sumarise ppc problems

[altern]

hi all

 > It worked like a charm! I'm proud to announce that my new 12" iBook is
 > happily running Ubuntu. The only issue is the lack of wireless
 > networking. I guess you can't have everything. :o)

great. I was not that difficult, was it?.

 > I'm going to double check the wiki as well. The dual-boot install
 > worked flawlessly, and was as or more easy than the x86 version.

I just thought this would be a good moment to try to sumarise the 
problems / issues to twist on ppc installations. I changed the subject 
of the thread because I think its a new step somehow.
So i will describe here some of the things I am dealing with at the 
moment, which solutions had been suggested and which questions are still 
unsolved for me. I think it would be good for all if ppc Ubuntu users 
describe our machines and the problems we have or had and how we did to 
solve them. Then maybe we could update the wiki with all this info

In myy case I have a 12" powerbook G4, 1.3mhz, GeForce FX Go5200
and my problems so far are:

A - wireless networking : Not working
B - modem : Not supported
C - graphic card : No hardware acceleration? I only get thousand of colors
D - kernel : which one to use for your machine?
E - ALT key wont work on spanish keyboard so i cannot access the @ #¬ \| 
[] etc... symbols (same for german keyboards aparently)

ok, now one by one.

A - wireless networking : Not working
I havent got into this at all. I kind of rememer that there were some 
emails about it in the list

B - modem : Not supported
The apple winmodem is not supported as usual with winmodems. So there is 
need for a driver. I was suggested to download it from 
http://www.linuxant.com and follow the "How to setup your modem" wiki at 
Yellow dog's website. I think its
here http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/support/solutions/ydl_2.3/winmodem.shtml
or
http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/support/solutions/ydl_general/modem_dialup.shtml

This wouldnt work for me as i cannot compile the driver. Looks like this 
is because by default Ubunto wont install the compiler and the headers 
needed. You need to go to the synaptic package manager under system 
configuration or management (?) and make sure you install the right 
packages. HOwever i am not sure about what i have to install. I was 
asked by the installation process to locate the header for my kernel (i 
am writing from memory so this might not be exactly what i asked for). 
Then i installed the kernel headers for general ppc but i still get 
errors. I am not sure if this is the right one. Later in this email i 
talk about this again.
The yellow dogs wiki is for yellow dog and i guess the Ubuntu linux is 
differently structured

C - graphic card : No hardware acceleration? I only get thousand of colors
i havent gone into this. just noticed that the display only displays 
thousand of colors as the ubuntu desktop background's gradient is not 
properly displayed. Also i notice that OpenGL applications (i program 
opengl under python) run pretty slow, so i guess there is no hardware 
acceleration.

D - kernel : which one to use for your machine?
THere are different kernels (note that i dont know much about this at 
all so i am not sure about this at all) to be installed i use the 
default one, however my machine is a G4 and i was thinking which would 
be the difference is i would be ussing the G4 kernel. Maybe some of the 
issues iam describing would be solved?. Also how to do this? just 
install in the sinaptics manager the G4 kernel? do i need to set 
somewhere that ubuntu uses by default the new kernel?

E - ALT key wont work on spanish keyboard so i cannot access the @ #¬ \| 
[] etc... symbols (same for german keyboards aparently)
The solutions for this sound pretty bad no apply ;-) I havent done it yet
http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/support/solutions/ydl_general/keyboard_german.shtml

Ok, thats it.

In general i think it would be good if someone could describe the issues 
about the different ppc kernels or point to some website where to read 
about it. I amd researching about it at the moment.

i hope this helps getting a better understanding of ubuntu ppc to everyone.

-- 
enrike