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I have an older Apple G3 computer… its very pretty and appealing to my kids because its blue and white and looks pretty cool. However, I don’t have a copy of Mac OS X. It came with Mac OS 9 and it seemed very old and outdated… a few months later, I realized I probably made a mistake by erasing it and installing Ubuntu. But whatever angle you want to look at it… installing Ubuntu was fun, challenging and something to do to pass the time. Today the computer still works very well with Ubuntu… however, there are so many things that are very difficult to do that are normally pretty simple with a Windows computer and for an Apple computer running OS X.

Today, I found a program called CRUX for PowerPC. I am downloading the .iso as I am writing this post… its 250 megs so it shouldn’t take too long at all.

What is Crux?

CRUX PPC is a port for the PowerPC platform of CRUX. It’s a GNU system with a Linux kernel. Runs on NewWorld PowerPC computers. The included software works at its best speed on 750 (G3) and 74xx (G4) CPUs. CRUX PPC supports PegasosII and the major part of Apple’s computers (Dual CPU included) and has special features (such as CPU Frequency Scaling) for laptops. CRUX PPC is a lightweight GNU/Linux distribution targeted at experienced Linux users.

The primary focus of this distribution is “keep it simple“, which is reflected in a simple tarball-based package system, BSD-style init scripts, and a relatively small collection of trimmed packages. The secondary focus is utilization of new Linux features and recent tools and libraries. CRUX PPC also has an innovative ports system which makes it easy to install and upgrade applications.

CRUX PPC is based on the releases of CRUX for x86. It contains software written by a lot of different people, each software comes with its own license, chosen by its author. Parts written by CRUX PPC team are to intend as free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.