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Putting Linux on my PowerBook

My experience in getting Linux on my Powerbook the way I want it. I first started with the obvious, i.e. installing LinuxPPC R5.

But I was uncomfortable with it. Now I had tons of software installed, without knowing what it is, how it get's configured etc. So I decided, I would want to build up my Linux installation step by step. I'd also try to build up everything in a as simple as possble manner, and get a Linux installation which is small and starts up fast.

First I got a bit accustomed in building a new kernel, and adapting some files to my needs.

But somehow I wanted to pursue a more radical approach, then just turn the LinuxPPC installation into something I would like. And then I had this problem, that during installation, my 2 GByte partition was created with too few inodes, so that I would end up using them all up before the disk was half full.

Having a spare 1GByte partition I first decided I would build up there a complete fresh installation. My plan was to set up there a minimal system, containing just what's needed, together with references to the old partitions, to compile and install packages, according to my ideas of an appropriate directory structure. But after preparing the disk I got into toubles. The transition to the new partition turned out to be more difficult I thaught. There were too much dependencies between each parts, like gcc expecting cpp in certain compiled in places etc. Whenever I fixed something, a new error popped up.

So I gave up, and instead used the "new" partition as backup, so that I could reformat the old partition.

After that I was ready to install the software I felt I needed.


Last updated: 1999-10-21 by Claudio Nieder