According to Hoyle...
Alternative Macintosh Operating Systems
March 2008
By Jonathan Hoyle
jonhoyle@mac.com
macCompanion
http://www.jonhoyle.com
This month, we examine the various
operating system
alternatives that are available to the
Macintosh user. Although
Mac OS X and
Microsoft Windows
represent the operating systems that run on over 99% of all Macintoshes, there
are numerous others which are simply a download click away. The vast majority
of these are essentially different flavors of the same operating system:
Linux. In addition to
Linux, there are other
Unix-like operating systems,
as well as others which are unique onto themselves. There are literally dozens
of these options, although many are tied to very specific hardware, so the choices
for your particular Macintosh computer may be limited. For this discussion, we
will consider any operating system which is not a version of Mac OS or Windows.
Alternatives for the Intel-based Mac
For
Intel-based Macs,
there are two ways one can run Microsoft Windows: either by dual-booting via Apple's
Boot Camp,
or by running virtualization software (such as
Parallels Desktop or
VMWare Fusion). But can these
avenues be used for non-Windows OS's as well?
Apple's Boot Camp is specified to run
Windows XP or
Vista only. Apple has not
specified Linux as a possible choice for Boot Camp, but that doesn't
mean it can't be used. Users who wish to include Linux as an additional
Boot Camp option should visit
this article,
which details the procedure for triple-booting your Intel-Mac. It's a bit
involved, and there are the usual
device driver issues, but
after several hours, you can eventually reach your goal.
The far easier approach to running an alternative
operating system on your Intel-based Mac is through the aforementioned virtualization
software approach. Parallels opens the door to just about any modern Intel-based
operating system, including virtually all Linux distributions, any version of
Windows (from
3.1 to
Vista Enterprise),
FreeBSD,
Solaris,
MS DOS, and even the forgotten
OS/2, just to name a few. VMWare
Fusion boasts an equally impressive list of supported operating systems.
Essentially, the world is your oyster if you are a
promiscuous operating systems junkie with a modern Intel Mac.
What you cannot do (at least not on an Intel Mac)
though is run most
68K- or
PowerPC-based
operating systems, such as
Yellow Dog Linux.
You might be fooled into thinking that the
PowerPC emulator Rosetta
would assist in this endeavor, but Rosetta is a part of the
Mac OS X operating system and is not available when booting into another OS. If
you are truly intent on guest-hosting a PowerPC-based operating system on your Intel-based
Mac, your best chance is to check out
PearPC, a Windows-based PowerPC emulator which supports
Mac OS X 10.3,
Mandrake Linux PPC,
NetBSD/PPC and
AIX. Neither the
SheepShaver nor the
Basilisk emulators will
run these operating systems, as they fail to emulate the needed
PMMU processor. However,
both SheepShaver and Basilisk can support
guest operating systems within
Classic Mac OS (see the
Guest Operating Systems for the Mac section below).
Alternatives for the PowerPC-based Mac
Despite the strong Intel partiality that predominates the Linux
world, there is a surprising number of PowerPC-based Linux solutions available. Many of
these are simply PowerPC rebuilds of preexisting Intel distributions, including:
Debian,
Gentoo,
Mandriva (formerly Mandrake),
SUSE,
Fedora,
Slackintosh (a PPC version of Slackware), and the ever popular
Yellow Dog Linux
(a PowerPC packaging of
Red Hat Linux). In addition,
there are PowerPC ports of
OpenBSD,
NetBSD and
CRUX as well. Each
of these runs on more recent PowerPC-based Macs
(G4's or
G5's), although many also have prior
versions still available to download which will run on earlier hardware.
With Apple's abandonment of the PowerPC platform, there are already signs
that some of these Linux distributions are no longer being supported. For example,
Ubuntu Linux had supported
G3 Macs and later, but
announced
that support was ending after version
6.10 (early 2007). Other distributions
appear to have only half-hearted support for the Mac, such as
Rock Linux,
which tested against an older
iMac, but no serious development since.
Going back further,
LinuxPPC
was a version written for
PCI-based
CHRP models, including
Mac clones. This
initiative began in 1996 but eventually died in 2002. Much of this initiative
is now in the hands of
PenguinPPC.
LinuxPPC has also been ported to
Nubus-based Power Macs.
However, the most popular Linux available on these Nubus machines is
MkLinux.
One very powerful and rather exciting operating system
for pre-G3 Macintoshes was
BeOS. At the failure of the
Copland project
in 1997, Apple seriously considered acquiring BeOS as the foundation to its
next generation operating system, but the decision was instead made to adopt
NeXT as this foundation of the future. Although
officially defunct, BeOS lives on in the
hands of many enthusiasts.
Alternatives for the 68K-based Mac
Do you have an old 68K Mac sitting up in the attic somewhere? If so, you
may be surprised to find that you can dust it off and turn it into a Linux
server with relative ease. The
Linux/Mac68K project (formerly
MacLinux) has as its primary goal to allow Linux to run on as many
68K Macs as possible. Linux requires a
PMMU (Paged Memory Management Unit) processor,
which is not found on some of the earliest Macs. No
68000-based Mac has one, nor does the
68020-based
Mac LC. Fortunately, the
68030 processor has one built
in, so any 68030 or better Macintosh can be used. Even the
68060 is supported, for those Macs with
060 accelerator boards.
If you have the original 68020-based
Mac II, you have the
potential to run MacLinux, as this machine includes a socket for an optional
68851 PMMU to be installed. If
you are one of the lucky few with this already pre-installed, you are good to
go. Otherwise, you will have to purchase a 68851 and install it yourself. In
addition, you will want to have a minimum of 4 MB of RAM on board, but maxing
out your RAM is the recommendation for MacLinux. The latest version of
MacLinux updated the kernel to
version 2.2.25 (Fall 2003), and an
OS X cross-compiler
was made available in 2005 for developers interested in contributing.
Of similar vintage is
NetBSD/mac68K,
the 68K equivalent to NetBSD/macppc project referred to above. There are also 68K Mac ports of
Debian Linux and
OpenBSD (formerly MacBSD). If
that's not enough, true Unix thrill-seekers may try to locate
MacMach, a
4.3 BSD /
3.0 Mach Microkernel project that
was hot and heavy in the early 1990's, but I have been unable to find where it is today.
Many people think of Mac OS X as Apple's first
and only attempt to put the ease of a Macintosh interface on top of a powerful
Unix operating system. This is untrue, as Apple had its first Unix
implementation in the late 1980's with
A/UX. This wonderful operating system
was essentially an
SVR4 implementation with a
System 7-like
Finder and a compatibility
layer to run standard Mac OS apps as well as Unix ones. It even included a
command line
Terminal shell for those
more comfortable in that environment. This was a direct analog of Mac OS X for
68K Macs! Unfortunately, A/UX did not survive Apple's move to the PowerPC, as
IBM's
RISC-based
AIX was considered its replacement. The
final release of A/UX was
version 3.1.1
from 1995, and with a little luck, perhaps you may be able to find it on
Ebay or
Craig's List.
Guest Operating Systems for the Mac
In each of the operating systems discussed above, we
examined those which essentially replace the Mac's standard OS. However, there
are operating systems that may coexist with the native Mac OS as
guest
operating systems. These live and operate within application space,
thereby not removing the standard Mac OS, into which the user is accustomed to
booting. Essentially, these guest OS's are viewed as just applications by the
host Mac OS, whilst being an operating system onto themselves within their own
domains. The benefits to this approach include an easy installation procedure,
simplicity to launch (double-click like any other app), and the ability to coexist
with other Macintosh programs.
Guest hosting as an application, such as the 68000-based
Mac Plus or
Mac Classic. The
downside is pretty severe though: although these guest OS's can be
preememptive multitasking and
memory-protected in
themselves, they are vulnerable to the limitations of the host OS. For example,
a guest operating system running as a Classic application is itself multitasked only
cooperatively, and the entire environment may be breached by a single errant
Classic Mac program. Although this may appear as the worst of both worlds,
it does buy you the greatest simplicity of running a separate operating system.
With all of the free Unixes (Unices?) for
the Macintosh, you might understandably think that none could be sold commercially
by a 3rd party. If so, prepare to be surprised by
MachTen by
Tenon Systems, a 4.4 BSD implementation that
lives inside the Classic application space. After A/UX, this was one
of the more popular and well-supported Unix implementations available
back in the day. Versions
2.2 and 2.3
were the last to support 68K, whilst version
4.1.4
was the end of the line for PowerPC. None of the product literature indicates
if MachTen will run in the Classic Environment under Mac OS X; I
emailed Tenon about this and was told that they remember having had success in
testing under Classic. In late 2002, Tenon announced their discontinuance of
MachTen, marking it down from its high of $695 to a mere $99 "while
supplies last".
Apparently supplies were in quite abundance at the
time, since more than 5 years later, MachTen remains available
on
their web site for the same $99.
There are a couple of other alternative 68K Mac operating
systems which live inside application space. One is the rather famous
MacMinix,
a 68K Mac distribution of
Minix,
the Unix-like operating system well known to computer science
students of the 1980's using
Andrew Tanenbaum's textbook
Operating Systems Design and
Implementation.
Whether or not you believe that
Linus Torvalds stole Minix
from Andy Tanenbaum to create Linux, MacMinix is still worth a look. Another is
MacMint,
a Mac OS port of the
Atari ST operating system
MiNT, an OS written to be a
TOS / Multi-TOS compatible
replacement. MiNT is an acronym for MiNT Is Not TOS.
Coming Up Next Month: We look
back at the face of Basic development environments in 2008. See you in 30!
Read all of the According to Hoyle columns.
http://www.maccompanion.com/macc/archives/March2008/Columns/AccordingtoHoyle.htm