Ubuntu 8.04 on iBook G4
Posted by Adi | Filed under English, Free Software, Planet Ubuntu
I just got a small iBook G4 12” (late 2004), 1.2 Ghz PPC laptop.
Thinks that make me happy:
- full size keyboard.
- great power management and battery life
- power indicator leds available on the battery (like for the old pc laptops)
- in terms of performance, at least for browsing and reading emails it’s ok
Major annoyance:
- the keys are great, to bad they are missing. no alt gr, insert, page up, page down, home end… etc… and just to increase the annoyance Caps lock key
- entry/return key is not as big as I would like, but guess what ? instead of alt gr you have another enter key !?!?
- single button touchpad, and my touchpad is not a “synpactic” one
- noisy CD/DVD drive. It’s realy noise!
- lack of “Delete” key… it’s actual a backspace
- custom “mini-vga” connector for external monitor
As you can see there are many bad thinks about this laptop, and the main reason I bought it was to have a small computer for ppc architecture. In any other circumstance I will go for a Thinkpad X series with extra cell battery and dock station.
I got the laptop with OS 10.4 already installed so I was beginning my journey for installing Ubuntu on this laptop. Usually I go for Debian for any hardware other than x86, but this time I was curious if I can use Ubuntu on this laptop.
The latest PPC LiveCD available is the Ubuntu 8.04. Not officially supported but available from the cd archive site.
To boot the CD start the laptop and hold “C” key. Now you should see the “yaboot” prompt. Yahoot doing what lilo or grub are doing for normal PCs. The CD has a problem with booting using slash-screen and in order to boot you must change the boot line like this:
IMAGENAME-nosplash modprobe ide-core video=radeonfb:1024×768-24@60
Probably you will need to resize the disc to make space for Ubuntu. I used the partitioning GUI available in the livecd for resizing the HFS+ partition. The resizing job ended with an error but the partition was resized and this is all that counts.
I have rebooted to check the resize partition in OS 10.4 and everything was OK. I continued with a reboot and start the Live CD.
After the Live CD has booted I followed the normal installation step, choosing the use the free space for hosting the new Ubuntu installation.
The driver for wifi network adapter are managed my restricted driver manager and after downloading the firmware and other things I was able to use the wifi card.
The function key buttons were all working like on a normal PC by pressing Fn+F[1-9]. To activate left click button in Gnome press F12.
You will not have Flash, Skype or Dropbox on this laptop, and probably any other proprietary software will follow this rule.
Suspend is not working out of the box. To make it work you must unload the usb modules, just before calling the suspend function. To find how to do this follow the guide from here.
To conclude I can say that Ubuntu 8.04 is usable on this laptop but I encourage you to go buy a Thinkpad!
Tags: Free Software, Ubuntu
December 12th, 2008 at 14:46
The „tada” sound makes me jealous!
December 12th, 2008 at 15:04
> instead of the classic PC startup beep, this mac has a strange “tada” sound.
Now, how is that a problem?
> single button touchpad, and my touchpad is not a “synpactic” one
You can use the cmd keys .
> The function key buttons were all working like on a normal PC by pressing Fn+F[1-9].
describes how to fix that.
> You will not have Flash, Skype or Dropbox on this laptop, and probably any other proprietary software will follow this rule.
That’s a problem with proprietary software in general; it sucks.
I also notice a bias toward Thinkpad. Why?
December 12th, 2008 at 16:08
Or maybe a system76 laptop, with ubuntu support! (@ http://system76.com/index.php?cPath=28)
December 12th, 2008 at 17:58
First of all I forgot to say that I love second hand computers (reuse)
Vadim, for people living in US and who want new hardware I recommend the system76 laptops. But for me, living in Europe is much harder… and in general I use second hand hardware
I like Thinkpad because I consider they are the best second hand laptops. In the past I had dell’s and hp’s and they all were destroyed previously of being obsoleted (contacts and plastic parts broke)
If you are in a conference and reboot your normal pc, a simple beep will make anyone know you have just rebooted, but this “tada” let them think you are playing something.
December 13th, 2008 at 00:34
price?
December 13th, 2008 at 01:41
340 $