Gentoo linux on PPC

UPDATE

The following was up to date through June of 2004, after that I've since gone back to running Mac OS X and I'm very happy with it. I've left this page here as useful information for anyone who wants to try Gentoo on PPC hardware

Specific HW: iBook Dual USB G3 600MHz 2002

This document serves to outline the steps I took to install Gentoo Linux on my iBook. The steps explained here are those steps that were additional to the installation process described by Gentoo. As a general note the documentation on Gentoo's website is IMHO the best document set for any present linux distribution. This is not to say that anyone is capable of reading the docs and installing Gentoo, it is a complex process and the more familiar you are with linux the better off you'll be. On the other had the completeness of the Gentoo Docs means that if you read through the whole process and think "hey that makes sense and doesn't sound bad" then you will be just fine. The small size of this page is an indicator of how complete the instructions are.

Why Gentoo?
Compiler Flags
USE Flags
Modem

Why the heck would you want to install Gentoo!?

This isn't quite the response I first got, it was actually:

What are you compiling here?
(notices my web page at the Gentoo Documentation)
Oh no... you're not one of _those_ people are you?

Now I have good reason to trust this person's opinion in matters of linux. But there are of course people with the opposite opinion, and some of them are at least as trustworthy. One in particular is my college roommate who has since gone on as a sysadmin and continues to impress all of us regarding linux/computing matters. I'm not the type of person to skip an experience simply because one person said to avoid it... so here I am.

What allows gentoo to work for me: a) free time over break b) renewed respect for ibook now that it has linux on it c) reports of success with gentoo on ibook in modem and sound d) curiousity regarding opimized compiles and performance boosts. e) single-machine with no immediate mission-critical requirements

As of now I currently have X, KDE, LaTeX, and KDE-networking fully up and running. As well as full modem functionality, full sound functionality, full AirPort functionality and of course full Ethernet functionality. This after less than one week of part-time tinkering in gentoo. The scoffs continue at work but to each h(is/er) own. I'm enjoying the process and I know more about the individual details that make my system work and I have taken less time to get semi-supported features working that I took in either YDL (on this machine) or RedHat (on x86 machines). I cannot say that Gentoo will always work for you. I cannot say it will ever work for you. But if you own an ibook, love linux, and share any of my curiousity then I can say you should be better off having played with it. Enjoy. and let me know how it turns out.
peace, AMCD

Compile options in make.conf

The ppc install setup some choices in /etc/make.conf, none of which were exactly like what I found at freehackers.org which are:

CHOST="powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-mcpu=750 -O3 -pipe -fsigned-char -mpowerpc-gfxopt"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"

In fact the above is all that I have in my make.conf (aside from a geography specific SYNC setting, set this if you'd like to). I changed this setting after having already compiled a fair number of things. I'll probably end up re-compiling the kernel and perhaps kdebase but that took so long in the first place that it won't happen anytime soon.

USE flags in make.conf

USE="-alsa -emacs imagemagick -gnome pdflib tiff" I use fvwm2 and enlightenment for now but I've gone to KDE on occasion too so I didn't disable functionality completely for it. Imagemagick for most image stuff (gimp too), and pdf's are handy.

hcfusbmodem

The hcfusbconfig package needs to be commented out in /usr/portage/profiles/package.mask if you want it to emerge. I use it but I don't trust it. First off it's closed so I only use it with bitter hatred toward software modems and closed source. Second don't leave the modules loaded any longer than you need to. I have trouble if it's gone to sleep with these loaded. That is hcfusbserial, hcfusbengine,and hcfusbcore.