I forwarded this query on to a mate who "does" Macs. With apologies to those who don't like top-posting and weird formatting, , this is his reply (mildly redacted)..
This came up on the LUG list and I wondered if you might know anything about this, or is it the wrong kind of Mac? Hi Folks, I am trying to install Ubuntu Linux (or any other flavour of Linux - I'm fairly agnostic in this regard) on a G4 Mac Mini. Its a G4 so ie not Intel and hence I dont think it will work, its a Mac specific chip. IF he had a later version it would be possible to use bootcamp However, I am struggling to get past the first hurdle, which is to get anything other than Mac OS X booting when I start it up! Thats cos its a Mac ;) dont want scruffy old linux on there I have tried pressing c with the boot media in the drive, investigated defining the optical drive as the boot drive within OS X, but nothing works or presents itself as a possible solution. The only other thing I have come across are recommendations that I need the original install discs to boot from initially, but I imagine they are long gone as this machine was purchased second hand. He could take it to the Apple store they should be able to re install the original OS The alternative to all of this malarkey is to get the drivers working for the usb wifi card that my daughter bought (it's her machine, and she checked for compatibility before she bought it), but they appear to be fairly inadequate in that they don't appear to be accompanied by any software that might enable me to configure the card to connect to my network. That should not be that hard provided she runs it as a Mac and not Linux they are pretty good at talking to networks etc ITS UNIX after all ! and regardless of what the Linux people think its a very nice iteration even the older versions. Hope this might be of some help one way or another? Victor Churchill, Bournemouth
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