quik is a

boot loader A bootloader, also spelled as boot loader or called boot manager and bootstrap loader, is a computer program that is responsible for booting a computer. When a computer is turned off, its softwareincluding operating systems, application code, a ...

designed to start

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

Apple Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

systems based on the

Old World ROM Old World ROM computers are the Macintosh (Mac) models that use a Macintosh Toolbox read-only memory (ROM) chip, usually in a socket (but soldered to the motherboard in some models). All Macs prior to the iMac, the iBook, the Blue and White Powe ...

architecture. It was originally written by Paul Mackerras, and portions of its code were reused in all other Linux boot loaders for PowerPC, including the one known as BootX (not to be confused with the Mac OS X boot loader of the same name), which is dependent on the Mac OS. Quik's loader boots from

Open Firmware Open Firmware is a standard defining the interfaces of a computer firmware system, formerly endorsed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). It originated at Sun Microsystems, where it was known as OpenBoot, and has bee ...

and bypasses the Mac OS entirely.

New World ROM New World ROM computers are Macintosh models that do not use a Macintosh Toolbox ROM on the logic board. Due to Mac OS X not requiring the availability of the Toolbox, this allowed ROM sizes to shrink dramatically (typically from to ), and facilit ...

systems use

yaboot Yaboot (yet another boot loader) is a bootloader for PowerPC-based hardware running Linux. History In 2009, maintenance by Paul Nasrat was handed over to Tony Breeds. Hardware support Support includes the New World ROM Macintosh and IBM RS/6 ...

. It does not work on systems that do not have Open Firmware; older PowerPC hardware based on the

NuBus NuBus (pron. 'New Bus') is a 32-bit parallel computer bus, originally developed at MIT and standardized in 1987 as a part of the NuMachine workstation project. The first complete implementation of the NuBus was done by Western Digital for th ...

architecture must boot into the Mac OS first and then use a separate boot loader. Quik is the only method of booting Linux on an

Apple Network Server The Apple Network Server (ANS) was a line of PowerPC-based server computers designed, manufactured and sold by Apple Computer, Inc. from February 1996 to April 1997. It was codenamed "Shiner" and originally consisted of two models, the Network S ...

iQUIK

iQUIK is a maintained version of the quik bootloader. Whereas the original follows a LILO-like booting model, with the second stage embedded inside an OS partition, iQUIK normally boots using its second stage in the first non-partitionmap partition, i.e. the second partition of the APM-partitioned storage device. This makes for a more robust system, making it more difficult to end up with a completely unbootable system. This also means it's possible to create rescue floppies and install media with iQUIK. Other improvements include - * Initrd support * Install to floppy * Preboot scripts (CHRP script-like support) * Booting Linux kernels of any size, from 2.2 up (including 3.0 and probably newer) * Richer UI with more commands to locate and boot kernels * Better ext2 file system support with symlinks, listing directories * Better hardware and firmware support, working around OpenFirmware 1.0.5 and 2.0.1 bugs * Cross-compile support with a recent tool chain and no external library dependencies

External links

quik homepage at penguinppc.orgquik 2.1 (latest known version) at shiner.info
(This site no longer exists)
iquik (an updated version that can boot recent Linux kernels and has better hardware support)

References

{{Reflist Boot loaders