What Linux for my old Mac G4?

[sastusbulbas]

Hi all,

I have dug out an old Apple Mac G4, dual processor with Firewire. I would like to install something like Ubuntu or Mint onto this, are these suitable or are there other alternatives.

I have both the above for standard PC, and they do not work with the old Apple I stick the discs in and nothing happens, where can I get a download which will install via CD and boot up without problems on the old Mac G4?

Cheers,
Steve

 

[craptakular]

opensuse? Gentoooooo? At least there the ones I know are still supporting ppc, im assuming yours is ppc?

I know ubuntu stopped ppc support in 7.04 or 7.10.

 

[gazzanova]

fedora is another

 

[BillytheImpaler]

Debian is the only distro I got working well on my dual 1 GHz PowerMac G4. Ubuntu's "community supported" PPC edition was dire on the hardware. I tried Fedora too and it seemed to work fairly well. Debian blew it away in terms of performance.

 

[pingwing]

I'd try gentoo, but the whole thing seems to be falling apart abit (portage isnt being maintained too well )

Probably best to go with a fairly big and well supported distro though

 

[Outcast]

Yellow Dog Linux

http://us.fixstars.com/products/ydl/

 

[Red and White]

can someone point me in the direction of the best image to use to boot on a g4. i cant get any cd's except apple ones to boot. tried ubuntu and a debian cd.

i just get a folder icon smiling at me.

 

[craptakular]

can someone point me in the direction of the best image to use to boot on a g4. i cant get any cd's except apple ones to boot. tried ubuntu and a debian cd.

i just get a folder icon smiling at me.

if its anything like my macbook, u have to make sure the system is TOTAL OFF ie REBOOT WILL NOT WORK.

From powered off, turn system on (with your ppc distro of choice in cd drive) hold down C until it boots.

my intel macbook works this way.

I'll try it on my G3 later in the week

EDIT: Your are using ppc versions of these distro's aren't you??????? oh and I tihnk you *may* have to do some tom foolery to in OS X 9 in order to get your new linux distro to boot after installation. I haven't looked to much into it, as I cba getting my G3 down from my shelf lol.

 

[Red and White]

ive borked my OS install though. tried to reinstall it and accidentally erased the hard drive. so there is nothing on it at all. dont know where to go from here. managed to get a ppc ubuntu version to boot but it wont mount the cdrom so the install fails.

:/

 

[DeeJay-Mo]

I had xubuntu Feisty working on a emac, there were a few issues with it though.

Firstly xserver-xorg didn't wanna work nice with Hardy+.
snd-powermac module would only play nice with smp kernel.
Sun Java and Adobe flash no longer supported under PPC.
- gnash is an alternative for flash, but it's not perfect yet
- IBM Java rumored to work, but I haven't tried this

 

[Red and White]

seem to have got debian on the way now. there are 8 cds to download though, do i need all of them?

 

[craptakular]

seem to have got debian on the way now. there are 8 cds to download though, do i need all of them?

only the 1st one i believe.

 

[DeeJay-Mo]

seem to have got debian on the way now. there are 8 cds to download though, do i need all of them?

Not necessarily. I usually start with the netboot iso. Install a basic system and then just apt-get install whatever I need.

 

[Red and White]

ok i have a basic system, what do i type at the command prompt to get a GUI

 

[DeeJay-Mo]

su    (enter root password)
apt-get update
apt-get install gnome-desktop-environment
reboot

 

[Red and White]

su    (enter root password)
apt-get update
apt-get install gnome-desktop-environment
reboot

you are a star. its working now, i will let you know how it goes

thanks for the help

 

[Red and White]

i might cry and then give up at this.

Failed to start X Server, it is likely it is not set up corrrectly.

when i diagnose the problem it tells me there isnt a valid font path

 

[BillytheImpaler]

If you don't mind the oldness Ubuntu 6.06 worked very well on my G4 rig.

 

[Red and White]

If you don't mind the oldness Ubuntu 6.06 worked very well on my G4 rig.

i dont mind anything at this point i'll look for a disk now. will i need the alternative text based install cd?

edit: found it

love this forum

 

[Rwac]

If you don't mind the oldness Ubuntu 6.06 worked very well on my G4 rig.

How did you find it ran? I revived my Mac Mini G4 1.25 512mb recently with Debian but still found it a little slow.