Any suggestions?
dan k
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I was reading this thread and it got me wondering . . .
I've got a couple of working (I assume they still work anyway) Sparc10 boxen. I installed some sort of SunOS (Solaris IIRC) on them when I acquired them several years ago, though I've completely forgotten the details now. However I haven't forgotten the headache I got learning just enough Unix to make that happen though . . .
Can anyone recommend a best all-around OS choice for a Unix novice? I've got no real ambitions for practical use, but certainly I'd like to determine its value as a desktop workstation. Of course a Sparc's serving abilities are without question, but I have very little use for more than one server, my trusty PM9500/225/OS9 box serves my server needs quite servicably.
dan k
Is a *really* loaded question.
That said, given the hardware you're dealing with, I'd suggest NaziBSD, er, NetBSD. It has excellent full-featured support for SBus Sparc hardware, and is *reasonably* well documented. It's what's installed on my old SparcStation 5. It's very much a "roll your own" sort of OS, so expect a trial-by-fire getting things working, but it will be educational and teach you lots of useful skills.
Just don't expect wonders using that system as a desktop machine. It will run "UNIX-y" and lightweight graphical things competently, and might even be fast enough to play an MP3, but a modern web browser or a "Desktop Environment" like KDE or Gnome will crush it.
--Peace
I think Solaris 8 would run reasonable on an Ultra 10, but the last time I tried to install Solaris I wasted a few hours in vain. NetBSD isn't very easy to set up either, but it's not as bad as Solaris (at least Solaris 9).When I had NetBSD installed on my pitifully anemic Sparc Classic, the performance (without X) was pretty good.
I'm so used to using a well-supported computing platform!
WT uhh, heck, do folks do with these confounded things anyway? I mean, is every single unix box (save those running MacOS X of course!) used as a server and administered by geeks? I was just hoping there'd be a sbus-Sparc-compatible ready-made and easily installable package of OS and apps.
Damn. If it's too much bother I'm afraid I'll never make it to the starting box let alone the finish line. I'm too easily bored to really dig in and learn the guts of Unix. I can still recall struggling just to initialize and partition the confounded HDD, and the associated headache!
Ahh well . . . it's just that I hate to see all those usable once-highend computers moldering away on a shelf in the back of my workshop.
(err, that includes all those old Macs too, but at least I have a clue what's possible to do with them!)
Maybe I could use the one dead Sparc10's case I have for something interesting, I'll have to see what might fit inside. Hmmm, what about my spare Quicksilver MLB . . . ?
:coolmac:
dan k
As NetBSD goes, the Sparc 10 is actually a very well supported platform. It's just that NetBSD by design isn't a "slap it on and look at the pretty pictures" OS for people used to, say, Windows and Macs. Or to put it another way, setting up NetBSD on a Sparc is pretty much as easy as it is on PC or PPC Mac, and substantially easier then it is on some other platforms. It's just that NetBSD itself expects the user to know exactly what they want in addition to the base OS, rather then throwing everything plus the kitchen sink in from the get-go.
If you must have something graphical and friendly from the start I'd suggest trying this:
http://auroralinux.org
I've never used it, but perhaps it'll float your boat. Or at least give you a nice horror story to look back on.
Or you could just use Solaris. If you have enough RAM (and preferably a dual CPU machine) it should be tolerable.
--Peace
I own a Sun 4/40 that I dig out occasionally to play with. The most "authentic" OS to run would be Sun OS 4.x, possibly with OpenStep on top, but I opted for the most recent version of Solaris that would work (sorry, can't remember the revision number). The package doesn't include much more than a few CDE desktop apps but there are lots of others for download. The OS is way out of date and unsupported but it's fine for a workstation on a secure network (ie behind a firewall without any sloppily configured Windows boxes). Unsurprisingly, Sun's online documentation is ten times better than that for any free OS.
As others have said, NetBSD or a small Linux distro are the way to go if you wish to run a server but it won't work as a graphical workstation with any modern X11 desktop.
Phil
I ran Redhat 5.2 (which doesn't exist anymore, long story) and SuSe linux on my Sparc10 jsut fine. Mandrake also has a Sparc distro that's very easy to use, but very hard to do anything but the most basic stuff on.
If I were you I'd put on SuSe and make sure you tell it to install "everything" in the package selection menu.
This is a vastly better choice than SunOS or Slowlaris.
Start here:
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/sparc
8 large .iso disk images. :?
Slowlaris? Hmmph! Oh well, I'll give 'em a try and see how they compare. I guess I can just swap in a different HD for each system, I'm too newbie to try and figure out a dual boot environment.
I've got at least two good processors and a couple hundred megs o'ram (184? IIRC), plus some 10K 9GB HDs, is that enough horsepower to do some basic desktop stuff?
Heh heh, just for kicks I hauled out one of these SPARCstation 10 boxes, along with a few Mac LBs. Looks like a B+W might fit, of course a Gossamer fits, and the Quicksilver looks to fit nicely. The only rub of course is that the SS10 case is too slim for any vertically mounted AGP or PCI card, have to look into some RA adapters. Hmm, I'll have to measure the PS voltages, be cool(!)
if one could use the original PS with its triple fans.
Amonst the other boards I tried, a IIci is rather long, as is the similar sized 7100, and the 7200/7500/8500 boards are just waaay too big.
dan k
It's been a really long time since I played with OpenBSD; NetBSD may be easier to set up.
I used to have a Sparc 10 with dual 60Mhs CPUs, and I ran Debian Linux on it. 32-bit sparc support in Linux is almost nonexistant anymore; the 2.4 kernel had a bug in sparc32 where the ext3 filesystem would become corrupt after a while if SMP was enabled, so I had to go back to ext2. One of the kernel developers looked into it a little, but I gave up after several months of no solution.
Solaris 9 is the last OS from Sun that will run on it, so you'd eventually be a bit out of date.
NetBSD supports sparc32 very well, including SMP now, so it might be worth having two processors. It isn't a "point-and-click" install, but it's really not hard as long as you follow the instructions.
BTW, when I ran Linux on my sparc 10, the KDE GUI wasn't actually all that bad (TurboGX card), but it did take a really long time to start up.
Have fun!
I dunno how I ended up digging into this as far as I have . . .
However, I'm finding there's a bit of opensource SW out there which will run on a sparc32 box under Solaris, like OpenOffice and Mozilla. Now if the whole mess isn't unusably slow, maybe I'll actually end up with another interesting 'puter with which to play.
Heh heh, I discovered lots of cool opensource stuff for OS X too. Thank goodness OS X is so user-friendly, I'm such a unix newbie it's not even funny.
dan k
At power on, press "L1-A" and you'll drop into open firmware. Then type "printenv" and see all the boot variables. To change a variable type "setenv variable value" and then just tell it whatever partition you want to boot from. Just don't let linux install the boot loader in the MBR.
Also the simple fact that you are even remotely considering solaris indicates that you are probably in over your head. There's virtually no free software for it, using it is really hard, no built in compilers, and you have to do a whole lot of work just to make it useable. Linux will give you a much better environment to start working on that fast and stable and easy to use. Slowlaris is so bad it can turn off an inexperienced user from the entire UNIX experience and scar them for life. It's like learning to play guitar on a Squire Strat.
Hey, I learned to play guitar on a Squire Strat!!! And my first Unix experience was with Solaris 7!!!
Uhhh, actually I learned to play guitar on an old Fender Strat. But Solaris was my first taste of Unix and boy did it suck. Yep, turned me right off everything unixy.
Anyway, turns out the Solaris 10 I DLed won't run on SPARC32 anyhow. Damn, I swear I read S32 was supported under 10. Oh well. I did see several apps precompiled for Solaris, which was what got me encouraged about trying it. Plus, it's Sun's 'native' SPARC OS, whatever that's worth.
OK, I guess it will be some flavor of Linux or BSD. Soooo, what I'm understanding now . . . is that if I want to use a SPARC32 box nowadays, I've got to learn to roll my own apps? I mean, there seems to be very few (if any) pre-compiled apps for Linux/BSD/other on SPARC hardware.
Also, as a mostly-OS-X user, would there be any advantage to focusing on BSD rather than Linux? Are the basics of Linux similar enough that what I learn would be useful with OS X?
And thanks y'all for the input, I appreciate your experienced thoughts and comments.
dan k
Solaris 9 will install on the *last* Sparc32 systems. Meaning the Sparc 5, 10, and 20. I installed it on my Sparc 5 once and it literally took two days. But if you *must* have Solaris that would do it.
If you do run Solaris, here's a "solution" to the "where to get software" problem.
http://www.sunfreeware.com/pkg-get.html
This is installed on all (all three) Solaris machines I admin at work, and it saves me a lot of hassle.
Of course, by the time you're done installing all the GNU tools on Solaris to get around how cra**y the mix of Sys5 and BSD versions included with it are you might as well of just been running Linux in the first place, but... anyway.
If you use a fat Linux distribution like Aurora or SuSE there will probably be enough stuff included on the installation isos to keep you busy for a long time.
Under NetBSD you'll just install things via the "ports tree", or precompiled packages sucked off of NetBSD.org mirrors. It's not really brain surgery. But it's not opening a .dmg and dragging it onto your hard disk either.
People get *way* too obsessive about the Linux/BSD/UNIX thing. Here's the simple facts:
"Linux" is a kernel, not a full OS. Colloquially "Linux" means "Linux kernel + GNU userland"
"BSD" describes both an "userland" and a kernel. OS X technically *isn't* a BSD from a kernel perspective. It's *mostly* a BSD "userland". However:
The "GNU userland" consists of enhanced clones of various UNIX tools from both BSD and System V UNIX. Enhanced to the point that most BSD machines end up with a lot of GNU tools installed. (OS X being no exception.) In fact, if it wasn't for GNU licensed components such as GCC the "Free" BSDs wouldn't be free at all. Likewise, most "commercial" UNIXes also end up with a lot of GNU mixed in, because, frankly, the writing is on the wall: People *like* the GNU userland tools, and get pissed off with the BSD and SysV versions' missing features. People who get all-fired religious about "BSD" are deluding themselves, because chances are they're using "Linux-y" tools every day.
Anyway. What kernel you're running is almost irrelevent, as long as it provides a reasonable sub-or-superset of "UNIX-y" services and supports your hardware adequately. Likewise, the differences in "userlands" you'll get along with your chosen kernel *really* don't end up amounting to anything. The "bloodlines" may be somewhat different, but in actual use all you'll see is a few minor differences in dialect. Think of it this way: if you learn to speak in New York you're still going to be able to communicate with someone born in the Deep South. BSD and GNU/Linux are both "UNIX" in the sense that Brooklin-ese and Southern Drawl are both English. A few words might be different, and the accents are in different places, but that's *it*. We're not talking the difference between German and Chinese, here.
Anyway. OS X from a "beginner user" standpoint is so different from either Linux or NetBSD you probably don't need to concern yourself with the minutia. Either is going to confuse the hell out of you at first. And either, if you apply yourself, will teach you valuable skills about "UNIX", and by extension, OS X's dirty UNIXish underbelly. So flip a coin.
--Peace
I berate Linuxes for not being even as user friendly as Windows, but the unixes are almost always worse by comparison. The only non-mac unix that is user friendly that I can think of off the top of my head is IRIX.
POSIX standards ensure a more or less somewhat consistant userland experience in the command line (pretty terrible).
You can ruin your guitar hands forver by merely touching a squire strat.
Eh, yea, but the sparc platform has an incredibly small hardware base, so it's very well supported. Just make sure you install "everything" and you'll hvae a pretty hard time findind something you can't compile.
Well, not sure if it was true at the time, but Solaris 10 is free now (though still a pain to navigate their site, register, and figure out how to dl the iso s), and includes a lot of nice packages. Not intuitive by any standard, but still... for my time, it was a hella lot easier to deal with than something like Gentoo, which would fit your description of turning off an inexperienced user.
Also, I'm resonably certain there were 2 Strats (as opposed to the Stratocaster). The Fender Squire Strat, and the Fender Strat (sans 'Squire'). The Squire Strat was a POS, no doubts. The Fender Strat was much rarer (limited release) and highly sought after once the differences were realized. I think they tried to bring the Strat (sans Squire) back, but the confusion in product titles... the Squire reached beyond the grave to ruin its sales.
Ditto on the vote for Linux. I'm thinking you could run dillo on that, little word processor apps, that sort of thing, ya just gotta roll your own.
That's basically why I gave up on my 1400... even though I had Debian on it, and 233MHz of proc, like icewm or fluxbox... it was just too slow. And these are maxed at what, 50MHz? OpenOffice would be baaaaaad.
In FenderLand, Tele or Strat, you got four classes, Squier, Foreign, USA Standard, Custom/Signature. There's subclasses of each (Affinity Squier, MexiStrat or JapaStrat).
Squiers can be made somewhat enjoyable, by doing two things:
1) You have to go through, literally 100 of them. Theyre spit out by machines, and out of 100, one (maybe) might have enough positive anomalies to be workable.
2) Then, definitely new tuners, sanded fretboards.
This is masochist though. No, seriously. Then again the same people that try shoehorning a workstation into so little MHz might also enjoy doing these things to these guitars.
Let me just say though, the second I wrap my hand round the neck of a 72 Telecaster (an original, not a reissue) theres no comparison. It's a supermodel vs. a manequin.
-- Macinjosh
Having just gone through this with an Ultra10. Solaris 10 runs pretty well, provided you give it two things: memory and a reasonable hard drive. I found that any old cheap 168 pin ECC EDO suitable for like Compaq servers works in the Ultra 10, and I put 512 MB in mine. And a 20 GB hard drive. Much more well behaved. Solaris 10 was very easy to install, as opposed to Solaris 8 or 9, which gave me no end of problems. I also liked the finish of the Java desktop that came with Solaris 10, compared to what I'd seen earlier from Solaris.
mike
edit: going back to the top, Y'all are saying "Sparc10." Yeah, my bad. That's a little different beast. That looks very similar in architecture to my Sparcstation Classic, and I've tried a couple of OS's on that baby too. I had pretty good luck with Debian, at the time putting "Woody" on it. Ran without problems, albeit slowly in X (surprise surprise). I don't think I'd run anything further up the Solaris foodchain than 7 or 8, and I'd be tempted to run 2.6.
Well, if I actually had time to go back a fiddle with the blasted things (I've got 3 Sparc10s,) I'd try first with Solaris9 . . . but I've yet to find a DL location. Back when I started this thread I poked around at Sun's site, but had no joy at the time. Maybe Sun has it up somewhere now?
Errm, I guess I'm old schule enough that for me the term Strat simply means a regular old USA Stratocaster, like my '76 blonde'n'black jobbie. All this Strat Jr. and whatnot stuff is out beyond my knowledge base. I guess I gotta get hep to all the groovy changes. :coolmac:
dan k
I see this mistake all the time. People confuse the original SPARC lines with the Ultra lines. That Ultra term makes the whole world of difference, ie, 32-bit w/ SBUS vs 64-bit w/ PCI (and SBUS in the very early Ultras) and even the newer x86 systems like the Ultra 20, while the Ultra *25* is a Sparc...
I got to thinking about it as I was finishing up my post. Oh, yeah, there was a 4m Sparc10. Duh. It does make a world of difference. My Ultra10 (or my dual Ultra2) is usable as a desktop machine. The 4m Sparc Classic is pretty much gonna have to be command line from now on. I did manage to get X up on under Debian Woody, but good Lord it was slow. I dig that lunchbox form factor, so I can't bear to part with it.
Dankephoto-
Solaris 9 is still on Sun's site. I downloaded it again a couple of weeks ago. Lemme see...
ok. Here's Solaris 8:
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/8/index.xml
and Solaris 9:
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/9/index.xml
You're gonna pull your hair trying to get 'em into an Ultra10, but maybe, as you have a Sparc10, you'll have better luck than I. I have looked Sun's site over and over, and Solaris 7 ain't there for download. eBay was reasonable last I looked.
Debian Sarge for SPARC worked well for me too, YMMV.
mike
Also, FWIW, Solaris 10 won't run on Sun4m machines or on sub-200MHz Ultra 1 CPUs. I don't recall 7 being downloadable but it isn't "shipping" anymore as it's been almost EOL'd. It's either 8 or 9, or Linux/BSD. Or an old NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP version.
see below... thread too thin!
I'm about to start an install. I've been about to for about 5 hours now. This is just for dev stuff, a practice box. Nothing special... except it is.
Got an 80 gb seagate, but I don't need that much. So I thought... dual boot...
Then I realized that might not be so simple considering what I want to dual boot.
I want to put Ubuntu Server, and Solaris 10 on this. I'm out of CD-Rs at the moment, and so I don't have the Solaris on CD yet (just the isos), but I do have Ubuntu Server install CD ready to go (net install the coolest). I'm hoping it would be straight forward (both use GRUB, right?)
My question to the gurus is... what is my partition map going to look like, considering I'd like to do the ubuntu install tonight? Is it as simple as just leaving 20GB (or there abouts) of free space for the Solaris install? Are there limitations on either OS like OS X has with the old world macs (has to be installed in 1st 8gb?)
The only boxes I've ever had that were dual boot were OS9/OSX, so ... I'm not sure what to expect, but I don't want to make a critical error now, knowing I'll use the ubuntu side quite a bit before I even get to the Solaris install (might be a couple weeks... I wanna futze some more with the vm first).
Also (sorry, just thought of another ask), I've always dedicated a whole disk to the OS, never set up /var or /usr partitions. Since I burned myself by using that POS toshiba again... I'm wondering if there is any advantage to using multiple partitions for an install, knowing that some day the drive will die. Is there any advantage to multiple partitions in saving data for when the drive starts to go? Meaning... when the drive goes... its the whole drive thats going, right? Its not going to die one partition at time, is it?
TIA
---edit----
Found someone with nearly identical circumstances (Edgy + Solaris on laptop):
At the ubuntu forums
But anything anyone wants to add is, of course, still very appreciated!
Looks fairly straight forward... with Edgy installed first. I'm going in...
(what could possibly go wrong?)
Heh.
Actually, that looks like good stuff. I'm a bit of a dual boot novice, so I'll noting your link down. Nice hip-pocket info there. Good luck not monkeying up your box!
mike
Thanks...
Still have questions... but I'm going forward.
SWAP!
Ubuntu puts the swap at the end of the / partition, er, after it... and Solaris puts it at the beginning of / , er... before it...
Do I really need 2 separate swap partitions, one for each OS? Can Ubuntu & Solaris share swap (considering I can only use one OS at a time, and swap will be in the right location, relative to where each OS wants it)?
Wow... muddled, but you have to admit... that's a good question. Guru's? Start your lobes! (and don't spare the wit!)
You'll have to modify Linux's startup scripts to run "mkswap" on the partition every time you boot. Solaris doesn't care what's on a swap partition, just using it as a raw device, but Linux expects some magic to be there for it before adding it to the swap pool.
http://www.ultralinux.org/faq.html#q_1_13
(That's specifically for linux on Sun hardware, but it applies to x86 as well.)
It may be a bigger pain in the neck then it's worth, honestly.
--Peace
This OpenSolaris distribution is *awesome*, simply because it's so wrong.
Unfortunately it's x86 only. If there was a Sparc build I'd consider dragging my Ultra 10 out of the garage.
As to the ancient question about an OS for *SparcStation* 10, I'd still have to recommend going with either NetBSD or Aurora Linux. Solaris is just, well, huge. Don't even think about it unless you have at least 128MB of RAM. You *can* install 9 (10 is 64 bit *only*), but it'll literally take you days.
--Peace
do go on... seriously... how's it wrong? Mixed up? Frankensteined?
--
Thanks for the answer about swap. Not a huge deal at all running a couple swaps... all told, even with free space for extra slices, it'll be less than 5gb total. I just thought it was an intriguing idea... thanks for the link.
And speaking of OpenSolaris... does that come with JDS as a desktop environment option (uh, OpenJDE)? According to wiki, Sun pulled support last year for linux (does that mean it's broken now?). Is the source for JDE available? (As you've probably guessed, I think its pretty slick... feels very much the pro workstation of next week to me... )
--
also... ubuntu install complete (one more thing to do, install !M nxserver). I was able to recover ~/.evolution off the dying toshiba, hoping I could bypass setting up the mail client again, but I've copied it over, launched evolution, and it goes right the setup assistant. I had like 6 accounts all tweaked... so any clues on how to migrate my previous accounts and settings with minimal grief would be appreciated also (wow, I'm just full of asks tonight!)
--edit--
found a link for data migration
--edit2--
btw !M nxserver works for Solaris as well... its a very thin xclient/xserver, designed to work well off dialup speeds... so on the local 54Mbps wlan, it really feels almost like sitting at the console (note the native OS X client).
Also, tried this neat Mac pref pane today:
Ext2 Filesystem - 1.4d4 -- allows OS X to mount ext2, ext3 file systems. I sure hope they keep working on it. It worked great for a time... but then froze my system. There's a rather apt warning in the README:
but it does appear to be the only game in town for mounting those fs on OS X
Solaris simply isn't supposed to be as easy to install as Nextenta is. It comes on *one* CD, doesn't ask you pages after pages of confusing questions, takes only about 20 minutes to set up... It's just sort of mind-boggling that you could actually put together something even approaching a "friendly" OS using pieces from Solaris x86 and *Debian*, of all things. ;^b
Unfortunately it's buggy as a bait store. But it is *cute*.
--Peace
By having two swap partitions you can hibernate the Linux side and boot into Solaris. Then when you reboot into Linux it will come up running just as you left it. The hibernation save a RAM snapshot to the SWAP space. This is when the 2xRAM swap size comes into play. In modern days on a general use system with 512MB of RAM or more you can get by with matched SWAP size or no swap at all, esp. if you've got 1GB or more.
well.. there's a neat advantage. So... 2 cons for having a single swap. I'm sold.
I'll have to look into this linux hibernation thing. In Windows, I always disable hibernation because I've never been able to get a hibernating Windows machine to come out of its cave (always end up having to do a hard shutdown and hard boot).
Linux hibernation is not related to BIOS/APM/ACPI-based hibernation so it works on nearly any system with adequate swap. Some time a machine will not standby or sleep, but they will almost always hibernate.
You know... I'm not really sure I know the difference between the 3.
What's hibernation... compared to sleep... compared to standby? And... do the terms mean mostly the same thing across the many platforms?
Generally hibernation means saving a RAM snapshot somewhere and totally powering off the machine. Some laptop vendors have this capability built in to the BIOS and save to a file on the expected Windows filesystem or on a special partition on the drive. Standby can mean the same thing as sleep depending on which vendor is doing the marketing speak. I think it is mostly a difference of terms between Apple and the PC world. There are specific levels of power saving defined under ACPI (see the Global States section).
Here's a good post giving a basic rundown of ACPI Power states.
Note there's a confusing amount of overlap. Basically:
"Sleep": An imprecise term that really can refer to *any* powerdown state other then full power-off hibernate.
"Suspend": A state where the CPU is halted and power is shut down to most peripherals in a system, but the system's state remains in RAM. If the battery runs down the system dies. (This is the state supported by most PowerPC Apple laptops.)
"Standby": May mean exactly the same thing as "suspend", but in *theory* defines as a somewhat "lighter" sleep, in which it's easier for a peripheral to wake the system up.
Hibernate: CPU registers and RAM are saved to disk and the system shuts down entirely. Hibernation can be entirely in software (as Linux can do it), in which the OS itself can do *all* the work of saving state, shutting down device drivers, and turning the system off, or it can be "assisted" by the BIOS power management software. The former is more common these days.
(Basically all the BIOS does is send a signal to the OS telling it to initiate a hibernate action. Back in the day of APM (instead of ACPI) BIOSes some systems could *attempt* to handle the CPU halting and state-saving all by themselves, but it was much harder to pull off without the "unprepared" OS panicking when time came to resume. Systems that support the "old" style of hibernate generally require a dedicated disk partition for the BIOS to use, while the newer style hibernation data can go into a swap partition (in the case of Linux), or the normal filesystem. (Windows))
--Peace
maybe accept this morsel in return for your generous sharing:
(I know this doesn't belong here... but its got my eyes popping out...)
too bad there's little chance this could work on any of the ppcs I've got, nor an ANS:
AIX 6 Open Beta
Hrm, they specifically mention PPC970 support, so I wonder how well a G5 Mac will work. It mostly looks like a way to get a free OS on IBM POWER hardware.
I think I jumped the gun...
And I was all prepared to add it to my...
'collection' (evil laugh... followed by coughing spasms).
I'm sure you're aware that AIX is one of the least free of all OS's, which is what makes this open beta so surprising (they never needed anyone before). As part of the agreement, we're expected to immediately burn the iso's after download, then delete the iso's. btw, I think we can thank Linux that AIX didn't stay dead. Linux jumped the gun on the server space (well, it wasn't linux, but some IBM-johnny-jump-onto-the-server). IBM, remember, started shipping linux servers... and the enterprise big players all freaked out. The big Customers (banks, I'd guess) wanted AIX back, wanted support to never end, so... they brought it back. At least... that's the way I rememeber it... but 2000-2002 weren't among the clearest of my years.
I've inquired with the only AIX guru I know, says that IBM hardware does use Open Firmware to boot... but the deal breaker is custom ROMs on everything, which also causes problems with non-IBM hardware even in an IBM box. But I like the way you think. Does the G5 have removable ROMs?
Honestly, NetBSD is your best choice. NetBSD can make a 486DX4/66 sprout wings and fly. The installer is a *tad* funky, but tis not that hard, and if you need help, please, PM me. and its not exactly "roll your own" as pkgsrc grabs it all for you and whatnot.
Just my $0.03.
//wthww