On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 20:09:15 +0100, Victor Churchill wrote:
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
I ran Ubuntu and Debian (and Arch), at least dual boot on a G4 laptop
for 10 years or so (until the mobo disk controller died about a month
ago, (much to my disappointment, it was a really nice machine, though
I'd never buy another apple product again based on their current
behaviour).
It is possible to dual boot Linux and MacOS (OSX) through yaboot (the
Linux boot manager -- I did for the first, distant few months until I
decided I never used the Mac side and reused all the disk for Linux).
It's also possible to boot from a USB stick with Ubuntu PPC on the USB
disk, though you have to learn more about OpenFirmware than you might
like http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-780320.html is a good
guide.
-jh
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