Quik (boot loader)

quik is a boot loader originally written by Paul Mackerras, designed to run Linux on PCI-based Apple MacintoshPowerPC systems based on the Old World ROM architecture. Quik's loader boots from Open Firmware and bypasses Mac OS entirely. PowerPC Macintoshes based on the New World ROM architecture instead use yaboot.

quik does not work on systems that do not have Open Firmware, including older PowerPC hardware based on the NuBus architecture; these systems must boot into Mac OS first and then use a separate boot loader. BootX (Linux) for instance uses this approach (using code derived from quik), which is dependent on Mac OS. All other Linux boot loaders for PowerPC (including the aforementioned yaboot) also reused portions of the code from quik. quik is the only method of booting Linux on an Apple Network Server.