FreeBSD on ibook G4 circa 2004

[Michael Dinon]

On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 12:06 PM, Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn at freebsd.org>wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, 2 Feb 2011, Michael Dinon wrote:
>
>  Hello,
>>
>> I am looking for viable alternatives to keep an old ibook I have running
>> relevant software.  I have in the past used Debian and various other Linux
>> distros but support for PPC seems to be becomes less and less viable.  I
>> had
>> looked previously at the BSD's as an option for PPC and found various
>> information although somewhat limited.  I am curious how well supported is
>> PPC by FreeBSD, is there anyone on this list running similar hardware and
>> using FreeBSD on as a laptop as opposed to server duty?  I know the
>> Broadcom
>> Airport Extreme card is not well supported by most opensource OS's.  When
>> looking at some of the FreeBSD info on PPC I saw that at one point certain
>> keyboards and trackpads were not supported which required USB keyboards,
>> is
>> that still true?  I also stumbled on a new installer bsdinstall, has
>> anyone
>> used this on similar hardware?  Also does one need to keep an hfs
>> partition
>> still?  I seem to remember Linux required an hfs partition, not sure if
>> that
>> is true of the BSD.  I don't plan on needing OSX.  Anyway thank you in
>> advance for any help or suggestions.
>>
>
> Hi Michael --
>
> I'm typing you this message over wireless on a 1.4 Ghz G4 iBook in FreeBSD,
> so it works pretty nicely. The wireless driver (bwn) has some kind of issue
> with the antenna gain, so I need to be closer to the AP than in OS X, but
> otherwise the system works quite well. All hardware is supported except the
> internal modem.
> -Nathan
>


Well that is definitely good to hear.  If I am correct you are the person
who is working on the bsdinstall installer I ran across.  Is there anything
I need to be aware of from a installer point of view?  Does automatic
partitioning work on PPC, do I need to create any special hfs partitions or
does the installer handle it without much intervention?  Thank you for such
a quick reply.

-- 
Mike