didn't even try to get me to have it repaired). By the time I sent it off it probably had 80-90 dead pixels (more than is shown in the picture in my previous post).

I FedExed it to them Monday (yesterday) on their dime and they already have it according to FedEx. They say the new one will ship out in 2-4 business days but some part of me, deep down inside, doesn't believe them.

Here's hoping,
Aaron

1clue · Post by **1clue** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 12:49 am

Getting back to the main point of your ordeal, why not just put LaTeX on OSX directly?

You can get the gcc compiler/etc for OSX right off Apple's web site last I looked, and I somehow got tetex on there. I think I downloaded the source and compiled it, but maybe it was a binary build from a darwin-oriented site.

1clue · Post by **1clue** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 12:56 am

Here's a darwin-oriented site package list. Tetex is on there.

http://pdb.finkproject.org/pdb/index.php?phpLang=en

tallest · Post by **tallest** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 1:07 am

Yes, but that's not the only reason I want gentoo, there are plenty of ways to get a LaTeX distribution for OS X. I want the power to upgrade some of Apple's stock OSS and install ever so useful things such as bash completion.

1clue · Post by **1clue** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 1:56 am

I hate to argue against finding a new distro, but the stuff you want to upgrade IS open source, so why not just download a new bash and compile it?

If you want to play with Gentoo on a mac, then by all means go to it. If you're looking for an excuse to do so, then pretty much anything will do. If, on the other hand, you only want bash completion and TeX, then it seems like you're chopping down a tree to get a tooth pick.

Aonoa · Post by **Aonoa** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 8:13 am

tallest is not the only one on here that wants Portage up and running on OSX, I'm right there with him. Building OSS from source is all fine and dandy, which I could do, but I want a package manager to help me run the system as I'll probably be building many applications. And in my opinion, when it comes to package managers nothing beats Portage.

1clue · Post by **1clue** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 8:36 am

I'd have to agree with that.

Personally I'm kind of surprised at myself for taking the stance I have taken here. I just saw the goal at the top of the thread, and it seemed that there was a much simpler way to accomplish it.

I have absolutely no problem with folks who want to get Portage or Gentoo working on a mac, if that's what they want to do. I'm not arguing that you shouldn't try. "Because it's there" is as good a reason as any to me.

As yet I have to find any serious flaw with Portage. It took me only moments to find flaws with RPM, and most of those flaws did not go away after years of using it. I similarly found flaws with almost every other package manager in only moments. Portage is the only one I took a hankering to from the first moment. As I said in another thread earlier, Portage is a good hack.

Aonoa · Post by **Aonoa** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 2:10 pm

Indeed.

Though, I think my ideal solution would be to partition the laptops two "processors" into being able to run Gentoo and OSX(with Portage) at the same time. Not quite certain if this is possible, yet.

And I'm not talking about dual booting, I'm talking about actually running both OS'es at the same instance in time.

1clue · Post by **1clue** » Wed Mar 08, 2006 9:02 pm

I know that some server hardware allows this. IBM mainframes and minis, for example.

I've never heard of anyone actually partititioning a PC though, so I'm not sure it has the hardware to fence off various peripherals.

mdeininger · Post by **mdeininger** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 9:42 am

well, qemu and Xen come to mind.

Xen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xen , http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/
Qemu: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qemu , http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/ , http://www.kberg.ch/q/

It's not *quite* the same as "paritioning" a CPU, but it's fairly similar... not sure if Xen works on PPC, though...

asph · Post by **asph** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 5:19 pm

hey, i just bought an iMac and i'm waiting for the delivery.

i see there's a forum called gentoo ppc, but i guess that's for the old apple computers with powerpc processors... does gentoo work on a new iMac (intel duo core)? which version should i install, normal x86 or ppc? is this the correct subforum to ask this?

thanks, i'm a little bit lost (i always used gentoo on x86)

Aonoa · Post by **Aonoa** » Wed Mar 22, 2006 9:55 am

The new iMac´s are intel based, so you use an intel based Gentoo (x86).

There is a bit tinkering necessary though, because of the EFI used instead of a normal BIOS.

asph · Post by **asph** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 7:57 am

oh that's great! thanks, i'll take a look

SickBoy · Post by **SickBoy** » Fri Mar 31, 2006 1:22 pm

Chalk me up as another user who would like to see more work go into Portage on OSX. I was able to install a package or two that I needed a couple of months ago, and it was just as easy as my other Gentoo systems and I really like the whole process.

I think, right now, ppc-macos's main problem is that not enough packages are even marked ~. Testing and patchwork is the only thing that cures this....

sonicbhoc · Post by **sonicbhoc** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 5:29 pm

jdgill0 wrote:Two, I seem to recall the Intel based OSX machines may use Intel's new bios replacement. I can't recall the name of Intel's bios replacement, but it replaces the typical bios that is found in x86 motherboards. I am not sure what the current state of the Linux Kernel's support of this "new bios." Otherwise, the Intel based OSX machines are using the same Intel chips that everyone else is using.

If you are talking about what I think you are, it's called "EFI," and the linux kernel has experimental support for it.