Linux on my old PowerMac G4

[gabe_lio]

Hello,

On my old powermac g4 I attempted to install Ubuntu Linux on it. Once the installation finish I rebooted the computer. everything seemed to be fine, it was booting properly. then the screen just went black and stayed that way.

I did a little research and I figured out that it was probably my graphic card was incompatible with the operating system I installed.

I have no idea what graphic card I current have installed in it, but I was wondering if anyone knew where I could get a graphic card that will be compatible with Linux operating system (for a decent price, I might add)?

By the way, after the Linux installation didn't work, I reinstalled OS X and it worked perfectly fine so this is what led me to believe it was the graphic card.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Have you tried booting a live cd/dvd? You can try out various ISOs and change the boot parameter to usually get round the blank screen (often, "video=ofonly" helps).
If you're not already aware, there is no easy way of getting Linux onto a PPC - the easier installations also tend to be the heaviest and least efficient on this old hardware. I'd recommend MintPPC for ease of installation and Debian for most efficient.
You might have to address your needs for Linux - it will never run any better than OSX on a G4.

 

[Lastic]

Which Ubuntu flavor did you install and which version ?

I'm running Ubuntu Mate 16.04 Beta 1 on my Powerbook G4 which now works for the Nvidia card and even gives 3D acceleration .

On my Powermac G5 which had a Radeon card , I had the same issue, booting to a black screen .

Have a look here for the Beta 1 , somewhere on the next pages there is a guy with a PowerMac who finally succeeds in booting with no black screen , and the link to Beta 2 is on one of the next pages also .

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2301608&page=15&p=13446262#post13446262

 

[spf2]

Are you using a video card with ADC connector? I had an issue where I was used a monitor connected to the DVI port to install Linux ( I didn't have an ADC monitor). After reboot, it reverted to the ADC port as primary and the screen I used to install it went blank. Setting the video to the DVI interface in yaboot fixed it. It was on Linux mint.

 

[2984839]

If you have a Radeon GPU, I believe there was a bug with KMS at boot time. Try entering the text in italics when you get to yaboot. This will force framebuffer mode during boot and should avoid the issue.

Welcome to yaboot version 1.3.16
Enter "help" to get some basic usage information
boot: Linux video=radeonfb:1280x854-32@60

Replace 1280x854 with your screen resolution. If it works, after booting you can add it to the /etc/yaboot.conf like so

label=Linux
read-only
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="quiet splash video=radeonfb:1280x854-32@60"

Then run "sudo ybin -v" to set the changes.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCFAQ#What_yaboot_parameters_should_I_use_for_graphics_problems.3F
see here for more:

 

[MacCubed]

Are you using a video card with ADC connector? I had an issue where I was used a monitor connected to the DVI port to install Linux ( I didn't have an ADC monitor). After reboot, it reverted to the ADC port as primary and the screen I used to install it went blank. Setting the video to the DVI interface in yaboot fixed it. It was on Linux mint.

This is the phantom port issue that plagued ADC cards, Linux uses the primary connector to display video on install, and in every ADC card the primary port is the ADC port and not the DVI (I think). Therefore, the computer ignores the DVI connector. This happened to me, however, later on I realized that nVidia cards had issues with Linux so I just ended up giving in.

 

[spf2]

I was lucky to get my G5 1.8 (PCI) working great with Linux which had a Nvidia 5200 AGP and wireless USB. After a harddisk failure, I reinstalled Tiger and Leopard dual boot.

 

[pc297]

This is the phantom port issue that plagued ADC cards, Linux uses the primary connector to display video on install, and in every ADC card the primary port is the ADC port and not the DVI (I think). Therefore, the computer ignores the DVI connector. This happened to me, however, later on I realized that nVidia cards had issues with Linux so I just ended up giving in.

So having tried it myself with a Radeon 9600 ADC, up to Ubuntu 12.04-14.04 the ADC port can be used (even though under 14.04 ADC cards except the X800 or X850 won't display Mate let alone Gnome properly on 13.04 or 14.04). However, with higher above and under Debian/Void/OpenSUSE (I tested it all the way back to 12.3) the radeon driver seems to have an issue in that when using the ADC port, the ADC and DVI port names get swapped (e.g. in /var/log/xorg.0.log) which results in a blank screen using the ADC port. The port names also seem to vary, under Ubuntu 10/04 the ADC port is called DVI-0 and the DVI port DVI-1, but in versions above and all other distros it's ADC port: VGA-0 and DVI port: DVI-0.

Unfortunately re the name swap, no amount of

video=[DVI-0|DVI-I-0|DVI-I-1|VGA-0][:e|:D] video=[DVI-1|DVI-I-1|DVI-I-2|S-video][:d]

in the append or

xrandr --output [DVI-0|DVI-1|DVI-I-0|DVI-I-1|DVI-I-2|VGA-0] --mode [width x height]

can fix it. I had tried other terminal tools and they all failed; under wayland this would not even allow mode change.

X -configure

always fails as the names get swapped, no matter how much manual editing is done in the xorg.conf file. Ironically the EDID get detected properly but is assigned to the wrong port.

Strangely enough when using both ADC and DVI ports in >14.04 and other recent distros the DVI port kicks as well as the ADC port but for the latter the display is completely corrupted.

So unfortunately, at least for the Radeon 9600, the solution is to use a DVI to ADC adapter for those who still have ADC cinema displays... Or obviously get a non-ADC card. It could be that the nouveau driver does not have this error so this needs to be tested on Nvidia ADC cards too, but since the radeon driver has an issue with the ADC port on the Radeon 9600 it is very likely the case for the 9800 and X800/X850 ADC cards, tbc.

Cheers,

 

[pc297]

The sad reality is that the ADC port cannot be used at all on recent Linux distros (at least as far as the Radeon 9600 ADC is concerned); even when used in combination with the DVI port as a second screen, first off the display off the ADC port is completely jumbled up and second because of the port name swap, the resolution modes of the display off the DVI port are completely wrong because they are actually that of the ADC port!