Do you ubuntu?

[j4]

I've been watching (mostly via her twitterings on the subject) the saga of famous librarian Jessamyn installing Ubuntu on a library computer; it's a heartwarming tale, but it's made a kind of bittersweet parallel to my own tale of woe as I've completely failed to get anything other than OS 9 installed on my old G3 Mac, due to its apparent inability to boot from anything other than its own 60GB-of-pure-stubborness hard drive. (It's a long, frustrating and not terribly interesting story.) Today, even the Motley Fool is raving about Ubuntu. I feel as though someone's laughing at me.

Comments

[jamboi.livejournal.com]

It's worth noting that ubuntu have dropped full support for PowerPC (https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-announce/2007-February/000098.html). Linux distros that continue to support PowerPC as a 1st class citizen include Yellow Dog Linux (http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/products/ydl/) (which appears to be the preferred distribution for PowerPC) and the venerable Debian (http://www.debian.org/) on which ubuntu is based also offers comprehensive support for PPC. On the other UNIX front you could always give NetBSD (http://www.netbsd.org) a crack. (which I've not tested as it doesn't support G5, it will however run on a toaster (http://www.embeddedarm.com/news/netbsd_toaster.htm)!)

It's also worth pointing out (although this is possibly specific to my hardware, which is very different to yours) that my experience of PowerPC Ubuntu (in contrast to i386 and amd64 versions) is that it's buggy and slow with very bad hardware support (no 802.11, very bad graphics drivers, constant system freezes). Maybe it's time to dig out an old PC to do the same job, if you have one.

[j4.livejournal.com]

They've only dropped official support... :-)

I know it's not the ideal combination, but I do want an Ubuntu machine at home because it's what we'll be using (and supporting!) at work; the only reason I'm using the G3 is that I've got it taking up space & want to use it for something (I've still got my flower-power iMac as an OS 9 machine, my powerbook running OS X, and an LC III running OS 8 -- I don't need another Mac OS machine really!). The fallback plan is to try to source a cheap mac laptop so I can add another machine to the menagerie without taking up any more space... (Yes, I really do want it to be a mac.)

But if I can install Ubuntu on the G3 then a) I'll be making use of the hardware I've got, and b) I'll be learning something in the process. This is the great thing about knowing so little: every day is a learning opportunity. :-)

But thank you for the suggestions nonetheless.

(BTW, also, yes, I am stubborn. :-)

[cjwatson]

The unofficial support probably isn't going to go away any time soon though, since a number of Ubuntu developers (including me) have PowerPC systems lying around; for that matter I'm using one right now. It just means it only gets test cycles when community members feel like doing so (i.e. the same level of support as Debian).

The hardware support problems you've had are probably mostly due to individual components, rather than PowerPC as such. For example, if your 802.11 device is a Broadcom (used in a lot of Apple laptops, like mine), then we haven't been able to get legal permission to redistribute the firmware, but if you can get another network device connected somehow then you can use a script in the bcm43xx-fwcutter package to get the firmware from elsewhere.

[jamboi.livejournal.com]

My 802.11g card is a broadcom, but I understand that issue (and support isn't important to me in any case).

The problem was more that there were all manner of bizzare artefacts with my Radeon 9600 (the sort of card that I'm sure works with no problem on i386) It also seemed to start using 1024*768 (very annoying on a 16:10 TFT) and crashing whenever I changed the res on the fly. The thing also froze frequently and arbitrarily during normal operation.

The fact of the matter is that if you bought an iMac G5 you probably did so purely for MacOS (or because you like expensive/pretty computers?). You can compile pretty much any UNIXey stuff you want anyway, so the incentive to poke around and make it work wasn't really there for me at any rate.

[reddragdiva]

Rly? It's flawless on my G4 Quicksilver and G4 12" Powerbook. Sure it wasn't crappy hardware you had?

[jamboi.livejournal.com]

It passes apple hardware test perfectly.

Besides, I'm using an iMac G5 (ALS), so I'll be using a different (64bit) kernel. Not to mention the different sound, ethernet and graphics hardware, and a drastically different motherboard logic chipset. There's enough room there for plenty of hardware support issues that may not show up on your box. OS 10.4.9 also runs completely flawlessly.