ubuntu on mac users?

[Dave Miller]

Steven Rowat wrote:

> 2. If this is possible, should it run on a PPC G3/233 desktop (rev B)?

I have Debian Sid (upon which Ubuntu is heavily based) running on a rev 
A Beige G3.  Once it's installed, it runs great, but you won't be able 
to install from the CD.  The Beige G3 won't boot a Linux CD (unlike the 
newer Macs), and it won't run a standard bootloader.  Your best bet for 
this is a floppy-based network install of Debian Sarge, and then once 
it's installed, switch the /etc/apt/sources.list to the ubuntu 
repositories and do an apt-get dist-upgrade.  In order to boot, you have 
to have Mac OS 9 on the system to boot into, and an extension called 
BootX which will load the kernel and "reboot" into Linux after the 
initial boot into Mac OS 9.  You need to have copies of the kernel and 
the initrd image on the Mac OS 9 partition.  This machine was the last 
machine Apple made that had this problem.  Any newer machine should 
"just work" without having to do all the above hassle.  (The "Open 
Firmware" is what makes the difference -- the Beige G3 was the last 
machine before they started using Open Firmware).

-- 
  - justdave