[NBLUG/talk] Linux on Beige G3

Lincoln Peters sampln at sbcglobal.net
Thu Oct 13 18:36:09 PDT 2005


On Thursday 13 October 2005 05:52 pm, Rob Orsini wrote:
> I just got a free older G3 (Beige) and I can't seem to get it to boot
> the PPC version of Ubuntu. Anyone have any experience with this ball of
> wax?

I was able to get the PPC version of Ubuntu to work on a first-generation iMac 
(the blueberry-colored, gumdrop-shaped thing with the tray-loading CD-ROM 
drive), but that was a "new world" Mac, so it was a lot easier than what 
you're looking at.

The BIOS'es of many older ("old world") Macs is crippled* so that it will only 
boot MacOS 9 or earlier, which makes it significantly harder to run Linux on 
such Macs (you need a MacOS installation with a Linux bootloader; difficult 
but not impossible).  A quick Google search suggests that your beige PowerMac 
G3 is an "old world" Mac.

These links look like they might be helpful; 
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/lists/mol-general/February01/0062.html
http://animefreak.ath.cx:9000/index.php/2004/08/06/installation-of-debian-linux-on-a-powermac-g3-beige/
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/history/357486


* I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there who would claim that the 
BIOS on an "old world" Mac is not crippled, since it was designed 
specifically for the task for which it was intended (i.e. booting MacOS), but 
I consider it crippled because it just seems to me like bad design.

-- 
Lincoln Peters
<sampln at sbcglobal.net>

After all my erstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Just because it perished?
		-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

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