Which platform should I download for FreeBSD?

[Justin Hibbits]

On Sun, Sep 9, 2018 at 11:14 AM Matthew Seaman <matthew at freebsd.org> wrote:
>
> On 09/09/2018 14:20, Miroslav Lachman wrote:
> > Jason Lindsey via freebsd-arch wrote on 2018/09/09 01:53:
> >> I hope you help me,
> >>
> >> I own a iMac 64, and do not know if I should download amd64 or arm64
> >> platforms to support FreeBSD.  I would appreciate an answer to my
> >> question ASAP, in that I currently learning Solaris 10 and other
> >> versions of BSD software.  I would like to include FreeBSD in my studies.
>
> Solaris 10 is SysV, not BSD.  You have to go all the way back to SunOS
> 4.x for the last BSD variant from Sun.  A pedantic distinction I know,
> but it's what some of us live for.
>
> > I don't own any Apple products but AFAIK all modern Apple computers are
> > using Intel x86 CPUs. If this is true for your model then you need to
> > download amd64 version of FreeBSD system.
>
> According to Wikipedia (the source of all knowledge....) the iMac G3, G4
> or G5 systems were based on PowerPC processors --
>
>  - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G3
>  - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G4
>  - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G5
>
> However those were discontinued in 2006 in favour of the Intel based iMac
>
>  - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_(Intel-based)
>
> So, unless the OP has a rather elderly machine, amd64 is the
> architecture you need.  There did use to be some PPC support in FreeBSD,
> but it never was a Tier-1 architecture, and I think it's basically
> unsupported if not gone entirely on up-to-date versions of the OS.

PowerPC is well supported, and even has two new quite active
developers.  It runs on older Apple hardware, IBM POWER* server
hardware, and embedded Freescale Book-E hardware.  I myself have all
three variants: multiple PowerMacs and PowerBooks, 3 Book-E systems
(including two desktop systems), and a Talos POWER9 system, all
running FreeBSD.

There is a strong effort underway to have official PowerPC packages
built as well.  So it's far from being unsupported.

- Justin