Which Linux/UNIX is best?

[nyteschayde]

Are there any decent distributions that will run on a m68k based Amiga? How about PowerPC systems?

I have two Amigas, one high and one low end. I have

A1200
 - 2MB Chip 4MB Fast
 - 020/881
 - KS3.1

A1200(T)
 - 2MB Chip 192MB Fast RAM
 - 68060/603e PPC
 - Mediator
 - Indivision
 - Voodoo 3 2000
 - ATI Radeon 9200

I can provide better specs. Both machines have HDDs of course. Looking for a Linux/UNIX that would happily live on both (doesn't have to be the same distro).

Any suggestions?

[the_leander]

Are there any decent distributions that will run on a m68k based Amiga? How about PowerPC systems?

I have two Amigas, one high and one low end. I have

A1200
 - 2MB Chip 4MB Fast
 - 020/881
 - KS3.1

A1200(T)
 - 2MB Chip 192MB Fast RAM
 - 68060/603e PPC
 - Mediator
 - Indivision
 - Voodoo 3 2000
 - ATI Radeon 9200

I can provide better specs. Both machines have HDDs of course. Looking for a Linux/UNIX that would happily live on both (doesn't have to be the same distro).

Any suggestions?

NetBSD is probably your best bet these days, but I'll be up front with you now: Any Linux/bsd you manage to get running on an Amiga (which is no mean feat in itself) is going to be hopelessly out of date and dreadfully slow.

Honestly you'd be better off dropping £50 on ebay and getting a shoebox PC, the software will be more up to date/usable and it'll have the advantage of more modern distros that are a whole hell of a lot easier to install.

YMMV, of course.

[Golem!dk]

I'm guessing that first config has no MMU, so that's out. As for the mediator, I wouldn't expect it to be supported, but you get to choose between 68k and PPC there. It will be some work to get it setup, no idea how much experience you have already. I guess for Linux you have Debian and Gentoo to try, NetBSD could work (amigappc is still in early stages, but has seen some work recently).

[whabang]

A PPC-specific distro on the 603e seems like the best option. It'll run much faster than the 68k, and will be able to use fairly recent software too.

There was some kernel patches that made older lunix kernels run on systems without an MMU, but I doubt you'll get it to run with any recent software.
Edit: Seems the project is still going on, and are actually working with Coldfires: Linkety-link!

[Karlos]

Debian PPC for the tower?

[Piru]

A1200
 - 2MB Chip 4MB Fast
 - 020/881
 - KS3.1

A1200(T)
 - 2MB Chip 192MB Fast RAM
 - 68060/603e PPC
 - Mediator
 - Indivision
 - Voodoo 3 2000
 - ATI Radeon 9200

Looking for a Linux/UNIX that would happily live on both (doesn't have to be the same distro).

There's no such distribution I'm afraid.

The basic A1200 without MMU isn't going to run any decent distro.

The high-end system would only be able to use AGA output, and wouldn't be able to use any of the devices connected to the Mediator.

[Karlos]

I read recently that the Debian crowd were seriously continuing with M68K, but only in the guise of ColdFire.

[mfilos]

AFAIK NetBSD runs just fine under 030+ Amigas. Don't expect any usable X system for it though.
For PPC I can only recommend Debian PPC (Apus) since I have done it, but it's really a pain in the a$$ to setup (OFC Only if you have hardware that it's compatible like BPPC/CSPPC with BVision/CVisionPPC)

Just to mention some stuff...
- Installing Debian is nowhere documented as a guide.
- Most peepz that successfully done it, were on A4000D with CSPPC with some info written in German websites.
- Even from some of the steps, the paths and repos for Debian have been moved to other servers and paths which will make you search like the nub and sometimes just guess
- To be able to install you DEFINITELY need to acquire specific PCMCIA network adapter that works with Debian (for example NONE 3com cards work). (Unless you can do it with only the CD's that I haven't tried)
- Apart from all this, you need to download Debian and boot it with parameters that are not documented anywhere (so according to your setup it might need a twinkering to the Bootstrap command)
- After successful installation, you need to edit the repos list in Debian cause nothing exist in the predefined paths
- Even when you install and everything runs like a charm like mine... you'll realize that you wasted 2 days installing Debian which is totally cool, but it's Kernel doesn't support Permedia and need to recompile a new one (that step I haven't done) but it works fine without it. Gnome is really slow but it works

Just for proof I'm attaching 2 photos:

[strim]

Work on NetBSD for classic Amigas with PowerPC cards is progressing. Thanks to Frank Wille, Jukka Andberg and a cast of thousands, now we have NetBSD fully utilizing processing power of Cyberstorm PPC and Blizzard PPC cards. There are still many problems and bugs to be solved, but the system is already booting and working in single user mode.

There is no binary release yet, but anyone can pull the sources out of CVS repo, apply patches submitted to port-amigappc at netbsd.org mailing list, build it and test!

[nyteschayde]

First of all, thanks everybody for the responses. I wonder if you could provide your setup and the things you've figured out someplace. Perhaps even just a zip of your file system is a good start. In theory, only the bootloader (or bootstrapper which ever is used on the Amiga setup) would be required in addition to a zip of your fs.

I just wanted easy access to a decent compiler and perhaps play around with my Amiga on a more usable system than my flaky OS4 PPC setup. Sounds like finding the newest (still old) version of GCC for the Amiga is a better bet.

AFAIK NetBSD runs just fine under 030+ Amigas. Don't expect any usable X system for it though.
For PPC I can only recommend Debian PPC (Apus) since I have done it, but it's really a pain in the a$$ to setup (OFC Only if you have hardware that it's compatible like BPPC/CSPPC with BVision/CVisionPPC)

Just to mention some stuff...
- Installing Debian is nowhere documented as a guide.
- Most peepz that successfully done it, were on A4000D with CSPPC with some info written in German websites.
- Even from some of the steps, the paths and repos for Debian have been moved to other servers and paths which will make you search like the nub and sometimes just guess
- To be able to install you DEFINITELY need to acquire specific PCMCIA network adapter that works with Debian (for example NONE 3com cards work). (Unless you can do it with only the CD's that I haven't tried)
- Apart from all this, you need to download Debian and boot it with parameters that are not documented anywhere (so according to your setup it might need a twinkering to the Bootstrap command)
- After successful installation, you need to edit the repos list in Debian cause nothing exist in the predefined paths
- Even when you install and everything runs like a charm like mine... you'll realize that you wasted 2 days installing Debian which is totally cool, but it's Kernel doesn't support Permedia and need to recompile a new one (that step I haven't done) but it works fine without it. Gnome is really slow but it works

Just for proof I'm attaching 2 photos: