It’s not particularly easy to create a bootable USB flash drive so you can try running Linux on a PowerPC Mac. FAST INSTANT DOWNLOAD Download type: Free: Premium : Download speed: 0.03 KBps : Maximum : Waiting time. There are some differences between the PowerPC version of Ubuntu and the versions of Ubuntu for officially supported architectures you will likely find the PowerPC FAQ helpful.Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger Retail DVD.iso (2.64 GB) Choose free or premium download SLOW DOWNLOAD. The PowerPC version of Ubuntu, which is community-supported rather than officially supported, should run on your Mac that has a G4 processor.Lubuntu is known for having a lighter-weight user interface, LXDE – similar to what Simon Royal used when he put LXLE on an old PC.Ubuntu Linux has a simple numbering scheme for its versions. After talking with others in our small-but-growing Linux PPC Facebook group, I settled on Lubuntu as a good starting point. Pick a DistroStep one is to choose your distribution. It’s my most powerful PowerPC Mac, so I figured it would be a good way to take Linux for a spin.Anything before G5 can only use a 32-bit Linux. The only PowerPC Macs that can use a 64-bit operating system are G5 iMacs and Power Macs. You can download 14.04 and 16.04 from this page, earlier versions from this page, where you can also get version 12.04 for PowerPC, among many other architectures.PowerPC distros prior to version 12.04 have separate 32-bit and 64-bit installers. That’s also the latest version available for PowerPC at present.Formatting the flash drive was the easy part installing the ISO and creating a bootable system stumped me.The only method I found that worked for creating a bootable USB flash drive with Lubuntu on it required me to use Etcher, a freeware app that takes an ISO and creates a bootable flash drive from it. I would spend hours trying this, that, and the other thing. And none of them worked on my Power Mac G5. The USB Flash Drive ProblemI do, however, have a few 8 GB and larger USB flash drives, and there are plenty of instructions online for properly formatting the flash drive and getting the bootable ISO installed. Using a USB Flash Drive was an exercise in frustration. That’s fine if you have blank CD-R media or a CD-RW disc, but I haven’t burnt a CD in years and have no blanks at present.That was also the biggest reason I had problems.
Bootable Usb Linux Powerbook 10.4 Mac OS XBut It Won’t BootI’ve been a spoiled Mac user since 1986, and if I’d had a CD-R or DVD-R, this would have been easy. Those are not the default settings, so you’ll have to find them in your version of Disk Utility. But it wouldn’t boot.The key is to format the flash drive using Master Boot Record and FAT. Etcher dutifully imaged the ISO file to the flash drive. I had to use one of my Macs with OS X 10.11 El Capitan installed, and that did the job.In other words, you need a fairly modern Mac to create the bootable flash drive you need to launch Linux on PowerPC Macs.I formatted the flash drive as FAT, exFAT, HFS+, Apple Partition Map, GUID Partition Map, and Master Boot Record. Nor does it run on my Intel Macs with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. On my Power Mac G5, the options are OS X 10.4.11 Tiger, 10.4.11 Tiger Server, and 10.5.8 Leopard.If I’d had an external USB or FireWire drive, it would have shown up as well. It’s easy, but there’s nothing nearly as easy for booting from a USB flash drive.On most Macs, if you hold down the Option key (marked Opt on some Mac keyboards, Alt on Windows keyboard) at startup, your Mac will present you with all the bootable options on your computer. That goes back to the first Macs with built-in CD-ROM drives. Skype for mac interfaceYour modern Mac be in Open Firmware (OF, as in two of the keys you hold down to boot into it). Hold down Cmd, Opt, O, and F at startup and hold them down until text appears on the upper left corner of your display. Open FirmwareWhatever the reason, my last generation Power Mac G5 will only boot from the flash drive if I startup in Open Firmware. I couldn’t boot from it in the traditional way. This was an exercise in frustration! Making a Bootable Linux Hard DriveOnce I saw that Lubuntu ran decently on my ancient Power Mac G5 Dual, I knew that I wanted to install it on a hard drive so it would boot more quickly and allow me to add more software. The other three I tried simply would not boot from the flash drive. In the end I found the command that let me boot from the front USB port on my older Power Mac G5 – these are all equivalent:Boot that only worked on one of my Power Mac G5s. That worked perfectly with my Late 2005 Power Mac G5, but it would not work with my older 2.0 GHz dual-processor Power Mac G5s no matter what I did, and I didn’t bother to try it on an iMac G5.If you have more than one bootable device, type devalias at the prompt, hit Return, and you will see a lengthy list of devices like this.That was a bit of a rabbit trail for me. Just hold those 4 keys down until OF tells you to let go of them.As long as you only have one bootable USB device, such as the flash drive with Lubuntu or an external CD-ROM or DVD drive, you can type in the following to boot from that device on a dual-core Power Mac G5:And then hit Return or Enter. That can take a while, as OF tests all your system memory every time you launch it. Ubuntu knows that we are interested in making informed decisions and that it needs to educate us through the process. It’s the kind of polish we don’t see with the Mac OS Apple knows that most of us just want it to run. I really appreciate the concise, thorough, helpful explanations of what each choice means. I wouldn’t want to use a Power Mac below 800 MHz or so with Tiger or Leopard, but dual 733 MHz or faster CPUs work well enough. This is lustworthy hardware, although not especially practical in terms of the current it draws.Dual-processor and dual-core Power Mac G5s are competent performers, and the faster dual-processor Power Mac G4 machines are solid workhorses as well with decent amounts of power. With four cores running at 2.5 GHz, you’ve got comparable power to the earliest 4-core Mac Pro. Is It Practical?There are two questions to address here: Is it practical to continue using PowerPC Macs in 2018? And is it practical to run Linux on PowerPC Macs instead of OS X 10.4 Tiger or 10.5 Leopard? HardwareFor those who have a Power Mac G5 Quad, the last and most powerful PowerPC Mac ever, the answer is a resounding yes. I ended up with a very nice, friendly, functional Linux machine that lets me run the latest version of Firefox on a 2005 Power Mac that was left behind with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard shipped in August 2009.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMichael ArchivesCategories |