[plug] Linux on Power PC (chip) Mac computers

[Simon Wise]

On 04/10/13 09:19, Gene wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> I have a Mac Power Macintosh (tower) with the Power PC (not newer Intel) chip,
> and would greatly appreciate any advice or leads to resources for getting this
> machine converted from OS X 10.3 to any flavour of Linux.
>
> I've got Mint and Ubuntu disks but they are suitable for Intel only apparently.

I've got an old PPC G4 Mac Mini running Debian ... you will need to go back a 
few versions to find a debian, mint or ubuntu install disk which will install on 
an old apple (that firmware and boot system has not been used for a long time), 
but the old debian ones are certainly available and oldstable is still 
maintained. Once installed the ppc repositories will be available for updates, 
you will probably be able to update to a more recent system but the main target 
platform for the ppc repositories isn't apples any more of course. Dual booting 
with OSX needs a bit of care ... the OSX method of picking the system to boot 
automatically will ignore the linux partition so only change things in linux 
using the linux way. You will need to get a bit familiar with the Open Firmware 
stuff, but google helps here, and the linux tools to use it. It might be an idea 
to upgrade to OSX 10.4.9 or so, if you can find a copy somewhere. I used OSX 
back then, generally dual booting, but never got an intel apple ... 10.4.9 was 
when they had cleaned things up to finish the transition to intel and before 
they started cluttering it all up again and leaving ppc behind.

It has been a while since I set it up, but I could look up some notes and maybe 
get more details if you need them.


Simon