Linux on Powermac G4

[swamprock]

Proof of the pudding...

And my 933Mhz Quicksilver doing 720P in Coreplayer:

View attachment 722358

Lucifer

(I waited 25+ years to meet the gentleman to my right, Gaz Jennings. Great guitar player)

On topic... as far as webm goes, another conversion will just be needed to play them, or one could always try out one of the many online converters. This one is my favorite- https://www.onlinevideoconverter.com/video-converter

I haven't found anything that this site wouldn't convert, but I've never tried it on a PowerPC machine as of yet. I don't see why it wouldn't work in TenFourFox.

 

[Dronecatcher]

Lucifer

I think it was one of your Linux Youtube videos that introduced them to me....
VLC and XBMC play webm ok on PPC but that's about it.

 

[Jessica Fa Metadata]

You would need ether a intel or AMD graphics card. Nvidia should not be used at all as the devs are lazy. You are best with FreeBSD as Ubuntu support ends in 2021 and we are not getting ubuntu 16.04.2 all ready. FreeBSD is not that hard to use on X86 at all. It just takes a little getting used to. On PPC you have to compile most things, not every thing, but most things. I think you can get modern apps on the ppc builds, but I am not sure. You could always just get a PC and use moonlight to stream the programs you need over.

 

[Fin Hirschoff]

Having stumbled upon this because of the title - "Linux on a Powermac G4" - well I thought I'd yank the thread back towards the topic.

Seems like this is the state of Linux on a G4 powerpc machine:

For starters, there's a Facebook group dedicated to this topic. Also, Executing this search on https://www.distrowatch.com will show you a list of OSes that will run on powerpc architecture - it's not a complete list, though. Mysteriously they leave Debian off of it.

Based on that, we have:

• Debian
  
• Ubuntu
• Lubuntu
• Ubuntu MATE
• Gentoo
• Vine
• T2 SDE

Ubuntu's probably too intense for the system's resources. Vine is in Japanese. T2 SDE is definitely its own thing.

I see that powerpc is being "dropped" after April, 2019. I think that's a bit beyond "not supported," because they're "not supporting" ARM7 after the same date... Perhaps the installation media won't be available for download.

Lubuntu already doesn't officially support it, but some mirrors have the installation media images.

There's this link, which is an article about installing Linux on a PPC, particularly with a USB stick

Seems like Ubuntu-based distributions are the most recommended.

Anyways, before I stumbled upon this, I stumbled on a G4 laptop - 867Mhz. I have to use VMs a lot, and I'm familiar with a few lightweight distros of Linux.

I was hoping to find an Arch-based distro, but that seems really dead. http://archlinuxppc.org is a barren wasteland.

I've always really liked Lubuntu though. I think it's a little heavy for this, but I believe I'll give Trusty Tahr a try.

 

[Imixmuan]

Having stumbled upon this because of the title - "Linux on a Powermac G4" - well I thought I'd yank the thread back towards the topic.

Seems like this is the state of Linux on a G4 powerpc machine:

For starters, there's a Facebook group dedicated to this topic. Also, Executing this search on https://www.distrowatch.com will show you a list of OSes that will run on powerpc architecture - it's not a complete list, though. Mysteriously they leave Debian off of it.

Based on that, we have:

• Debian
  
• Ubuntu
• Lubuntu
• Ubuntu MATE
• Gentoo
• Vine
• T2 SDE

Ubuntu's probably too intense for the system's resources. Vine is in Japanese. T2 SDE is definitely its own thing.

I see that powerpc is being "dropped" after April, 2019. I think that's a bit beyond "not supported," because they're "not supporting" ARM7 after the same date... Perhaps the installation media won't be available for download.

Lubuntu already doesn't officially support it, but some mirrors have the installation media images.

There's this link, which is an article about installing Linux on a PPC, particularly with a USB stick

Seems like Ubuntu-based distributions are the most recommended.

Anyways, before I stumbled upon this, I stumbled on a G4 laptop - 867Mhz. I have to use VMs a lot, and I'm familiar with a few lightweight distros of Linux.

I was hoping to find an Arch-based distro, but that seems really dead. http://archlinuxppc.org is a barren wasteland.

I've always really liked Lubuntu though. I think it's a little heavy for this, but I believe I'll give Trusty Tahr a try.

Really? First, look for these threads:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/powerpc-linux-support-to-continue-in-debian-ports.2128808/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/adélie-linux-for-powerpc.2117886/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/void-linux-for-powerpc.2129245/

Second, PowerPC Linux is not for the faint of heart. It's not like x86, you are dealing with strange Apple hardware, beaucoup unmet dependencies, headaches upon headaches at times. I hope you know your chops and are comfortable with the command line, and editing config files, and compiling your own software and sometimes your own kernel. No just downloading a distro and it all just works. Still, as swamp rock has proven, sometimes the prize is worth the struggle.