Lubuntu 16.04 Remix (updated)

[ltpitt]

@ltpitt It is possible, but it's not an out of the box thing. I stand by the sentiment that it is a pain.

However, @wicknix has recently posted of someone documenting a way to get it working (I refuse to post Facebook links).

eMac surprisingly usable as a daily driver

Give this a shot for linux. Seems quite a few people have had luck with his hack on their emacs. https://www.facebook.com/groups/ppclinux/permalink/437344776940132/ Cheers

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I have read about this hero but I was wondering if at one point a working install was simply turned into an image for easy download and restore.

The install procedure seems indeed very daunting :/

 

[mrusera]

if I try to rotate this using randr or arandr the screen gets pixellated mess that I can't navigate. Anyone know how to fix this on a mac mini ppc? I tried searching and don't see any information.

 

[wicknix]

Have you tried lxrandr that's part of lxde and included? Are you trying to flip the screen for a "tablet-mode" for use with a flipped monitor? or just trying to adjust screen resolution?

Cheers

 

[dpfenninger]

Trying to install this on a Power Mac G4 Quicksilver 867MHz, 1.1 GB RAM. I can get through the live CD boot and onto the desktop, but every time I try to run anything, including the installer, the screen blinks (goes completely black for a few seconds, then the desktop reappears, then continues to blink randomly) and the system locks up...mouse pointer frozen, no keyboard input recognized.

Thoughts? I've tried various boot parameters but nothing seems to help.

Help please!

 

[wicknix]

Do you happen to have the geforce2 mx gfx card? If so, it's probably one of the worst cards you can have for powerpc Linux unfortunately. I'd say try the older 12.04 remix as sometimes the older xorg and kernels work better. It may or may not have the same problem. Short of installing a Radeon (best supported) card I don't really have a solution. Maybe someone else can chime in that's familiar with that card.

Cheers

 

[repairedCheese]

Do you happen to have the geforce2 mx gfx card? If so, it's probably one of the worst cards you can have for powerpc Linux unfortunately. I'd say try the older 12.04 remix as sometimes the older xorg and kernels work better. It may or may not have the same problem. Short of installing a Radeon (best supported) card I don't really have a solution. Maybe someone else can chime in that's familiar with that card.

Cheers

My G4 MDD with a Radeon 9000 Pro does exactly the same thing, so it's not just an nVidia thing.

 

[dpfenninger]

Do you happen to have the geforce2 mx gfx card? If so, it's probably one of the worst cards you can have for powerpc Linux unfortunately. I'd say try the older 12.04 remix as sometimes the older xorg and kernels work better. It may or may not have the same problem. Short of installing a Radeon (best supported) card I don't really have a solution. Maybe someone else can chime in that's familiar with that card.

Cheers

I have a Radeon 9000 ADC. I think I may have found a solution...by using this command I stumbled upon in a Google search:

live video=offb: off video=radeonfb: off video=1024x768-32 radeon.agpmode=-1 (no space after the colons...it keeps turning it into an emoji)

...I can get into the live desktop seemingly stably and get through the installation. I have to do some further testing to see if the resulting installation works (I let the install run when I went to bed last night) but so far, more promising than any previous attempt.

 

[wicknix]

Cool. Let us know how it ends up. If it works I'll adjust the boot params on the first post to reflect the 9000.

Cheers

 

[MicroTecture]

My G4 MDD with a Radeon 9000 Pro does exactly the same thing, so it's not just an nVidia thing.

I have an iBook with a Radeon Mobility 9200, I remember struggling to make Xorg configs previously but after some fiddling around I've figured out a solution. But I do strongly recommend you get a newer GPU that is more capable. I've seen semi-modern Radeon GPUs in regular PCI form, I wonder if PCI to PCIE adapters work since those do exist and I do believe they have been for GPUs, just not sure about a classic Mac with that adapter.

I have patched the MESA libraries to report as thew newer versions, these are for 12.04 (I tested it on the 12.04 PPC Remix so far on an Nvidia and Radeon system)

Put them in a folder, follow the instructions from the README file and you should be done once you've followed them
Radeon 9000 Pro should be in a close range of support to the Radeon 9200/Mobility 9200 line of stuff, should work just fine the same method I've done them. Definitely try DRICONF, I haven't gotten these MESA files to work with DRICONF for an Nvidia GPU (not sure why), I have gotten them working on the Radeon Mobility 9200.

Download them by clicking here

Unfortunately nouveau isn't that great on these old PPC machines, they are okay the newer they are, I would wonder even if cards like the GT520 or 610? (don't remember which line in the 6xx lines) in their semi-rare? PCI form would run, or if the machine would post at all. I've seen someone online run PCIE Radeon HD 5000 series GPU on their PPC G5 machine before running the Void PPC Port?, and ofc they don't support anything older than a version of Snow Leopard. You could even flash a regular PC GPU for an old PowerMac anyways.

 

[Cal J Harris]

Hey, just wanted to thank you for you recommendations on other threads. So I toyed around with all sorts of Linux on the Mini G4, you a defo right that Lubuntu 12.04 is the best choice. Not just speed wise but so far it feels like the only one were I can move a window fluidly.

I just have some questions, I ran out of DVDs so I downloaded the 12.04 Remix CD and installed that. I see Arctic Fox is out of date and that you also added SpiderWeb. I’m not a massive Linux user and when using Arctic Fox when testing Debian Sid I just ran it from the download. How do I update it? That and how do I go about installing SpiderWeb, do I need those newer CA’s? Additionally I need to look through and look at your instructions on using Debian ports for newer software, basically don’t apt-get update? Just install what you want + dependencies?

Thanks again, 12.04 runs well and feels snappy.

 

[wicknix]

For updating the browsers you can simply download them and install them by double clicking on them (gdebi should open automatically to guide you through the install), or through the terminal with "sudo dpkg -i /path/to/downloaded/browser.deb". You can find the latest release of arcticfox here: https://github.com/wicknix/Arctic-Fox/wiki/Downloads and the latest spiderweb/interweb and spidermail here: https://github.com/wicknix/SpiderWeb/wiki/Download

I would not recommend using debian ports with 12.04. It's too old. It'll probably break badly. With 16.04 it's possible as its close enough to Debian 10/Sid for most things to install properly. Instead, i would recommend getting more blank dvd's (or try your luck with booting from USB) and installing 12.04 v4 as it's got 3 releases of improvements over v1, and i rebuilt a lot of packages to current versions in v4.

Cheers

 

[Cal J Harris]

For updating the browsers you can simply download them and install them by double clicking on them (gdebi should open automatically to guide you through the install), or through the terminal with "sudo dpkg -i /path/to/downloaded/browser.deb". You can find the latest release of arcticfox here: https://github.com/wicknix/Arctic-Fox/wiki/Downloads and the latest spiderweb/interweb and spidermail here: https://github.com/wicknix/SpiderWeb/wiki/Download

I would not recommend using debian ports with 12.04. It's too old. It'll probably break badly. With 16.04 it's possible as its close enough to Debian 10/Sid for most things to install properly. Instead, i would recommend getting more blank dvd's (or try your luck with booting from USB) and installing 12.04 v4 as it's got 3 releases of improvements over v1, and i rebuilt a lot of packages to current versions in v4.

Cheers

Well you were spot on, I dabbled this was before his post. I broke but I also fixed. In the case it was even installing newer packages from 16.04 needless to say it broke things but I simply went back to 12.04 packages.

Just to clarify, your saying in V4 you updated some packages beyond what would be offered in 12.04 by default. What I’m manly looking for is a newer version samba.

 

[wicknix]

Ahh, gotcha. Yes, i rebuilt quite a few things that are much newer than what 12.04 offers. Some are even newer than what 16.04 offers. Most of the software i rebuilt was whatever was "current release" a few months ago. No newer samba though. That doesn't mean you can't build a newer version on 12.04. Everything i rebuilt was built on 12.04 for 12.04. Just fire up synaptic and start installing all the development files required to build samba.

Cheers

 

[fra9000]

Hi wicknix,

great and marvellous job you are doing here.

I am doing a restoration project for an iMac G3 Flower Power edition pushing the machine to its limits (CPU to 700mhz powerpc750cxe, 1g ram, SSD harddrive etc.). Proof of concept is to try using it as a daily-use computing (web-browsing, office suite, etc.).

At the end of the hardware upgrade process I would like to trial your macbuntu version based on lubuntu-12. Thing is that the iMac does not come with dvd reader and booting from usb seems like a pain. Is there any chance we can have latest macbunbu remix in CD format? Maybe 1 CD with the essential and the rest we can download, or 2CDs?

Otherwise I have to find a DVD burner and a compatible firewire 400 dvd reader. Since your project is supporting such old hardware I think would be beneficial to always have the latest version of the lubuntu-12 in CD format.

Thank you in any case for you great job.
BR/Francesco

 

[Cal J Harris]

Ahh, gotcha. Yes, i rebuilt quite a few things that are much newer than what 12.04 offers. Some are even newer than what 16.04 offers. Most of the software i rebuilt was whatever was "current release" a few months ago. No newer samba though. That doesn't mean you can't build a newer version on 12.04. Everything i rebuilt was built on 12.04 for 12.04. Just fire up synaptic and start installing all the development files required to build samba.

Cheers

I guess I will see.. my trial originally well.... I got the latest version of samba from 16.04, samba wanted a newer upstart. Upstart wanted a newer lsb-base, that wanted more and well it just went on I stopped around there. I guess I could keep going and see if it actually worked, but I was very worried about upstart making the system a dud so I reverted back before trying anything more.

 

[wicknix]

@fra9000 Thanks. Unfortunately the added changes won't fit on a single cd. Base 12.04 only left about 40mb free on its cd .iso. That gave me enough room for a few small tweaks and add Arcticfox (which i had to remove firefox to do so for space reasons). The work involved to create v4 is too much to dismantle and attempt a 2 cd installer. Sorry. Your best bet is try USB booting. I don't own a G3, but USB booting from a G4 is pretty simple.

Cheers

 

[z970]

@wicknix You could try using BleachBit to remove all but several languages to cut down on fat, and remove several additional bundled applications that are not absolutely necessary. And if the user requires them, they can simply install them after installation anyway through 12.04's repositories - even if that means including a post-install script to reinstall the base necessities once the system has been installed.

That might knock it down just barely enough to fit into 700mb.

 

[wicknix]

It'd be easier to just dd the v4 iso to a usb stick and boot from usb.

 

[fra9000]

@fra9000 Thanks. Unfortunately the added changes won't fit on a single cd. Base 12.04 only left about 40mb free on its cd .iso. That gave me enough room for a few small tweaks and add Arcticfox (which i had to remove firefox to do so for space reasons). The work involved to create v4 is too much to dismantle and attempt a 2 cd installer. Sorry. Your best bet is try USB booting. I don't own a G3, but USB booting from a G4 is pretty simple.

Cheers

@wicknix ok I will try with that. I hope I will not encounter the issues that other users did on booting from USB on iMac G3. Otherwise I will try to buy a DVD writer/reader to boot from firewire device. The problem there, is that not all of them are compatible with iMac G3 booting. I will keep you informed on my adventure 😉. Thank you again.

 

[shakary]

I installed Lubuntu 12.04 remix in my ibook g4 it works great congratulations you are great. Only problem I can not write the @. I've tried several combinations. You can give me a tip. Thank you.

 

[icarus523]

I also installed Lubuntu 12.04 remix on my 1.5GHz PowerBook G4 12".

My problem appears related to the bottom third of any window (even desktop), is not being refreshed?
If you scroll up, the part of the window isn't updated. Its quite frustrating.
Is this screen tearing? I googled a bit and what I've come to a resolution was to install compton, but this is not available in 12.04.

 

[repairedCheese]

PowerPC/FAQ - Debian Wiki

wiki.debian.org

Well, I suppose it's no surprise that someone else figured that the Radeon 9000 has issues. The solution is a little above my linux experience, though. Turning off acceleration when KMS is enabled seems like a bit of a challenge.

 

[wicknix]

@shakary : If the rest of your keyboard is displaying the proper letters and characters i don't know what the reason is. I would say wrong keymap possibly otherwise.

@icarus523 : You could install weston. It's a compositor like compton. What video card is in your machine? I've only ever had tearing/refresh issues with the nvidia card (fx5200) in one of my G5's when using 5.x kernels. No issue with older kernels though.

Cheers

 

[TzunamiOSX]

@wicknix

Is there a way to change the language of Arctic Fox?

 

[wicknix]

Yep. Start with this post and the post after it. You'll more than likely have to make a small edit to the xpi of your preferred language pack, but it's easy to do.

Arctic Fox web browser for 10.6 (32 & 64-bit)

Hello Guys, The 27.x langpacks are no longer working with the last 27.10.1 version of Arctic Fox. But AF is still a great browser, of course!

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