2. What are the differences to Linux on Intel machines ?

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The current state of Linux/m68k (at the time of writing this, we talk about version 0.9pl13) is like this:

Kernel:

• most important filesystems are present: minix, ext2, /proc, nfs, iso9660, Amiga FastFilesystem (currently read-only), MS-DOS
• networking code: the TCP/IP protocol stack, SLIP, CSLIP, PPP
• device drivers are available for SCSI & IDE host adapters, serial port, mouse and native console display.
• Network drivers: There are device drivers for the Ariadne, A2065 and Hydra ethernet board and an upcoming Arcnet (A2060 and A561) driver.
• Still missing are drivers for most graphic boards.
• virtual consoles with Cut & Paste feature
• support for ELF, the Executable and Linker format

  ELF is mostly usable for programmers; users will not find very much difference. However, ELF makes creating your own shared libraries a very simple task, and it is supposed to be "the way to go". If you want to change your system to running ELF (this does not require a kernel patch anymore, but you will have to install new libraries and do a few "dangerous" steps), you should read the ELF Installation README by Andreas Schwab very carefully - it is a step-by-step explanation of what actions are required. Besides a few other steps, you will also get a quite recent version of gcc (2.7.0) tailored for ELF.

The 1.2.13pl3 kernel has a functionality corresponding to the 1.2.13 kernel on PC-Linux - which means that the whole memory management has been rewritten as compared to 0.9 kernels. Other from that, there are not too much changes.

A LiLo (Linux loader) has been written by Geert Uytterhoeven; it's available at ftp://linux3.cc.kuleuven.ac.be/pub/Linux68k/ as amiga-lilo-x.y.tar.gz, where x and y are the current version number (at the time of writing this: 0.4a)

Binaries and applications: This is growing with every day that passes, so it's hard to say what is available and what not. As Linux uses a lot of GNU programs which are most of the time easily portable (just unpack them, type ./configure and make), almost all of the GNU software is available. The most important of these are:

• textutils (cat, head, tail, join, split)
• fileutils (cp, ls, chmod, chgrp...)
• gcc, gdb
• bash, sed, awk, flex, bison, gnutar, perl, make, screen.

Besides, most programs that were either written explicitly for Linux or adapted from other platforms are quite simple compilable - e.g. xc (terminal program), networking software (ifconfig, arp, route, talk, ftp, telnet...), mgetty, procps tools, util-linux, ncurses. If you find something to be "missing" from the currently available distributions, it's often a good idea to just get ahold of the sources (e.g. from a friend who runs it on his PC), and trying to compile them straight out of the box. The only problem might be Makefiles or "intelligent" configure scripts that use the -m486 or -m386 compiler flags - these are of course not valid on Motorola systems. Just throw these options away.

Man pages are available just as on PCs under Linux - copy them to /usr/man or /usr/local/man, and you're all set. System calls and library functions are (almost) identical with their counterparts on Linux/x86, so you can use those man pages, too.

X11 has been out since January 1995, and was also found to be pretty usable. The problem with it is, however, that device drivers for the popular graphic boards are not yet available - and running X11 on a 640x480 Multiscan screen is probably not what everyone wants. Sooner or later this gap should be filled in, too.

Installation of X11 has become a new chapter of this installation guide.

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