The late PowerPC-era Macs are really fun to play with, because they're an interesting blend of modern niceties like USB and Ethernet but are limited with how old most software is. There's still a scene of people working on bringing newer versions of GCC and other *nix utilities to Tiger or Leopard, working with the pre-release PPC betas of Snow Leopard, and trying to keep online services working despite aging TLS versions and retired APIs. Compiling takes forever until it fails with an obscure C11 error or missing C library features. And that makes for a fun, if often frustrating, challenge.
But PPC32 Linux support is quickly falling off. Gentoo isn't just used because it's fun to leave your lampshade iMac G4 compiling a kernel for days, but because it's one of the few distros still supporting the platform. There's unsupported testing repos for Debian (and maybe Ubuntu?) plus the up-and-coming Adelie. Otherwise your best bet is OpenBSD - FreeBSD and NetBSD usually lack precompiled ports, and FreeBSD has announced the next major release will almost definitely drop 32 bit PPC.
The 64 bit G5 systems are much better supporte. I'm pretty sure they can boot ppc64le that many distros target. They're also even more modern - the final models had PCIe, SATA, and up to 16GB of DDR2 RAM. Sadly there's nothing modern about the power efficiency, nor the self-destructing water cooling system.
It's always bothered me that Apple has so little backwards compatibility. I suppose that's why Windows is used by most of the corporate world for "reliability" (more reliable than Apple), and "ease of use" (people don't want to learn command line for Linux). It's just the mid option
The incentives are very different (or used to be).
Microsoft was selling software and needed that software to work. Making it work in as much hardware as possible was a good thing.
Apple was selling hardware and needed customers to upgrade that hardware over time.
Microsoft sells hardware now too, and cares more about the cloud. So, they are not so much about deep compatibility anymore.
> It's always bothered me that Apple has so little backwards compatibility.
So little? macOS Sequoia is compatible with Macs that are over seven years old [1], macOS Sonoma goes back to 2017 [2].
At that point, it doesn't make much sense for anyone to still be operating these things in a production setting because of power efficiency and lack of RAM - and all Intel macOS machines can be used with even the most cutting-edge Linux distributions anyway if you wish to further extend their service life. If you need a modern Windows though, you'll most likely want to go via a hypervisor because of TPM concerns.
The old PPC clankers, it's a miracle the hardware is still running and they haven't died from bad capacitors, Soldergate or whatever in the time.
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/120282
[2] https://support.apple.com/en-us/105113
Is that good? Windows 11 officially supports computers from 2017 too, Linux way further. Ubuntu 24.04 will happily run on machines over a decade old with no problems.
And Apple has poor backwards compatibility. You can't run 32-bit Intel binaries on anything newer than 10.14. PPC has been out of the question for over 15 years. Meanwhile even on Windows on Arm you can run stuff made with XP or even Windows 98 in mind.
> Windows 11 officially supports computers from 2017 too
... assuming they have TPM 2.0, which is far from a given.
> And Apple has poor backwards compatibility. You can't run 32-bit Intel binaries on anything newer than 10.14.
Fair point. Apple is indeed more aggressive on backwards compatibility in software... which is both a blessing and a curse. At the very least, it forces app developers to stay at least somewhat current, which means that Apple has far less legacy garbage to drag around - unlike Windows, where Microsoft went through at least half a dozen completely different programming frameworks and paradigms alone relating to "how to draw a window on the screen" which it has to support to this day simply because otherwise the complaints would be endless. And Linux is even worse in that regard.
> PPC has been out of the question for over 15 years. Meanwhile even on Windows on Arm you can run stuff made with XP or even Windows 98 in mind.
If you really have such old software and a need for it... run it on a VM.
MacOS Sonoma only supports a single model from 2017. The iMac Pro. Everything else is left out. Much easier to find a PC from 2017 that has support for TPM 2.0.
Software devs come and go, there's no guarantee the dev will go back and update old software. Just look at the graveyard of abandoned Mac games on Steam. And even if they do, it often means rebuying or worse a subscription just for the sake of running what you already had.
Can I run something like Crysis in VM with good performance? Especially on a completely different architecture like ARM?
Apple's built their entire company on dropping backwards compatibility. It's how they've maintained their agility for so long, despite being one of the largest companies on the planet.
I am prone to defend them, but they do it in a sensical way (most of the time), I plugged in a G3 whose hard drive was last written to when I was playing hopscotch and when I connected it to wifi it had an official update patch ready for me. They aren't perfect but how many other companies do that. I'd argue that their unflinchingness to move on hardware-wise, and long software support is what gave them success.
Yeah imo they support backwards compatibility where it matters and their hardware is useful for longer as a result. They’re also not afraid to drop it when it’s important to do so.
Alas they didn't become one of the largest companies on the planet because of how they treated their macOS userbase.
Especially nowadays it seems their biggest asset became that they produce good PC-hardware on such a high economics of scale that they're almost unreachable in build-quality...
> Alas they didn't become one of the largest companies on the planet because of how they treated their macOS userbase.
I’m not so sure. We love to complain about Apple, but I don’t see many old timer Mac users now extolling the virtues of Windows. It’s dangerous extrapolating one’s own observations to the world at large, so maybe I’m wrong?
> We love to complain about Apple, but I don’t see many old timer Mac users now extolling the virtues of Windows.
This might be true, but macOS in general is not what made Apple one of the largest companies on the planet.
That's not about complaining, it's about correlation and causation. It's like saying Apple's Wi-Fi routers must be the best because Apple became one of the largest companies on the planet.
I'd say without the iOS ecosystem they would be a well-respected company in the premium tier of their industry, like Dyson or B&O.
I would say that counterintuitively, it’s a factor in the Mac’s strong indieware/botique software scene, which has been going for decades now. Most devs in that camp keep up with the platform changes and those who don’t get swept away, opening up space for someone else to fill that niche.
Can you elaborate further on what software project/products/companies you are referring to?
A couple of long-standing small Mac-focused companies that come to mind are Panic and The Omni Group, which have been building high quality software since the days of classic Mac OS and NeXTSTEP, respectively and are among the fastest to adopt new things coming out of Apple.
They've started to drop the ball, but Apple also was really good at simplifying things to the point that its infamous "just works" slogan was apt.
I switched to mac circa 2003 and reliably connecting to wifi was simple, clean, and intuitive. This was the height of the shitshow that was wireless networking on windows, where half the time windows would fight with the vendor software, etc.
I was even more shocked when I hit the "advanced" button and there was full and working advanced BSD networking settings cleanly laid out, from overriding IP/netmask/router, 802.1X, etc. Windows made it difficult and frustrating to apply these kinds of settings, because they wanted to hide it from the user.
This is not entirely true - they’ve invested quite a bit in maintaining backwards compatibility at least hardware side through various emulation or translation layers : first during the ppc/x86 migration then more recently with the x86 to arm shift.
They're a phone device manufacture, which is how they became the first or second largest company, depending on how the tariffs blow.
Mac and macOS are afterthoughts at this point.
They have somewhere near 10% share of the laptop market and the new Apple Silicon stuff absolutely cooks. For an afterthought, they're an exceptionally well-built and well-loved one that people enjoy using.
This isn’t true. They support old platforms for a long time.
At some point you need to move on. Can’t support ancient platforms forever.
Apple platforms only had command line after NeXT reverse acquision, it isn't as if A/UX was a huge success, so it is kind of ironic see that mentioned.
It was specially clear in the early days of MS-DOS versus Mac OS.
> It's always bothered me that Apple has so little backwards compatibility.
Hear, hear!
Outside the corporate world's devices, I insist that my personal computing choices bring me either high confidence or personally useful knowledge/growth, or I will ban the product/company with malice. I banned APPL for foisting the full load of supporting older devices onto me, and MSFT Windows 11 is facing my personal banishment for kicking all older (but perfectly serviceable) hardware to the curb.
I thank the Linux ecosystem every single day.
I'm writing this on a ten year old Mac with specs in line with what I see on dell.com as still available in new systems, with Apple still delivering some software updates yearly. All the apps I use have been available in both Intel and Apple Silicon flavors. I'm not sure how much more I can expect from Apple / the Apple ecosphere.
You say:
> specs in line with what I see on dell.com as still available in new systems
But I'm not sure if you mean the relative performance of an entry-level chip like the N100 or the raw numbers like "6-8 core, 3.8GHz" - the performance may be fine for your use-cases but doesn't actually compare to decade-newer chips like M2 when pushed.
> Apple still delivering some software updates yearly
They deserve a lot more credit for this transition than the PPC-Intel one, that's for sure...
...what Mac are you using then, again? Because I have a 2017(!!!!) MacBook Pro that's completely unusable due to its terrible performance and fans going at 100% all the time.
Open it and clean the fan. After it, it will work like a new one.
Apple hates when you do this but they can't stop you: I still have one of the original Intel Core Duo Mac Minis from 2006. I upgraded the HDD at one point and also installed Windows. I use it to run a CNC mill.
Doesn't this mainly come down to Macs using weirder architectures while Windows largely stuck to the IBM PC and its clones/descendants?
I'm also seeing more software lately talking about dropping support for Windows 7 or 8 after a certain release.
There's no reason today's macOS couldn't support a Classic environment, like the early releases of OS X. There are a lot of support costs surrounding such an environment, so I don't blame Apple for dropping it.
It supports x86 emulation, for now.
I believe Windows has seen more architectures than Mac OS Classic and OS X combined.
Windows 3rd party software often drops support because Microsoft doesn't support the OS. It could be the desire to use new APIs that aren't included in 7/8 (or soon to be 10), but it's hard to support an operating system as an app vendor that the OS vendor doesn't support.
I always liked VMware's statement that they would support NT4 and above -- like, no you can't.
* I believe Windows has seen more architectures than Mac OS Classic and OS X combined.*
I have never been a Windows user, but I used to keep an eye on it when NT was still the separate business version (pre-Vista) and my NT 4.0 (or was it 3.51?) CD-ROM had x86, MIPS, Alpha and maybe PowerPC support. When things weren’t as clear platform-wise, NT was really a multi-platform system. Since then also x86_64, IA64, ARM64.
CE adds SH3 to the processor list.
And ARM32.
Classic ran as suid root and was a big huge security hole on a multiuser OS. (which is probably why they got rid of it as soon as they could.) There are some more contained emulators of course.
> people don't want to learn command line for Linux
The same applies to Windows and Apple's OS.
The point about the command line is that it is there for people who want it. You can use all of them without using the command line.
Regarding OpenBSD: I don't know if 32 bit PowerPC support will be around for all that long, if one considers how many platforms have been dropped from OpenBSD in the last few years.
Also, it doesn't look like OpenBSD has binary packages for 32 bit PowerPC:
https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/7.7/packages/
Although I do see packages for OpenBSD 7.6 from last year:
https://cdn.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/7.6/packages/powerpc/
There's always NetBSD, though, which has tons of binary packages and which isn't going to be dropping architectures like PowerPC any time soon :)
7.7 isn't out yet, and frequently port builds take a while, so this is unsurprising and shouldn't be taken as a lack of support or impending discontinuation.
OpenBSD still supports the Alpha, which is an even older and rarer (albeit 64-bit) architecture.
It’s wild that OpenBSD still supports the architectures it does. I literally learned how to program on a G4 Mac running OpenBSD back in 2000. I think it was version 3.0 but I don’t really remember. It was a wonderful experience, and I chose OpenBSD because it was the only UNIX-like OS I could get to boot on that machine (I struggled to understand Debian’s esoteric instructions for weeks before I gave up). OpenBSD, by contrast, had essentially the same install program it has to this day. At the time, there were no printed books for OpenBSD, but I read the (surprisingly good) man pages and supplemented with a used copy of the FreeBSD handbook I bought on eBay. Good times.
> It’s wild that OpenBSD still supports the architectures it does have you looed at what NetBSD supports if you count the tier 2 ones?
https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/
At least one of the more obscure platforms openbsd supports are often due to someone(one person) willing to step up and do the builds.
I love reading when the luna88k maintainer comes out of the woods a month or two after release to announce that the packages are done building. Realisticly I expect there are a few 88k users. But based on the radio silence I see on the lists it feels like there is one heroic user who really likes openbsd and is willing to make it happen. I find it very inspiring.
The G5 doesn't have full little-endian support and to my knowledge can _not_ boot standard ppc64le kernels (which are targeted at the POWER8+ ISA). The only big endian stuff I could find when I tried to put Linux on my G5 was 32-bit, which does run on the G5 but likely means it's Linux support dies with its older PPC Mac brethren.
Oh, pardon my mistake! I've always wanted a G5 but have neither the space nor electrical capacity for one.
They are definitely power hogs. And slow.. Core 2 era Intel machines run circles around them.
But their obscurity just makes them kind of neat!
I still have my PowerMac G5 (Dual 2.0 GHz with 8 GB RAM)... still works but it is stashed with my other electronics "heritage" beside a 21 inches CRT Dell flatron monitor! and the 23" Apple Cinema Display I bought with the PowerMac. Such a well built machine. I wish Apple still made such an expandable chassis but with more compatible parts like it was with the Intel based Mac Pro. I believe the one I have still has Mac OSX Snow Leopard installed, the original Mac OSX that came with it was Panther, my favorite is Tiger though.
I ran Yellowdog linux on it, and Fedora 4 back in the days when I didn't want to upgrade to a newer OS right away and I liked it.
Both Chimera Linux and Adelie Linux have support for 32 bit PPC. They are fresh off the press distros. So, support can still be found.
I mentioned Adelie, but didn't think Chimera supports PPC32 (yet) - the founder used to maintain the PPC32 flavor of Void Linux so it's very possible.
> Compiling takes forever until it fails with an obscure C11 error or missing C library features. And that makes for a fun, if often frustrating, challenge.
Seems to me the trick to enhancing build times would be emulation using modern hardware, no? qemu, etc.
QEMU support exists, but needs TLC. The best it can do is "mac99" which emulates a 1st generation PowerMac G4 - it can run 9.2 - 10.5. But in my experience via UTM on a modern MacBook, it gains some Geekbench points like memory speed but loses a lot in others like integer performance.
I'm very glad that it exists but is not at a point where a powerful Ryzen or Apple Mx can compile (much) faster than real hardware.
Minor corrections
- Only the G5 *Quad* had PCI-E, all the others were PCI-X (yuck)
The Quad was also the only one to take DDR2 RAM, though did support up to 16GB
All Apple Macs though are PPC64 Big Endian, not ppc64le. This causes no end of problems with software that now assumes "IF PPC = LE"
All of the PowerMac11,2 models that used the dual-core on a single silicon 970MP G5s supported PCIe:
https://everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup/?search_keywords=Po...
The quad was just two dual cores in a single chassis, with an unfortunately prone to breaking liquid cooling setup.
I've never understood running PPC Linux on old machines. Unless you're interested in running some of the really weird and esoteric scientific packages, or you're trying to unfuck a machine (which I've used ppclinux for many times lol), I don't get the point?
These machines were built as a package. Both the software and hardware was designed with an ethos in mind. It's bespoke.
I can't tell you what to do with your hardware, but if you want to run old linux, you can just do that in like qemu or something.
I mostly agree, and dual boot Tiger and Leopard on my 1.67GHz PowerBook G4. But just as those OSes aren't very useful outside of novelty (or maybe some older Mac OS games that haven't been ported to a newer platform) so is running a modern Linux distro or BSD on it. The times I've done it, I've done the install, clicked around for a few minutes, and then move on. Sometimes struggling with and overcoming the hassle of installing an OS (or newer version of Bash on 20 year old Mac OS X) is the point. Journey vs destination and all that.
It's sort of surprising NetBSD doesn't support it. I thought almost the whole point of NetBSD was that it ran on anything.
My impression is 'the point' is more that NetBSD is a hobby OS which is easier to port to old hardware (so volunteers welcome). Newer commercial boards all run Linux.
It does?
https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/macppc/
And that OpenFirmware. Telnet to your BIOS?!
It's sad that support for these things always seems to just disappear. All software maintainers have to do is not touch it and not break it, and it would work forever, but no, they can't help themselves. Out of boredom of old things, they drop this... out of convenience, they deprecate that... and out of a refactor, they forget to keep thus... and suddenly, software that once worked fine is now gone. It's up to archivists and tinkerers to constantly fix these mistakes and restore these old platforms.
> All software maintainers have to do is not touch it
That seems okay...
> and not break it
Ah, there's the rub - when you're not actively testing on the platform, because no-one on your team has the relevant pieces around any more, then you don't know whether you've broken it.
And even if you do have the relevant pieces, there's a non-zero cost involved in testing every subsequent release on that environment, and implementing workarounds for every subsequent change or new feature in the future which fails to work on the old hardware, used by ~0.0% of your user base.
It's not just boredom that causes stuff to be dropped, it's when the cost of maintaining compatibility with the old hardware exceeds the benefit of retaining the compatibility.
Unfortunately, I don't think supporting a platform by providing prebuilt binaries is as simple as "just don't touch it". There's no guarantee things will continue to build for the platform, nor that upstream projects won't remove explicit support from their code bases if the effort to maintain it exists.