I just stumbled upon a wonderful archaeo-website, mostly frozen in 1999, and personally meaningful: https://www.mklinux.org
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I just stumbled upon a wonderful archaeo-website, mostly frozen in 1999, and personally meaningful: https://www.mklinux.org
This is the homepage of MkLinux, the long-defunct but historically important effort to port Linux onto PowerPC Macs. A pre-Jobs Apple co-funded this open-source project as an experimental step towards what would eventually become Mac OS X.
It was my first Linux. And I remember in a flash how people would pronounce it "McLinux”, and how I hated that so much, arggh.
Is “pre-Jobs" the right word for the bleak dozen years for Apple between Jobs's departure and return? “Inter-Jobs”?
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@simon_brooke @jmac I mostly remember mklinux for two things:
1. Oh cool you can run Linux on a Mac now
2. Holy balls this is slow -
@simon_brooke @jmac my understanding was that they carved Linux up into a series of cooperating servers running under a Mach microkernel. So the “Linux” in mkLinux was a fairly radical fork, not just e.g. a vmlinuz image built from an upstream source tarball.
(I ran mkLinux on a PowerMac 7100 back in the day. It required heaps of RAM because it didn’t support dynamic linking.)
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@simon_brooke Yup, that's what the "Mk" stood for. I think it was best-documented option for getting Linux on a Mac at the time, though, so naturally people read it as "MacLinux" but spelled weird.
I came across this last night because something made me curious about the origins and status of GNU Hurd, which—I learned—is also built around a Mach microkernel. And this stirred up some deep memories of doing terrible things to my poor Performa 6115.
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I just stumbled upon a wonderful archaeo-website, mostly frozen in 1999, and personally meaningful: https://www.mklinux.org
This is the homepage of MkLinux, the long-defunct but historically important effort to port Linux onto PowerPC Macs. A pre-Jobs Apple co-funded this open-source project as an experimental step towards what would eventually become Mac OS X.
It was my first Linux. And I remember in a flash how people would pronounce it "McLinux”, and how I hated that so much, arggh.
Wow, this brings back some memories... Also my first Linux on an old Performa 6116 that my family had.
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@simon_brooke Yup, that's what the "Mk" stood for. I think it was best-documented option for getting Linux on a Mac at the time, though, so naturally people read it as "MacLinux" but spelled weird.
I came across this last night because something made me curious about the origins and status of GNU Hurd, which—I learned—is also built around a Mach microkernel. And this stirred up some deep memories of doing terrible things to my poor Performa 6115.
@jmac @simon_brooke I think I have a MkLinux book and CD somewhere. But I spent far more time on LinuxPPC, and then later some time on Yellow Dog.
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Is “pre-Jobs" the right word for the bleak dozen years for Apple between Jobs's departure and return? “Inter-Jobs”?
@jmac To me, there's no such thing as a pre-Jobs Apple. It's like saying "pre-Jesus Christianity."
I would call those bleak years between his tenures "The Great Interregnum."
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I just stumbled upon a wonderful archaeo-website, mostly frozen in 1999, and personally meaningful: https://www.mklinux.org
This is the homepage of MkLinux, the long-defunct but historically important effort to port Linux onto PowerPC Macs. A pre-Jobs Apple co-funded this open-source project as an experimental step towards what would eventually become Mac OS X.
It was my first Linux. And I remember in a flash how people would pronounce it "McLinux”, and how I hated that so much, arggh.
@jmac I remember how you could crash an MkLinux install on a PowerMac 7200 by enjoying its pleasant booOOP! console beep a few too many times.
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@jmac I remember how you could crash an MkLinux install on a PowerMac 7200 by enjoying its pleasant booOOP! console beep a few too many times.
@stepleton That's how you know you're on the bleeding edge, baby
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@jmac To me, there's no such thing as a pre-Jobs Apple. It's like saying "pre-Jesus Christianity."
I would call those bleak years between his tenures "The Great Interregnum."
@_jimnelson_ @jmac
I have my own opinions about crApple. On the one hand, their security IS top notch but you have to manually enable it for it to be effective (e.g. Lockdown Mode, Advanced Data Protection). On the other, I wouldn't exactly call them "private." Just ask @ashleygjovik for details if she's allowed to give them out. -
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