Recommendations: What Flavor Linux To Run On My G4 Mirror Door? (I'm New To Linux)

2112st

2112st

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Oct 8, 2023
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Hey folks!

So, I plan to populate all four drive connections inside my G4. One has OSX, which came with it, one has OS9 which I recently installed. A third will be additional storage.

The fourth? Well, after watching some of Action Retro's videos, I'm trying to figure out what Linux GUI I'd like to play with. Note the specs of my G4 below. I'm open to suggestions. I'm a complete novice to Linux.

I'm not much into games, though-I'm a writer and illustrator. So, I'd be curious what I can play around with in Linux, as well as maybe teach myself another operating system. :)

G4-Specs.jpg
 
C

ClassicHasClass

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Aug 30, 2022
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Actually, on big-endian systems, I find the BSDs to be better choices (Linux on 32-bit PPC is not well-maintained and many distros don't even offer it anymore). All of the major BSDs (NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD) will run splendidly on that, though I'm a longtime pro-NetBSD bigot.
 
Patrick

Patrick

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Oct 26, 2021
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@Action Retro just installed Debian on a G5 and a G4


and i guess it just worked.

when picking which hard drive to install the OS to. i would be extra careful you pick the RIGHT hard drive. ;)
 
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Certificate of Excellence

Certificate of Excellence

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Aside from wifi, Debian 12.4 installed out of the box for me on my powermac g5. I also had issues with FF not working like Sean did but you can get dillo or SeaLion 32.5.1 or iirc Arcticfox 43.1 for web. I unwisely chose Mate which was kinda sluggish and don't really recommend it. Disabling macro compositor improves GUI snappiness. In the above vid, Sean ran XFCE which looked nice n snappy outright and is what I think Id use for a fresh install on ppc. Here's the link for the net install.

https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/12.0/ppc64/debian-12.0.0-ppc64-NETINST-1.iso

Best of luck to you.
 
Certificate of Excellence

Certificate of Excellence

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rikerjoe said:
I wrote about my experience installing Lubuntu 16.04 Remix on a white iBook G4, which went quite well.

https://tinkerdifferent.com/threads...with-mac-os-x-on-white-ibook-g4-800-mhz.2778/
Click to expand...
Remix was perfect out of the box for me as well on my pmg5. The issue I had was defunct repositories so it was hard to get apps. Still, even with the very old arctic fox it came with, the browser worked pretty well for most web and I was able to add other features like docky, neofetch and conky to get some of the functionality I liked.
 
rikerjoe

rikerjoe

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Oct 31, 2021
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Certificate of Excellence said:
Remix was perfect out of the box for me as well on my pmg5. The issue I had was defunct repositories so it was hard to get apps. Still, even with the very old arctic fox it came with, the browser worked pretty well for most web and I was able to add other features like docky, neofetch and conky to get some of the functionality I liked.
Click to expand...
My latest escapade in PPC Linux for the PowerPC Challenge was attempting to get Gentoo Linux running on another iBook G4, which has been a big fat fail so far and of course the month of January is now behind us. I haven’t given up yet and have been slowly chipping away at an installation where my current challenge is to build a kernel that will actually compile and not throw errors during compilation or kernel panic during boot. Unfortunately the Gentoo PPC handbook is not a great help here, and what info I can find on the interwebs seems dated, but I’m still plugging away.
 
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speakers

speakers

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Nov 5, 2021
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I have the same MDD PowerMac3,6 as yours. I've had it from new. Apart from the loud and hot PSU, which failed once and needed recapping, it's a fine machine.

I multi-boot OS9, OSX Cheetah, Panther, Tiger and Leopard plus NetBSD-9 and Debian-8. I configure yaboot from Linux for the multi-booting. The Linux version is old, was reasonably well supported at the time, but I can't vouch for Debian now. Although macppc is a secondary platform for NetBSD, it's quite well supported and the documentation is centralized and reliable.

I mostly use the command line and don't run a GUI (except X11 on occasions). Getting video to work correctly is often quite a pain.
 
Patrick

Patrick

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💖 Gentoo

about a decade ago thats the distro i used at work. (the guy before me started with it. and i just kept it going)

..
it is a very manual distro. back then i loved the documentation. but its prolly pretty dated now if they haven't kept it up to date. I think the founder, who was really good at tech writing. eventually left and created Funtoo ?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
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