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Linux of any sort on a Beige G3

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I have been attempting to install either Yellow Dog 4.0 or Ubuntu 7.10 on a Beige G3/266 with 256MB RAM and a 10GB HD. Here are the results so far:

Yellow Dog:

Boots into a monitor with a mon> prompt. Using the kernel and ramdisk files from CD 1.

Ubuntu:

Slowly attempts to boot, gets past detecting the ZIP drive, then goes to initramfs or something similar. I am at home and the G3 is at work so it is a bit fuzzy right now. Again using the kernel and ramdisk files from the CD.

I've downloaded the Ubuntu alternate CD but haven't burned the disc yet. Would this help to install it any better than the other two?

 
Does Ubuntu still have PowerPC support? I thought they ended that around 6.10 or so..

I don't have much advice for installation, but if you do get anything installed, use a light WM. Fluxbox used to be my favorite, but I just found FVWM2-Crystal, which is a 'pretty' version of FVWM2, and it seems to run well on PCs of that vintage.

 
PowerPC is now community supported for Ubuntu. This means that Canonical is not responsible for the advancement and development of the PowerPC version anymore (that may change, but it depends on the demand). That said, the community has responded tremendously in support of the PowerPC version, so much that Ubuntu/ppc releases only fall behind a day or two from the officially supported versions (plus, the PPC version has gotten better IMO since the community took over development).

You can find the PowerPC port of Gutsy at the following link:

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/7.10/release

If you have problems with Ubuntu, rest assured that Debian/ppc will never falter so you might want to give that a try.

 
Apparently it didn't like my Rage128 PCI video card. After removing the card Debian started right up. Before that I kept getting MMU errors. Strange. It didn't like my Belkin USB2 card either.

The Rage128 card was from a Rev. 1 Blue/White G3 tower that I upgraded to a Rev. 2. When I received the Blue/White G3 it was not in the 66mhz slot.

Yellow Dog and Ubuntu would probably boot OK now as well but since Debian is known to be running (at least the text-based install is) I'll leave it on for now.

 
It's currently downloading packages to install. Depending on the phase of the moon, the way my shadow falls, etc., it will be anywhere between 5 hours and 12 hours to finish.

This is using the Net install CD.

 
It's currently downloading packages to install. Depending on the phase of the moon, the way my shadow falls, etc., it will be anywhere between 5 hours and 12 hours to finish.
This is using the Net install CD.
Click to expand...
Even with the x86 version it can take quite a while. I've got Etch installed on my kids' PC and it took just as long I would say (Celeron D 335 2.8 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Asus P4S800 mobo).

 
It's currently downloading packages to install. Depending on the phase of the moon, the way my shadow falls, etc., it will be anywhere between 5 hours and 12 hours to finish.
This is using the Net install CD.
Click to expand...
Even with the x86 version it can take quite a while. I've got Etch installed on my kids' PC and it took just as long I would say (Celeron D 335 2.8 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Asus P4S800 mobo).
Click to expand...
It's down between 1 hour and 45 minutes and 4 hours now.

I installed Debian 4 on a Pentium 233 laptop with 96MB of RAM a while ago and it didn't take this long. It was not using the net install CD though.

 
It's currently downloading packages to install. Depending on the phase of the moon, the way my shadow falls, etc., it will be anywhere between 5 hours and 12 hours to finish.
This is using the Net install CD.
Click to expand...
Even with the x86 version it can take quite a while. I've got Etch installed on my kids' PC and it took just as long I would say (Celeron D 335 2.8 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Asus P4S800 mobo).
Click to expand...
It's down between 1 hour and 45 minutes and 4 hours now.

I installed Debian 4 on a Pentium 233 laptop with 96MB of RAM a while ago and it didn't take this long. It was not using the net install CD though.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it was much faster with the discs, but it's just so many discs! 8-o I'll deal with the netinstall, thankyouverymuch... :p

 
Yeah, it was much faster with the discs, but it's just so many discs! 8-o I'll deal with the netinstall, thankyouverymuch... :p
Click to expand...
When I did it on the laptop it was with one CD.
Click to expand...
Did you just do a base install and then install everything individually after that? That would be the only way I can think of installing a system with only one Debian disc. :?:

 
I believe it was the Gnome LiveCD. Afterwards I didn't bother adding additional packages. If I remember it only had a 2GB hard disk so I'm trying to figure out how it worked.

 
I finally finished the install about 8:15 this morning. It took a while to locate instructions on copying the vmlinux and initrd files back to the MacOS partition and I had to boot from a MacOS CD to restore the hard disk driver. That step should never have to be done - if I had not read up on it I would have freaked out on losing the MacOS partition when I told it to use free space.

At the moment it's slightly sluggish - no doubt from 256MB RAM and the onboard video chip. There's more memory here salvaged from a Compaq desktop i'll try out.

 
Yeah what I normally did once the installation was finished was change to another command prompt, modprobe the hfs and hfsplus modules, mount the Mac OS partition to a folder I created, and copy over the kernel and ramdisk using cp. The kernel and ramdisk are found in /target/boot during the installation process.

 
Yeah what I normally did once the installation was finished was change to another command prompt, modprobe the hfs and hfsplus modules, mount the Mac OS partition to a folder I created, and copy over the kernel and ramdisk using cp. The kernel and ramdisk are found in /target/boot during the installation process.
Click to expand...
I didn't do modprobe, but found some instructions on mounting the HFS extended partition and copying the files over. The rewriting of the Apple HD driver really threw me for a loop though.

It's up to 384MB RAM - 2 128s salvaged from some old Compaq desktops that were in the office plus 128 that was originally there. Two 64MB DIMM modules were removed.

It's still sluggish, so I may try one of the lightweight window managers. It's also stuck at 800x600. Also BootX is not giving me the option to do something with the G3 cache, so it may be disabled. Before I removed the video card and the USB2 card I cleared out the preferences for BootX because it was really acting strangely.

 
It's still sluggish, so I may try one of the lightweight window managers. It's also stuck at 800x600.
Click to expand...
I'm a fan of Blackbox, which is small and minimal onscreen as well. (I designed a Platinum-esque theme for it.) I've been told Fluxbox is almost the same with just a few more customization options. I recently learned of Matchbox, which was originally developed for embedded devices, so it may be another option to look at.

IceWM is good, if you like the Windows taskbar style UI. For small desktop environments, I've tried Xfce (slow but better than KDE or Gnome) and EDE (faster but not as many compatible apps), and want to look at Étoilé sometime.

 
I've been meaning to install Etoile on a GNU/Linux system at home for kicks. I love that it tries to mimic the function of the Finder without actually trying to copy the look of it.

And follow Zydeco's instruction about GrabG3CacheSetting. As far as I know, it's still included in BootX.

BTW Zydeco.....GREAT themes for XFCE! :)

 
I've been meaning to install Etoile on a GNU/Linux system at home for kicks. I love that it tries to mimic the function of the Finder without actually trying to copy the look of it.
Click to expand...
I wish that someone would work up a standard for X11 apps to communicate with menus. Several WMs can work with detached menus now, but I think the implementation is specific to a toolkit. If there were a standard, Qt apps could use the Etoile menu bar, etc. That would rock.

 
I've been meaning to install Etoile on a GNU/Linux system at home for kicks. I love that it tries to mimic the function of the Finder without actually trying to copy the look of it.
And follow Zydeco's instruction about GrabG3CacheSetting. As far as I know, it's still included in BootX.

BTW Zydeco.....GREAT themes for XFCE! :)
Click to expand...
Got the L2 cache working. It make a drastic improvement in the overall operation of Debian. XFCE is now installed and running. Unfortunately the MacOS installation is starting to act a bit odd stating that it could not communicate with the Monitor. All ATI control panels/extensions with two exceptions have been disabled but it still shows the same message.

For now it defaults to booting into Linux. 800x600 is a bit of a hindrance though.

 
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