Ubuntu LiveCD on an ibook - so close and yet so far

[jamena]

I'm thinking about updating an old ibook (of the bright orange 300MHz variety) with linux as it's OS so I got hold of the latest (5.10) Ubuntu LiveCD to give it a test, see if it works okay before formatting etc...

The kernal loads, goes through all the options okay, shows an ubuntu splash screen with all the loading status going by at the bottom
...but...
Right at the end of bootup process I end up with a black screen. I can see the mouse pointer and I can move the mouse pointer around on the screen, and by clicking around and smacking the keyboard I can make the CD spin up, but I get nothing on screen apart from the mouse pointer (which does respond at least to the trackpad)

help is obviously needed any suggestions?

[jamena]

hmmm...maybe the laptop is just a bit lacking in the hardware department. I've left it alone for a while (a good 20 minutes...) and it's still accessing the CD and the beginnings of a desktop seem to be appearing...but it's not really getting anywhere. How does the speed of a "proper" install compare to the speed of the live CD? If it's anything similar then I need a "slimmer" linux distro for PPC!

Any suggestiongs for a slimline linux distro for PPC?
Laptop is an ibook 300MHz with 96Mb ram. Mac OS 9 only uses 32mb of the ram ... surely there's a PPC linux that will run happily on that! Ubuntu live seems to want more something...

[nvening]

linux is only for x86 which mac are not (yet)

[Funkstar]

linux is only for x86 which mac are not (yet)

well i have to say that that is completely wrong. linux is for any hardware you care to port and compile it to. x86, x86-64, IA64, PPC, Arm (iPac etc.), PS3, iPod, Sparc, Mips, Power4.....

[nvening]

sos, i mean the distro, as far as i know unbuntu does not have a mac version

[ikonia]

what no PPC version - apart from the one thats mentioned in bold on the download page

http://se.releases.ubuntu.com/5.10/

or a direct link to the image

http://se.releases.ubuntu.com/5.10/u...ll-powerpc.iso


jamena

this is why in an earlier thread where you aked about a dirstro for the mac I suggested an EARLIER versoin of yellow dog.

Linux is not magicly light on all kit, its the same principals as every other os, later releases support more products, and more hardware, and better hardware. Software is generally aimed at the "current" hardware platform

You you use Windows XP on a Pentium 2 with 128 meg of ram - well it may well work, but it will be slow and clunky and there maybe hardware problems,

Same for linux you can't just wack the latest release on older hardware and expect it to run ok.

LivceCD's speed well depend on a.) your hardware b.) your ram and yes, a disk installed version will run faster however if you basic hardware is lacking for the current versions nothing will change that

[ikonia]

heres the old thread.

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=56217


I'm curious to how you got on with knoppix on the PPC.
I can't find an official knoppix mirror with PPC liveCD's on.(although I've not hit them all)

[nvening]

I am starting to hate linux. I have downstairs and i have yet to work out how to install.

[jamena]

heres the old thread.

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=56217


I'm curious to how you got on with knoppix on the PPC.
I can't find an official knoppix mirror with PPC liveCD's on.(although I've not hit them all)

I thought I'd start a new thread - seemed detached enough (though if an admin wants to slap this thread onto the end of the older thread that'd be fine!)

I was in a hurry on Friday and grabbed the first liveCD for macs I found, which happened to be ubuntu...
http://lpn.rnbhq.org/hardware/powerbook-g3.shtml might have been what I was referring to in my previous thread but it looked a bit scary, so when I found the ubuntu live CD distro for ppc I thought I'd give it a go instead. As I mentioned at the start of this thread it was horribly slow and was still doing stuff after 20 minutes (I've run XP on a 200MHz PII before and it took a bit less that 20 minutes to load ). a 300MHz cpu and 96Mb of ram should happily run an OS by my thinking, even if it does run quite slowly. The Ubuntu liveCD sort of got stuck at the point where the desktop was loading up I think. I might have time to play with it and other options again next weekend, I'll take my camera to record the progress a little better...

Oh, I looked on the YDL website http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/ but after a minute or so I had not found the downloads section and all I could see was the purchase options, lost patience and searched elsewhere... ...impatience online? never.

So... earlier versions of PPC distros (liveCD type would be particularly nice as I can test the OS before installing, besides the laptop is only ever going to be a for browsing, email, and perhaps the occasional bit of emergency work...)

[ikonia]

I only mentioned the old thread to reference why I was saying use an older distro on older kit rarther than the latest all singing all dacing.

a 300MHz cpu and 96Mb of ram should happily run an OS by my thinking

yes it should - but why arn't you running Tiger for example, because the later versions require more resources, its the same with linux/windows/OSX

by example, you've just grabbed a liveCD version of the Linux equiv of Tiger, in that its the latests greatest ubuntu release, and running from a live CD.


Here is a link to yellow dog 3.1 install
http://www.linuxiso.org/download.php...8-install1.iso
http://www.linuxiso.org/download.php...8-install2.iso
http://www.linuxiso.org/download.php...8-install3.iso

and 4.1 if your machine will handle it
http://www.linuxiso.org/download.php...8-install1.iso
http://www.linuxiso.org/download.php...8-install2.iso
http://www.linuxiso.org/download.php...8-install3.iso
http://www.linuxiso.org/download.php...8-install4.iso

There doesn't appear to be a livecd for yellow dog.


You could look at debian for PPC

http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/


Gentoo has a PPC port tuned for individual chips

http://www.linuxiso.org/download.php...mal-2005.0.iso
http://www.linuxiso.org/download.php...sal-2005.0.iso


this may suite your needs better

a Redhat 6.2 nice and old in terms of running needs Mach install

http://www.linuxiso.org/download.php...nstall.smi.bin


for something a bit more mac based - Darwin

http://www.linuxiso.org/download.php...ppc-602.cdr.gz


Hopefully, thats given you a bit of food for thought.

I'd strongly recommend using a distro thats appropriate in age to your hardware (think about the reasons your not running Tiger)

[jamena]

cheers - I will give some of those a go.

Btw, reason I am not running Tiger has nothing to do with hardware requirements...it's mainly because the Mac is rather old and throwing money at a new OS is not a sensible course of action! I just thought I might be able to stick linux on it and use opensource software as there's comparatively little of that for OS 9.x

I just assumed linux was a slimmer OS that windows/macOS or would at least adjust to work with what it was given with more success. I will try out some older distros (ta for the links) but can't you choose what gets installed with the basic linux OS? In which case the latest distro would make sense in terms of security, only you follow up by avoiding the ram hungry desktops and all the unnecessary extras? I'm sure that was one of the "selling" points of linux - that it could run as a very slimline OS requiring very little resources etc?

[ikonia]

Those links should help you out.

But the principals still stays the same, do you think the latest MAC release would run silky smooth on it ? doubtful as even the latest version of OS's stripped down will have a greater need for resources.

Just to give you some further examples......

Look at Windows 2000 and Windows XP - XP is built on 2000 technology but as an OS is a tad "fatter" even with options removed it still requires a little more juice than 2000 (windows guru's set me straight please)

Same with linux your hardware was released probably early/mid 2.4 kernel so software would have been developed around that period for your hardware, the latter stuff is totally backwards compaible, the problem you will have is how they are packaged together.

eg: latest ubuntu comes with latest gnome - which is a fair bit bigger than gnome versions kicking around when your kit was the latests. So the latest ubuntu is build around software developed much later than your kit with later hardware requirments (software is normally developed for current kit) so you could in theory install ubuntu latest, strip out the desktop, the multimedia etc etc, and build say a desktop product like fluxbox or xfce with a version thats got the hardware requirments of your kit.

Linux is "light" by comparision, but only for the versions relevant to your hardware, you can't put the latest all singing and dancing linux release on much older hardware and still expect it to be "light" however if you put a older distro on so that libraries/kernel/desktop are all of a similar period to your hardware then you'll find its performance excellent.

Don't worry about security, older linux versions are still well maintained,

Just think about the principal - would you expect the latest mac release even stripped down to run well on your kit ? no, the same will be said of pretty much all OS's they are developed with current kit in mind with only slim room for older compatability.

[peterb]

I am starting to hate linux. I have downstairs and i have yet to work out how to install.

Did you buy any books as was suggested on the other Linux thread you started?

[njm106]

Laptop is an ibook 300MHz with 96Mb ram.

The minimum specification for the Ubuntu Live CD is 128MB and it can take a good few minutes to load even on a fairly modern PC.

What you have to bear in mind is that it is extracting all the programs from the CD uncompressing them and then trying to load them in to memory, it aint gonna be quick with 96MB.

It will be a hell of a lot faster once it has been installed. I have installed Ubuntu on a K6II-300 with 128MB of RAM before and that was reasonably ok but don't expect OpenOffice to come up in a flash.

If you want to stick with Ubuntu I recommend installing a less resource intensive GUI such as fluxbox.