[plug] linux on an imac

[Michael Holland]

Gavin,
I picked up an old G4 Powermac to play with and found a few surprises.
First, the parts are all standard, almost. USB mouse and keyboard, and
yes, generic ones work fine. (OK, Apple was using USB long before PCs.)
Standard IDE HDD, DVD and ZIP. (no more SCSI) Standard SDRAM slots (4),
VGA, fire-wire. Not one port or device that wouldn't be at home on an x86
box. PCI, AGP, PCMCIA(!), even an almost-ATX power supply and motherboard.
So these boxes are cheap and easy to upgrade.

 Secondly, with just a memory upgrade (256MB min, 512 good), it runs OS-X
beautifully. And OS-X is just wonderful - real Unix too, including X.
Better than win32 with a full Cygwin install :-) Better than Ubuntu, in
that my favourite shell was already installed.
  If you want a "legit" copy of OS-X, you should in theory be able to
beg or buy a used copy of Panther from someone who has upgraded to Tiger,
as there are no "upgrade licences".
  There are also no registration codes, Activation, or "Genuine Advantage"
to worry about, so there isn't really an active market.

  Which brings me to the question: Why would anybody want to put Linux on
such a machine? It not like the world is short of old win-98/2k boxes that
are just begging for the Linux make-over.


P.S., generic USB mice are better than Apple ones. Even OS-X makes use of
the extra buttons and scroll wheel.

> Anyone been successful with _any_ flavour of linux on a 1998-vintage
> imac with NO mac software available?  Could you please point me to a

I installed Ubuntu to test it. If you are still stuck, perhaps you could
take my hard drive (lying in a drawer somewhere) and see if it boots in
yours.

One warning - the apple g3/g4 DVD-ROM drives I tried will not read
burned DVDs. CD-Rs are OK though. (Any way around that?)

cheers, Mike.