Subject: ANNOUNCEMENT: Macintosh port of LINUX (free UNIX) now available

From: [email-masked] (Matt Welsh)
Date: 2 Apr 1993 01:23:54 GMT

LINUX 0.99.pl6 for the MACINTOSH

The first BETA version of Linux, the free UNIX clone for the Macintosh is
now available. Linux was originally developed for the 386 by Linux Torvalds
([email-masked]) as a free GNU copylefted UNIX clone, which over the
last 2 years or so has gained a great deal of clout within the UNIX world
(as readers of comp.os.linux already know). Because the kernel sources for 
Linux are freely available, and are so well-written, porting to other
architectures is nearly trivial. 

Linux is a full-fledged UNIX clone, implementing many features from 
BSD, System V, and Posix, including networking, X-Windows support, compilers
(such as gcc, f2c, and so on), and many more utilities including TeX,
groff, and more. Essentially, Linux-Mac has all of the features as the
original Linux for the 386... the two are binary compatible, so that with
the Linux-Mac kernel you can use all of the utilities and available software
for Linux-386.

I've just finished the first BETA port of Linux for the Macintosh. It will
run on any Macintosh SE or better, with at least 4 megs of RAM. This is a
port based on Linux version 0.99.pl6. The kernel image (Linux-mac.bin.hqx) can
be transferred to a floppy (using the Mac version of the "rawrite" program,
which is also available) and used to boot the system (in lieu of System
7.0). This kernel image uses a ramdisk to store basic system utilities,
such as fdisk and mkfs to create filesystems for Linux.

Because Linux for the Macintosh is binary-compatible with the original
386-based Linux, once the Linux-Mac kernel is installed you can simply
install other software using the popular SLS release (on tsx-11.mit.edu under
/pub/linux/SLS) or H.J. Lu's "bootable rootdisk" release. See the Linux
FAQ for more details. 

All that is ready now is a generic kernel image with ramdisk, used for
initial installation. After you have the basic system installed you can
get the full Linux-Mac kernel sources (in the file Linux-mac-0.99.pl6.tar.z,
see below) and compile your own kernel using gcc. Installing the Linux-mac
kernel and basic utilities will require about 1 meg of diskspace (that's
how much fits on the one floppy image), however, if you install other
software you'll need more than this. Just see the Linux FAQ for more details.

Linux-Mac is available for anonymous FTP from tc.cornell.edu in the
directory /pub/mdw/Linux-mac. There you'll find the files
	* Linux-Mac.bin.hqx (the kernel image)
	* rawrite.bin.hqx (the rawrite program, used to make the kernel
	  floppy),
	* Linux-Mac-0.99.pl6.tar.z, a gzipped tar file containing the 
	  kernel sources.
You can also pick up the Linux FAQ from sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/docs/FAQ.
You need to read this FAQ and the Linux-Mac README file for information
on installing and using Linux.

Please report any problems with this port to me ([email-masked]). 
Some of the internals are a bit shaky, and there are (of course) problems
with the source which exist even in Linux-386. 

Cheers,
mdw

-- 
Matt Welsh, [email-masked] 
"I met a girl named Sandoz..."