Ubuntu iBook G3 Performance

[Larry Grover]

Wouter Eerdekens wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 20, 2004 at 05:56:26PM +0200, Ecmel Ercan wrote:
> 
>>Hi,
>>
>>I am considering to buy a secondhand Apple iBook G3/800 with 640 MB RAM
>>and AirPort card.
>>
>>Any feedback is appreciated regarding Ubuntu performance and compatibility
>>on such a system.
> 
> 
> I'm running Ubuntu on my iBook G3/600 with 384 MB RAM. It works just
> fine. All hardware is supported, sleep/recovery works (with just a
> little bit of customizing needed). I don't have any AirPort card
> however, but I believe that everything works OK as long as you don't
> have AirPort Extreme.
> 
> I'd go for it. These laptops look cool and Ubuntu works very well on
> 'em...
> 
> Cheers,
> Wouter
> 


I have a G3/800 with 384 MB RAM and a 12" screen, purchased new in May 
2004 (as new old stock...I got a really good price on it).  I also have 
an airport card.

The good news:

I've tried several PPC distros on it (Gentoo, Debian, YDL 3 and 4, 
Fedora Core and Ubuntu) -- the Ubuntu install was the easiest and just 
about everything including the airport card worked right away.  The only 
thing that didn't work was suspend-to-RAM (sleep).  There is a 
workaround for the suspend problem which was posted to this list not too 
long ago.

The performance is quite acceptable -- linux runs noticeably faster than 
OS X.  Also, the battery life is great.  I get something like 4+ hrs on 
a charge.

I have the small (12 inch) model.  The light weight and small size make 
it very easy to carry around (I bicycle to work, including a long hill 
on the last 3/4 mile, and it's no problem to have the laptop on the back 
of the bike).

The construction seems pretty rugged, so I don't have any concerns about 
physical integrity over the next several years (unlike two Dell's I have 
owned, both of which pretty much fell apart in two years).

The bad news:

I had a hard time finding a bag *small* enough to fit my iBook.

The really bad news:

This model is prone to failure of a critical system component:  the 
logic board (see http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/faq/ or simply 
google on "ibook logic board").  I've owned my iBook for a little over 7 
months, and it has been back to Apple for replacement of the logic board 
  a total of three times!  In fact, I just got it back from it's third 
trip to Apple's repair facility today.

Now, Apple has fixed my iBook for free each time it has broken (see the 
Apple page I cited above for details on their extended repair program 
for the logic board), including overnight shipping both ways.  And their 
turn-around time for the repairs has been outstanding (they have 
repaired and reshipped it in less than a day each time).  Still, this is 
a very poor record for reliability.

Based on my experience with this model iBook, in good conscience and 
despite the good performance and good linux compatibility, I recommend 
that you avoid it.

Good luck,
Larry