After buying a new MacPro and giving the old PowerMac G5 to my mother, I had a spare machine with no clearly defined role. I choose to give a try to Ubuntu on this PowerMac G4 450 Mhz.
This machine is now an 9 years old, but I never had any problem with it except that I had to change the power supply.
My previous experience of installing Ubuntu on an old Mac was performed on an PowerMac 7500 and was far from successful. This time I had no problem at all to install it.
Step-by-step guide
- Download the latest Ubuntu release for PowerPC (currently 8.10 Intrepid Ibex), be carefull to choose the alternate install CD (the other download is server version without a GUI)
- Burn the CD
- Start the Mac with the option(alt) key pressed down and insert the CD in the CD-ROM drive
- Choose to boot on the CD (the icon with the CD and a small pinguin on the bottom left)
- Follow the on screen indications
- I had a problem during the installation when the installer tries to detect my CD-ROM drive. In order to circumvent the problem I had to issue the following command in the second terminal (you access it with option+F1 key combination):
modprobe ide-scsiYou should ear the CD spinning in the drive and by restarting this step of the install this should go through. - Take a break, the installation now goes till this end without a problem but last in my case 1 hour.
That’s it. As you see there’s no major challenge in this operation.
