Using Haiku/BeOS on a G4 Apple?

1

I use a G4 dual 500mhz PowerPC running OSX 10.4.8

any advice/ideas on running BeOS and/or Haiku on this machine?

or care to point me in the right direction to get the info I need?

1 Like
2

I was just about to answer that VMware is your friend when I realized your cpu is PPC.

What you need is an x86 emulator for OS X. I think QEMU is your best bet, unless you want to buy MicroSoft’s Virtual PC. I don’t have a Mac myself, but AFAIK you can find qemu in darwinports as well as the “Q” OS X port/GUI (http://www.kju-app.org/kju/) which is the one qemu.org links to.

Hope this helps.

3

If you want to run Haiku natively on PPC hardware, you’ll be waiting for it to be completely ported to PPC, and appropriate drivers available for your hardware.

I’m not sure what PPC processors BeOS R5 PPC was able to run on, but I think G4 may be too new.

4

See here:
http://www.tycomsystems.com/beos/ppc_ready.html

[7] BeOS is incompatible with Apple’s new “G3” and “G4” systems, including the iMac and iBook.

Only way to run BeOS (or Haiku) on G4 is by using x86 emulator software.

Haiku will also take some time before it gets ported over to ppc hardware (my guess is 2 or more years). Or maybe never? Can’t say for sure what’ll happen.

OS X & Linux are your best bets for OSes on that system.

5

I shall look into building a machine to do the job then