[plug] linux on an imac

[Tomasz Grzegurzko]

On 8/23/06, Michael Holland <myk at myk.id.au> wrote:
> 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.
I found mostly the same with my G3 -- apple's intel move is a long
time coming, looking at the hardware... heck even the SCSI stuff works
either way -- for example I have a PowerMac 7200 with an adaptec scsi
card I took from an x86 PC. Got away with this because both machines
are PCI-based.
>
>  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.
Many reasons. You've outlined the problem -- MacOS costs money. Do you
really want to shell out (insert $$$ here) for an old box? 256MB of
RAM is truckloads for Linux. Can you not do lots on a PPC/Linux box
thanks to OSS? Is this a PLUG list or a MLUG list? =) etc etc.
>
>
> P.S., generic USB mice are better than Apple ones. Even OS-X makes use of
> the extra buttons and scroll wheel.
Then they're way behind -- Linux has done it for ages. Another reason
not to MacOS in my opinion.
>
> > 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?)
I have similar problems with my G3 -- quite a fussy little cdrom. As
it is quite embedded in the hardware though, I cannot replace it quite
so easily.
>
> cheers, Mike.

Tomasz