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#1 2005-03-09 4:53 pm
- The New Guy
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- From: Left of left
- Registered: 2000-10-18
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Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
My G4/400 is on her last legs. Really, she's only used for email, internet, iTunes and typing. Games all run very slowly. I also use her as a portal into my home network and for WebDAV.
Specs:
Sawtooth G4/400 AGP
640MB RAM
40GB+40GB+10GB HDD
ATI Radeon 128MB Graphics card + 15" and 17" monitor
What distro would run the fastest on her? It'll be a while until we can scrape together the cash to get a Mini, and even then it would seem like a waste of a good computer to me.
The car of the future is a train with a bike waiting at the other end.
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#2 2005-03-11 3:45 pm
- Egress
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Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
Any Linux will run fine on that machine. I'm not sure about dual monitor support, though.
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#3 2005-03-11 6:29 pm
- hawaiian717
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Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
Dual monitors should work. I use an x86 Linux box at work with a dual head nVidia video card with two 19" Samsung LCDs, one connected via the DVI port, the other viat the VGA port. With the right xorg.conf file it should work.
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#4 2005-03-13 9:24 pm
- MuckSavage
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Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
Don't know how well their PPC support is, but Ubuntu Linux runs pretty quickly on an old Celeron 700 frankenpc I built. It runs better than some of the other distros I have tried.
Since it is based on debian, you could try installing different flavors of debian to see which runs best.
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#5 2005-03-14 6:56 am
- videoartguy
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Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
ubuntu also just release a ppc live cd of hoary...
check their forums for a doanload link.
anyone tried it out yet?
ppc live cd's are few and far between.
rocklinux is the only one i've ever used that worked....
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#6 2005-03-14 4:24 pm
Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
Gentoo Linux is the way to go. Dual monitor works, and the best way to optimize to have the full performance is to use Gentoo.
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#7 2005-03-19 7:15 am
- laughinol
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Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
Sorry, you don't recommend Gentoo PPC to someone looking for a turn-key dual monitor setup. It CAN be made fast and fun, buy this is for a later date, after some experience.
YellowDog, FC, or whatever distro you've heard of with PPC tacked on should be fine. Later, if you want to experiement, try gentoo. It's nice n fast, light, but compiles everything (save OOo) from source, and isn't friendly to folks that don't like docs and manual configuration. (I use it and love it, but don't recommend to newbies).
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#9 2005-03-19 12:45 pm
Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
laughinol wrote:
Sorry, you don't recommend Gentoo PPC to someone looking for a turn-key dual monitor setup. It CAN be made fast and fun, buy this is for a later date, after some experience.
YellowDog, FC, or whatever distro you've heard of with PPC tacked on should be fine. Later, if you want to experiement, try gentoo. It's nice n fast, light, but compiles everything (save OOo) from source, and isn't friendly to folks that don't like docs and manual configuration. (I use it and love it, but don't recommend to newbies).
I thought he said he wanted to know which distro was the fastest for teh machine. Also, Gentoo PPC isn't like terribly hard. It just needs a little dedication, that's all. The tutorial provided by gentoo.org is excellent.
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#10 2005-03-24 11:49 pm
- laughinol
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Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
tpark wrote:
laughinol wrote:
Sorry, you don't recommend Gentoo PPC to someone looking for a turn-key dual monitor setup. It CAN be made fast and fun, buy this is for a later date, after some experience.
YellowDog, FC, or whatever distro you've heard of with PPC tacked on should be fine. Later, if you want to experiement, try gentoo. It's nice n fast, light, but compiles everything (save OOo) from source, and isn't friendly to folks that don't like docs and manual configuration. (I use it and love it, but don't recommend to newbies).I thought he said he wanted to know which distro was the fastest for teh machine. Also, Gentoo PPC isn't like terribly hard. It just needs a little dedication, that's all. The tutorial provided by gentoo.org is excellent.
OK, agreed, Gentoo.
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#11 2005-03-25 5:09 pm
- assassin_bill
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Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
Honestly, after testing almost every PPC linux distro under the sun... Debian's the best. It's stable, fast, and secure (I recommend sarge or stable (sid's weird).
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#12 2005-04-11 6:55 am
- laughinol
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Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
Sorry, but "It's stable, fast, and secure" is just too vague. This defines every linux kernel, essentially, if it's self-built. The distro around it and how it's configured is what makes things nice.
Also, I wonder if ppc packages are as up to date as .deb stuffs usually are 
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#14 2005-04-18 1:09 am
Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
tpark wrote:
I thought he said he wanted to know which distro was the fastest for teh machine.
I'd like to see actual benchmarks to back that up.
I've yet to see a gentoo machine that actually is faster than a binary install.
-=-
That being said - FC4 will have a PPC release in June.
FC3 can be installed but its a PITA
FC Rawhide (4 test) can be installed but isn't stable.
YDL rocks on Macs.
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#15 2005-04-25 6:06 pm
- shuuhen
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Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
I run Yellow Dog Linux 3.0.1 on my PowerBook 3400. KDE was sluggish on it, so I switched to Fluxbox. Considering the speed of my PowerBook, it is fairly fast.
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#17 2005-05-14 10:28 am
- vegeta08
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Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
resedit wrote:
YDL rocks on Macs.
Didn't the latest release of YDL have a bunch of issues with audio? I seem to remember reading something about it on a mailing list some time ago, and apparently TerraSoft's reply was essentially "Tough. Live with it." I would hope they would have sorted it out by now....
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#18 2005-05-15 12:53 am
Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
the kernel that ships with ydl had lots of problems on my mac , when i tried recompiling the kernel source rpm it errored out as well (damn distro patched kernels) so i always build kernels from the official kernel.org source, so if your having issues YDL having broken audio, just compile the vanilla 2.6.x.x source with the ALSA Powermac drivers intead of waiting for a new kernel from them
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#19 2005-05-15 1:36 am
Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
well, ALSA is still kinda buggy on PPC from what I hear. Works for some, doesnt for others, even with same hardware/configs. not saying it wont work, I had little trouble with it on my gentoo'd ibook. As with most things linux, ymmv
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#20 2005-06-10 4:14 pm
- tramahound
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Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
does ubuntu work with airport? I have a 400mhz tibook i'd like to try it on. is it bettery than YDL? I tried that and couldn't get airport to work. I'm a linux noob though so which is easier/more documented?
Thanks
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#21 2005-06-10 5:14 pm
- ironhawk
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Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
Right now, I'm up in the air betweet Debian and Gentoo.
Two folks linked to the Debian PPC pages give instructions on how to install both.
Someone mentioned Debian being based on Gentoo.
So, which is better, in your opinion?
I know Debian supports Airport, because someone mentioned it at the Debian site, but I don't know if Gentoo will.
I found the bittorrent files for the Debian ISOs... there are 12 of them.
Does this mean it will take 12 CDs to install Debian, or do the CDs include extras like KDE and apps and the like?
BTW, I'm going to do this on my Clamshell iBook, first.
I'll back up my OS X partition by using Carbon Copy Cloner, to make an image, which I'll save on my G4.
If things work out, I'll also install Linux on the G4, and use MOL for any OS X stuff.
What would you recommend for a partitioning scheme?
I have a 60Gb hard drive in the iBook.
As an aside, I share my iBook's internet connection ( which I receive via Airport ) with my G4, via ethernet.
Will I still be able to do so with Linux?
Last edited by ironhawk (2005-06-10 8:30 pm)
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#22 2005-06-13 10:19 pm
- tramahound
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Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
which one is easiest to sit down and use for a linux noob?
ubuntu or debian?
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#23 2005-06-13 10:23 pm
- MuckSavage
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Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
Ubuntu. Very easy to install and use.
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#24 2005-06-14 9:13 pm
- a monkey
- *monkey screech*
- From: The Jungles of Africa
- Registered: 2005-05-28
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Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
Fedora Core for PPC, man. It's got a lot of false stereotypes since it's still not "stable", but it ran awesomely on my old G4. 
You should really check it out.
Ubuntu is very easy for a n00b to install/use, but it almost makes things too easy. Fedora Core gives you more control. If you've never installed a linux distro in your life, use Ubuntu. Otherwise Fedora Core.
Last edited by a monkey (2005-06-16 9:53 am)
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#25 2005-06-14 9:24 pm
- a monkey
- *monkey screech*
- From: The Jungles of Africa
- Registered: 2005-05-28
- Posts: 48
Re: Best PPC Distro for an Aging G4
ironhawk wrote:
Someone mentioned Debian being based on Gentoo.
Not true at all.
Vidalinux is based on Gentoo, though, and Ubuntu is based on Debian.
Last edited by a monkey (2005-06-14 9:25 pm)
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