I think this sources.list is not working anymore. I've just installed MacBuntu on a spare PowerBook G4 5,8 that I rebuilt from parts for Linux purposes. Admittedly it works great out of the box (pretty much everything is detected hardware-wise except for brightness and other keyboard controls which you describe in your README.txt). So many thanks for this tweaked Linux version for our ancient Macs! Now I tried to update the system but it wouldn't le me do that since I'm getting 404 errors (sources.list has been edited). Any ideas what I can do or are there any other mirrors for PowerPC? Thanks!
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Lubuntu 16.04 Remix (updated)
- Thread starter wicknix
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I think this sources.list is not working anymore. I've just installed MacBuntu on a spare PowerBook G4 5,8 that I rebuilt from parts for Linux purposes. Admittedly it works great out of the box (pretty much everything is detected hardware-wise except for brightness and other keyboard controls which you describe in your README.txt). So many thanks for this tweaked Linux version for our ancient Macs! Now I tried to update the system but it wouldn't le me do that since I'm getting 404 errors (sources.list has been edited). Any ideas what I can do or are there any other mirrors for PowerPC? Thanks!
The files are still there: http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/b/bash/ so i'm not sure whats going on. You can browse the whole repo via web browser to verify that it's all still available.
Index of /ubuntu/pool/main
Cheers
Index of /ubuntu/pool/main
Cheers
Thanks for your quick answer. I checked and it seems as if there are files missing in the repo. E.g. "bash_4.2-2ubuntu2.9_powerpc.deb" doesn't exist on the Ubuntu server but "bash_4.2-2ubuntu2.9_amd64.deb",
"bash_4.2-2ubuntu2.9_armhf.deb" and "bash_4.2-2ubuntu2.9_i386.deb" do. The same applies to many other files. I don't know how I can fix this except for maybe another mirror ...
Thanks a lot! I was trying to find a mirror that has the files in question but I have been unsuccessful as of now. I can live without the updates for now (since almost everything is functional) but may I ask how I can get sleep and brightness control to work? (or which packages I have to install, even if manually). The machine is a PowerBook 5,8 so pretty similar to yours, only slightly newer.
I'm not sure which packages are needed for that, however I would suggest installing kernel 3.x I linked in first post. That will give you cpu throttling. As for brightness pbbuttonsd may not have started. Try sudo /etc/init.d/pbbuttonsd restart and see if that helps. If not it could be a boot param. You need open firmwares framebuffer active to use brightness controls.
Cheers
Cheers
Installing the newer kernel from the DVD image did the trick. I now have brightness control and a working hibernation mode (although Ubuntu seems to handle hibernation differently compared to OS X, i.e. I do not get the pulsing sleep light on my PowerBook and the laptop seems more like shut down than asleep). Thanks for the hint and I really hope the repo gets fixed sometime in the future. I can use the laptop now fully to dive more into the Linux world and it has been quite interesting and fun so far 👍
I really don't want to double post but I have to ask if there are any news regarding the (partially) broken repository? Does anyone know perhaps a working mirror? The reason I'm asking is due to the fact that some applications are not installing since there are parts of dependent packages broken.
I've had time to check out the "MacBuntu" Lubuntu distro for PowerPC more thoroughly in the last few days and I have to say it outperforms Tiger and Leopard by quite a bit. I'm very surprised how good my PowerBook G4 handles web browsing on Lubuntu. Websites like Wikipedia and DuckDuckGo load almost instantly like on a modern machine, really no comparison to web browsing on Tiger and Leopard. YouTube also works great with the script "ViewTube" (although I always copy the link to googlevideo.com and stream it in VLC in order to be able to jump between sequences). I also installed a bunch of apps from the Lubuntu Software center (ones that can be downloaded, because it is also partially broken) and I have to say that there are indeed apps for almost every basic use case. Mines are media consumption, web browsing, checking mails, taking notes in LibreOffice and Xpad and that's about if or this machine. Considering the architecture and the age of a PowerBook G4 the results are astonishing. In my attic I have two disassembled PowerMac G5s (Late 2005) that are waiting to be reassembled and once they are, they will be getting the same Linux treatment. Many thanks again to @wicknix for sharing these updated and tweaked Linux distros.
I've had time to check out the "MacBuntu" Lubuntu distro for PowerPC more thoroughly in the last few days and I have to say it outperforms Tiger and Leopard by quite a bit. I'm very surprised how good my PowerBook G4 handles web browsing on Lubuntu. Websites like Wikipedia and DuckDuckGo load almost instantly like on a modern machine, really no comparison to web browsing on Tiger and Leopard. YouTube also works great with the script "ViewTube" (although I always copy the link to googlevideo.com and stream it in VLC in order to be able to jump between sequences). I also installed a bunch of apps from the Lubuntu Software center (ones that can be downloaded, because it is also partially broken) and I have to say that there are indeed apps for almost every basic use case. Mines are media consumption, web browsing, checking mails, taking notes in LibreOffice and Xpad and that's about if or this machine. Considering the architecture and the age of a PowerBook G4 the results are astonishing. In my attic I have two disassembled PowerMac G5s (Late 2005) that are waiting to be reassembled and once they are, they will be getting the same Linux treatment. Many thanks again to @wicknix for sharing these updated and tweaked Linux distros.
Haven't found any 12.04 mirrors yet. Everything i find points to old-releases. https://www.stephenrlang.com/2017/03/setting-up-the-old-releases-repo-for-ubuntu/ and https://gist.github.com/ivomts/4558134 and https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2465263 are examples of what i found. If you feel like experimenting, you could use debian wheezy's repository or ubuntu 14's repository for a few things. However you do risk breaking your installed system when doing this.
Cheers
Cheers
My apologies for not chiming in earlier to possibly save you some frustration. I also ran into this (see post #778). I don't have a solution for the problem, but my workaround might save some headaches.
Since post #778, I have reinstalled Macbuntu, partially because I suspected that, as a result of the missing packages, I may have had some dependency issues (packages that updated but caused issues because a related package wasn't), and I had other issues that I caused.
I scanned through the archive repository, and reworked sources.list to reflect what is actually in the repository and how it's organized, then split out the sections that point to packages that are missing from the pool, and commented those out. I then did 'sudo apt-get update' followed by 'sudo apt-get upgrade'. A whopping 13 packages upgraded. Whoopie! I then uncommented the problematic sections of the repository, and used Synaptic package manager to scan through the packages in the affected sections (Using the 'Origin' button on the left side, and choosing the affected sections from the list above that). There were some that I tried to update, but most I left alone, keeping in mind that most of these were security updates, and not as a result of a parent package being updated. I then re-commented out the affected sections, and did 'sudo apt-get update' again. Any installation I try to do is with these sections commented out.
Here's my sources.list:
#Macbuntu Install DVD
deb cdrom:[Lubuntu 12.04 _Precise Pangolin_ - Release powerpc (20120423)]/ precise main multiverse restricted universe
# The following are grouped by the folders in the archive
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise main restricted multiverse universe
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise main restricted multiverse universe
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-proposed main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-proposed main restricted universe multiverse
# The following have been split out to ease issues of missing packages
# from 'precise-security main' which in July 2021 are in the package index
# but give 404 errors when 'apt-get upgrade' tries to retrieve them
#deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security main
#deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security main
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security restricted multiverse universe
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu precise-security restricted multiverse universe
# The following have been split out to ease issues of missing packages
# from 'precise-updates main' which in July 2021 are in the package index
# but give 404 errors when 'apt-get upgrade' tries to retrieve them
# deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates main
# deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates main
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates restricted multiverse universe
deb-src http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates restricted multiverse universe
Try doing those installations with the broken sections of the repository commented out. Lubuntu Software Center works through the same pathways as apt-get and Synaptic Package Manager, so it will have the same problems. If a package is in the regular repositories, its dependencies should be there, too. It's only (some) updates that are broken. If a package is in the broken repositories, I would avoid trying to update it, on the chance that a dependency is missing.
The newer kernel also took care of my bootup/login issue on my G3 Powerbook (Pismo) with Rage Mobility 128 graphics. The newer kernel in the Ubuntu 12.04 repository was supposed to take care of that, but it was one of the packages throwing a 404 error.
To get the pulsing sleep light, you need to choose 'Suspend', which is otherwise known as 'suspend to RAM'. Hibernate is also known as 'suspend to disk'. Suspend on Linux is a hit-or-miss proposition. After much trial and error, I've finally gotten suspend working on my Pismo. I've tried a lot of different things in other flavors and versions (Debian and Ubuntu), but what seems to have put me in the 'win column' for suspend in MacBuntu is upgrading to the newer kernel combined with changing from lightdm as a display manager to gdm. There may be (and probably are) other factors involved, too, so YMMV.
I'm not sure how Hibernate is _supposed_ to work, but when I have succeeded (?) in using it, from a user perspective, the computer appears to (and does) shut down. Upon pressing the power button, the system will boot up and resume to the state it was at when I selected hibernate. IIRC - it even bypassed login, so I don't use it for security reasons (don't want my cat to know...).
Thanks! I might try the other repositories you mentioned but if I do I will disk dump my entire partition beforehand since I really like how the system is running right now (even without the updates)
Many thanks for sharing and explaining your sources.list! I will try your method and see if I can get at least some of the now broken packages updated. I'm still wondering however why nobody archived the repo and why there aren't any other mirrors out there since Ubuntu is quite a popular distro.
I can confirm that when I choose hibernate it shuts down but it will resume where it was after restarting. I will check if I have the suspend option on my machine and if that one acts like sleeping like on Mac OS X.
Thanks again for your input. Linux can take some time to get it the way you want it but it is definitely worthwhile since it opens the door to newer software and is quite fast too.
Sorry for the double post in advance but this might be important (and could possibly help us Lubuntu PowerPC users getting the broken packages). I found this on archive.org: https://archive.org/details/ubuntu-repo-precise-pangolin-12.04-20210304
It seems as if someone archived the repo back in March. The archived repo is of considerable size (204 GB!) but I think My plan is to download this, modify the sources.list again and run it again on my PowerBook. I've actually just started the download via Torrent (as I'm sure the normal download would interrupt at some point and I wouldn't be able to resume it) and it will take some time until I have the file. I'll report back if I was able to get the OS fully updated with this.
It seems as if someone archived the repo back in March. The archived repo is of considerable size (204 GB!) but I think My plan is to download this, modify the sources.list again and run it again on my PowerBook. I've actually just started the download via Torrent (as I'm sure the normal download would interrupt at some point and I wouldn't be able to resume it) and it will take some time until I have the file. I'll report back if I was able to get the OS fully updated with this.
Here's how to get the Midnight Commander menu item working in MacBuntu:
1) Copy the desktop file listed as 'Midnight Commander' from /usr/share/applications and drop it into ~/.local/share/applications - if this directory doesn't exist, you'll have to create it.
2) Open the copied file with your favorite text editor.
3) Look for the line that starts 'Exec=' and change it to 'Exec= xterm mc'
4) Change the line that starts 'Terminal=' to read 'Terminal=false'
5) Save the file, and you're done. The menu item should work immediately.
A similar process can be used to remove items from the Lubuntu menu without affecting the installed program. Simply add 'NoDisplay=true' (w/o quotes) to the list of items in the file.
On my system, Midnight Commander in xterm was tiny and ugly, so after some DuckDuckGo time, I followed the instructions on this page:
This is how Midnight Commander looks on my desktop:
Sharp-eyed folks may noticed that I have tweaked the Conky configuration to tighten things up a bit, add a battery percent indicator and running CPU graph. I also am using a second LXPanel as a 'dock' instead of Docky, because the latter was unstable (random CPU max-outs) and crashy on my system. No Trash icon, though.
I’m trying to boot into a 12.04 remix v4 disc on an 867MHz 12” PowerBook G4 and have been having a really tough time. It keeps getting stuck at “(initramfs)” without the quotes after a blue “Lubuntu 12.04” screen. How do I get past this?
It *might* be open firmwares frame buffer that's causing it. Try booting with it disabled and see if that helps.
Code:
boot: live video=offb:offI refer to my earlier post about my disassembled G5s (2005 ones with PCI-E) which I have lying around. Like I have written, I'm wanting to install Linux on them and right now I'm asking myself if it would be possible to use other graphic cards than those that were available back then with the G5 (or in other words the ones Apple offered). I noticed that I still have a Quadro 4000 and an ATI Radeon 5770 (both Mac Edition) lying around which once were in my Mac Pros but I eventually upgraded with better cards. Now Mac Edition does not really say anything since these are EFI flashed (by the factory) which does not have anything to do with PowerPC and Open Firmware. I'm 100% certains those cards I mentioned would never work in PowerPC Mac OS X but I imagine they could work in Linux. What I'm not certain about however is if those cards would need some sort of "Open Firmware treatment", i.e. flashing. If so that would be great, since it would increase the VRAM and power of the card in general dramatically. Has anyone in this forum Linux running on a G5 with significant more modern GPUs?
By the way, I'm still downloading the Ubuntu repository (I'm now at about 50% since the archive.org webseeders are extremely slow and I can't really get above 500kb/s with my 100mbit/s connection 😅). For some reason I have noticed just now that those 204 GBs are the compressed size so it'll be kind of funny to see how much space the repository actually takes up ...
By the way, I'm still downloading the Ubuntu repository (I'm now at about 50% since the archive.org webseeders are extremely slow and I can't really get above 500kb/s with my 100mbit/s connection 😅). For some reason I have noticed just now that those 204 GBs are the compressed size so it'll be kind of funny to see how much space the repository actually takes up ...
Wikidownloads2 - The Mac Elite
themacelite.wikidot.com
If there are now files for your cards - it wouldn't boot. As a workaround - you'll need supported card for startup & reconfigure Linux to use only secondary card in X11 (for example - blacklist radeon when using nvidia card & vice versa).Wikidownloads2 - The Mac Elite
Thanks for the response! Would I have to install the original GPU that came with the G5 permanently or only temporarily for the initial setup? I can't find any PPC ROMs for my cards (no surprise there since the cards are from the 2010s)
This. Mac can't pass self-test without supported videocard.
Nice find on the repo! I've got some free disk space so i'll try downloading it as well. I've got 1gb up/down and hovering around 800-900kb/s. Saying about 2 days for me right now
Thank you for all the work you've done on this. I'd like to give linux another try on a Mini. I'm not off to a good start though. I downloaded lubuntu-16.04-remix-v2-ppc.iso and I'm trying to get it onto a bootable USB stick. From the PowerPC/Linux wiki here:
forums.macrumors.com
I'm trying:
sudo dd if=~/Downloads/<distribution image> of=/dev/sdx
I have no sd devices on my powerbook running Mac OS X, 10.4 though. I'm guessing that is a linux command then?
The PowerPC Debian Wiki
Mac OS X Tiger was released in 2005, its final security update being in 2009. Mac OS X Leopard was released in 2007, given its very last security update in 2011, and is the ultimate version of Mac OS X compatible with the PowerPC architecture, effectively marking the entire family EOL, even for...
forums.macrumors.com
I'm trying:
sudo dd if=~/Downloads/<distribution image> of=/dev/sdx
I have no sd devices on my powerbook running Mac OS X, 10.4 though. I'm guessing that is a linux command then?
Well, dd does exist for osx, but it's very sketchy vs using dd on a Linux machine to create the usb stick. The device paths will also be different for osx. I'd suggest just burning the dvd as it's far less hassle with no open firmware hoops to jump through either. I believe around pages 3-8 on this thread has the device paths for osx though if you don't mind a little reading.
Cheers
Cheers
dd works fine for me on OS X (early and late).
First, find the disk device by
Now, let's say the device is
Note that we added an extra "r" before "disk" to make it go a bit faster.
BTW, it is probably a good idea to verify that the target machine's OF can see the USB stick before all this.
First, find the disk device by
diskutil listNow, let's say the device is
/dev/disk2diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2sudo dd if=$HOME/Downloads/<distribution image> of=/dev/rdisk2 bs=1mNote that we added an extra "r" before "disk" to make it go a bit faster.
diskutil eject /dev/disk2BTW, it is probably a good idea to verify that the target machine's OF can see the USB stick before all this.