The FreeBSD/ppc project pages contain information about the FreeBSD port to the PowerPC® architecture. As with the port itself, these pages are still a work in progress.
The FreeBSD/ppc port is still a Tier 2 platform. That means it is not being fully supported by our security officer, release engineers and toolchain maintainers.
ISO images of FreeBSD &rel.current; suitable for New-World Macs are available for download, for details on how to obtain these see the release announcement.
The easy way to use ports on FreeBSD is to use portsnap. Refer to the Handbook if you need assistance to use the Ports Collection.
The powerpc64 port provides a 64-bit kernel and userland, and is supported on all 64-bit CPUs. Users of 32-bit CPUs (G3, G4) must use the 32-bit powerpc platform, users of 64-bit CPUs that support 32-bit operating systems (G5) have a choice, and users of 64-bit CPUs that do not (Cell) must use powerpc64. For those users with a choice, powerpc64 provides some additional features (the ability to use more than 2 GB of RAM and ZFS support) while having slightly worse ports support due to being a newer and less common architecture. Like other 64-bit platforms, FreeBSD/powerpc64 supports running 32-bit binaries as well as 64-bit ones.
Peter Grehan is the project leader. Contact him if you can contribute code. If you just want to know about the status of this project, check this page regularly or join the FreeBSD/ppc mailing list.
The FreeBSD/ppc port should run on any New-World Apple machine (any Apple machine with a built-in USB port), as well as the Sony Playstation 3. A port to IBM pSeries hardware is in progress. People reported FreeBSD runs on following machines:
| Manufacturer | Model | Submitter (optional links) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | iMac G3 350 MHz | Martin Minkus | Rage 128VR |
| Apple | iMac G3 DV Special Edition | David S. Besade (dmesg) | None |
| Apple | iMac G3 Revision B | Peter Grehan | Rage 3D Pro 215GP, accel disabled |
| Apple | eMac 700 MHz | Peter Grehan | Nvidia GeForce2 MX |
| Apple | Mac Mini G4 1.4 GHz | Tilman Linneweh (dmesg) | None |
| Apple | Powerbook G4 1.33 GHz | Peter Grehan | Nvidia GeForce G5200 |
| Apple | Aluminium Powerbook G4 1.5 GHz | Andreas Tobler | None |
| Apple | PowerMac G5 | FreeBSD 8.0 | |
| Apple | iMac G5 | FreeBSD 8.0 | |
| Apple | Xserve G5 | FreeBSD 8.1 | |
| Apple | PowerMac G5 (late 2005) | FreeBSD 8.1 |
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0 > boot hd:loader hd:0At this point, you can set currdev and manually load a kernel:
OK set currdev="hd":14 OK load /boot/kernel/kernel.save