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| 68k Minix/Linux in 2026 ? | |
| Posted by: Admiral Ackbar on 2026-09-18 12:02:57 Hey all. I did some searching on the forums here, looking for creative ways to get a *nix on a Mac+ accelerated to a 68030+FPU and 4mb RAM, and also SE/30 accelerated with 128mb RAM. It seems like MacMinix worked a little bit back in the day but the Pliner web page seems to be gone. I didn't see any Linux distros available. I (now) understand that so much of the hardware/firmware/drivers were made for MacOS so a bare-metal boot to a *nix isn't a simple thing. So... Can anyone say what the options might be in 2026?  | |
| Posted by: cheesestraws on 2026-09-18 12:10:19 NetBSD? The mac68k port has some quirks but it is still active NetBSD is nicer than Linux anyway, he said, opinionatedly | |
| Posted by: Snial on 2026-09-18 12:41:44 You should be able to find Pliner on the wayback machine. | |
| Posted by: adespoton on 2026-09-18 12:50:05 I second NetBSD. It's what I used back in the day, and it's still the best option for bare metal on old hardware. If you just want something similar, there's also MPW Shell and MPW ToolServer. Debian had a 68k version, but it required some specific hardware (MMU and FPU?). Not sure if it would work on your special case hardware. There's also http://www.linux-m68k.org/ -- I'm pretty sure you won't find anything from there that supports the Plus architecture though. | |
| Posted by: lauland1 on 2026-09-18 18:44:32 NetBSD is kept up to date, and does have excellent hardware support, except for a few powerbooks or other obscure things. Even in those cases, a serial terminal will work. There's ancient but very working m68k debians out there. I have it on a performa 630. It requires an fpu, so would not run with the stock lc040, or without one. You can, and would have to, upgrade it by hand and piecemeal, to get it modern, but I'd start with the old iso images. If you really want to rough it, there are "modern userworlds" out there, you may need to use your own kernel. In both those cases your machine will boot into mac os, then use a launcher to load the kernel, then start it, etc. I think you'll find pretty good support for the SE/30. I think even some versions of A/UX will run on it. An accelerated plus will be more difficult. The kernels (bsd and linux) probably won't know what to do with the plus motherboard. Technically there's no reason it couldn't work, so look and see if someone has done work in that direction. The install process for BSD and Linux is not forgiving. Minix is quite limited by comparison, but, because it runs as a mac os app, very simple to use. You might want to look into MachTen. It also runs as a mac os app, but is much "larger" than Minix. Any "real unix" will require an mmu, but the 030 has one built in. | |
| Posted by: terrier on 2026-09-19 04:09:59 Recent releases of NetBSD/mac68k have made some real strides in the last few years thanks to a few active contributors - sound is now supported on most machines, lots of powerbook improvements (backlight controls, battery support on 1xx powerbooks, etc), a softfloat port has been added for FPU-less machines, etc. | |
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