Lubuntu 16.04 Remix (updated)

[ervus]

Thanks for that! I think the flash drive is writing now... The command line is not doing anything but Activity Monitor shows steady disk activity.

The USB stick is also /dev/disk2 on my PowerBook. The first attempt gave me: Resource busy, so I ejected it in finder. Then I got the error: Operation not supported, so then I removed/inserted the stick again, then did a umount /Volumes/USBstick and now it looks like dd is copying. I think your commands would be a more elegant way of doing this.

Should I continue to post progress info in this thread, or should I start my own to not clutter this one?

 

[wicknix]

I'd post progress / questions here. It keeps all the answers in this thread, even though its already quite large.

Cheers

 

[Irontooth]

I created an IceWM theme based off of elements from 2 other themes and added an autostart script to load volume icon, network manager, desktop icons etc for Lubuntu Remix (or i suppose any other *nix as well).

I've been using IceWM for quite awhile on my Pismo Powerbook, and really like it for performance and customisability. However, there's one thing that drives me crazy. In MacBuntu, Debian 7, Debian 8, and (maybe?) Lubuntu 16.0.4, any and all of the 16x16 icons in menus, toolbar, and windows have a weird graphics glitch, almost like there is a defective bitmask. It sometimes changes if the mouse is hovering over the icon. I'm almost absolutely sure I didn't see this when I briefly had it set up in Debian sid on this computer. It affects all themes, even the built-in ones. Any ideas?

Screenshot below. Notice also the 'flat' area just to the left of the inactive window titles. In some themes, that's dark blue in the active window. It appears to be related to ColorActiveTitleBar, but some themes (e.g. - defaut ones,, but also some others I've tried) seem to override that setting.

 

[wicknix]

Yeah, i had noticed the 16x16 pixmaps are wonky as well. Whatever the issue was on powerpc did indeed get fixed eventually in Debian buster/bullseye/sid. However your title bar issue i haven't seen before on ubuntu 12 or 16. That is a strange one indeed.

Cheers

 

[ervus]

I wanted to follow up and report a successful install on a Mini from a USB flash drive created on a PowerBook. The only hiccup so far has been the detailed use of dd to create the bootable USB drive. The rest of the procedure was covered in the first post of this thread and the linux wiki thread. I guess the dd procedure details could be added to that section of the wiki thread (I'm not sure how to edit that thread).

Now I'm doing a bunch of installs to get gcc going...

 

[Irontooth]

Yeah, i had noticed the 16x16 pixmaps are wonky as well. Whatever the issue was on powerpc did indeed get fixed eventually in Debian buster/bullseye/sid. However your title bar issue i haven't seen before on ubuntu 12 or 16. That is a strange one indeed.

Cheers

Thanks - Glad it's not just my installation that has the icon anomaly. I found it annoying enough that I built my menus with no icons, and used a couple of carefully selected (read 'trial & error') icons for the toolbar. It would be interesting to know if the 'fix' happened in Debian or in IceWM. The latter was just updated again this month, but I would guess can't be built for a distro this old.

I'm really loving having suspend working. LightDM doesn't affect suspend, as I implied previously. I've been leaning things out on my Pismo, and control suspend entirely through pbbuttonsd. With the battery indicator in Conky, I disabled running xfce4-power-manager. My biggest issue with suspend in MacBuntu is/was remembering to eject and remove my USB SD card reader, as the Pismo won't properly wake up with it connected while holding media.

 

[netsrot39]

Quick update on the repo of Ubuntu 12.04 from archive.org (see my earlier post). I had a look at a few dependencies and it unfortunately seems as if those are also missing in the repo from archive.org. The issue is that for some applications and also for a general system update Lubuntu is looking for newer versions of various dependencies that don't exist in the 12.04 repo. I'm not sure if this could be bypassed by using packages from Ubuntu 16. Long story short, the repo from archive.org isn't really different to the official one. I only checked a few dependencies manually since I don't know how to properly setup a local repository (i.e. modifying the sources.list so it only fetches the packages from my hard drive)

 

[wicknix]

, but I would guess can't be built for a distro this old.

Worth a shot trying. I mean all the updated software I included in 12.04 remix was built on 12.04 remix. A lot of newer stuff built without issue.

 

[ervus]

I'm a few hours in now and I have a few newbie-type questions; hopefully people won't mind...

How do I fix the command key? This gets pretty irritating in short order.

I'm trying to build/run an X11 program. I got it to build, but I get an illegal instruction error when I try to run it. On Mac OS X I would start X11 and run it from there. Do I need to do something similar on linux? I thought the GUI was already in X11?

How can I turn the WiFi connection on/off easily (without deleting the network connection). It seems to be constantly sending/receiving no matter what I'm doing, even after I disabled the software updates. I ended up blocking it on my router to turn it off.

Thanks!

 

[ervus]

First screenshot and post from linux!

 

[wicknix]

If you're talking about right click... use the ctrl key instead of cmd. Otherwise i believe F12 is also mapped for right click.

To turn wifi off, just right click the network taskbar icon and uncheck 'enable wireless'.

As for your x11 program i can't help if i don't know what it is you are trying to build. It's possible that it just isn't compatible with powerpc, or you enabled a configure option that should be disabled, or you might be missing other libraries/software it relies on, etc etc.

Cheers

 

[ervus]

Some more digging, and this is what I've come up with so far:

Introducing appmodmap: make the Command key work again (or, making Mac refugees into Talos owners)

At least in terms of sheer numbers, Power Macintoshes are still the most common Power ISA-based computers, and those of us who still used ...

www.talospace.com

I see what you mean about the wifi icon in the task bar. That wifi icon is not always there for me. I'll see if I can figure out the pattern for when it is or isn't...

My program compiles and runs without graphics, but when I try to enable graphics (it uses X11) it briefly pulls up a window border then quits with the error: Illegal instruction. This program works under Mac OS X if I run it through X11, so I think the problem is related to that. I installed the components to run an xterm, but I get the same error trying to run it in that. What other X11 packages are available? I tried the command X11 and a few others. I tried startx, but that basically crashed the whole machine.

 

[wicknix]

I don't know as i have no idea what you're trying to build / run. There are many, many, packages related to x11. It just depends on what you want/need. The system already has the basics to give you a working desktop. I'd open synaptic package manager and search x11 and check out the results. However, since this mystery software builds, you must have it's minimum requirements already installed. Does it offer configure options? If so, try enabling or disabling some things and see if that makes it work.

Cheers

 

[r34per]

I probably know the answer to this already but, figure i'd ask anyways-

I'm running lubuntu 16.04 on my powermac g5, and i have 2 graphics cards in it. One is a mac edition 9600, and the other is a flashed radeon 9250. The cards seem to work fine independently, but i'm wanting to use 3 monitors with my g5. Two monitors hooked up to my 9600 over dvi, and the other connected to my 9250 via vga. When i try and span them the whole system freezes forcing me to reboot. Am I missing something? I left them on "Auto" for the position to see where they will go.

 

[Andy1248]

I am new to this Thread/Forum and linux/Unbuntu. I have managed to install Lubuntu 12.04 Remix V4 onto my 2004 Powerbook G4 and its works very well. Plays videos OK. But, no sound. I did have the Macbuntu installed worked ok and same problem, no sound.

I am very new to terminal commands so some easy tips to find out why my sound does not work would be appreciated.

 

[Irontooth]

I am new to this Thread/Forum and linux/Unbuntu. I have managed to install Lubuntu 12.04 Remix V4 onto my 2004 Powerbook G4 and its works very well. Plays videos OK. But, no sound.

Did you perform the alsamixer step? If not:

Launch xterm or lxterminal, type in 'alsamixer' (no quotes) then press Enter.

Alsamixer should launch in the terminal. I suggest that you press F1 to review the help screen, but the quick way to get your sound is to press F3 to get to the playback screen (if needed), then use the arrow keys to move between the controls, and set the Master and any other sound output settings (e.g. Speaker) to 80 as a start (up/down arrows or numbers to change the volume). On my system, Beep is listed separately, and I have that set to 10. Press Escape to quit. That _should_ do the trick.

 

[Andy1248]

Did you perform the alsamixer step? If not:

Launch xterm or lxterminal, type in 'alsamixer' (no quotes) then press Enter.

Alsamixer should launch in the terminal. I suggest that you press F1 to review the help screen, but the quick way to get your sound is to press F3 to get to the playback screen (if needed), then use the arrow keys to move between the controls, and set both the Master and Speaker settings to 80 as a start (up/down arrows or numbers to change the volume). Press Escape to quit. That _should_ do the trick.

Many thanks for your response. The alsamixer opens ok, can set levels for master but not speakers. However set the PCM to 80 and now have sound. Thanks again.

 

[Irontooth]

Many thanks for your response. The alsamixer opens ok, can set levels for master but not speakers. However set the PCM to 80 and now have sound. Thanks again.

Glad to see that it helped. I edited my post to hopefully make it a little more generic for any future users.

 

[danimourinho]

Hello all! I have a PPC Mac mini ( https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/specs/mac_mini_g4_1.42.html ) with a GPU Radeon 9200 and 1gb of RAM.
If i start the live CD at it is; after a few min once im on the desktop the screen flashes, gets black and come back as it was but completely frozen and the computer becomes unresponsive.

If i select on the yaboot the option: "live radeon.agpmode=-1 radeon.modeset=1 video=offbff nosplash" everything seems work ok!

The problem is that after installing Lubuntu and restarting on the HHD; the same error occurs. My question is how to set up lubuntu to start with the same options i've used in the live cd??? ( live radeon.agpmode=-1 radeon.modeset=1 video=offbff nosplash ). I did try to edit the yaboot.cfg adding on the append section the following: "append="radeon.agpmode=-1 radeon.modeset=1 video=offbff nosplash" but seems that is not working. Could anybody help?

 

[wicknix]

After editing yaboot.conf you have to run an extra command to update the bootloader.

Type: sudo ybin -v

Cheers

 

[danimourinho]

After editing yaboot.conf you have to run an extra command to update the bootloader.

Type: sudo ybin -v

Cheers

Thank you very much! I did a quick check and seems the system is running fine now!

 

[Irontooth]

First off, I have to admit that I have way too much free time. That said, I had a stray thought the other day about IceWM's Toolbar. Sure enough, the toolbar configuration works just like the regular menu configuration, menus included. So...

I reworked IceWM with Macbuntu to get this:

That's IceWM's Taskbar without the menu or windows buttons, with the toolbar holding some MacOS-like menus, and LXPanel acting as a dock. The IceWM menu is available via hotkey, but I also have the Lubuntu menu at the left side of the dock.

It's a work in progress, but the Ú menu has similarities to the Apple menu, with submenus for System Preferences, software management (Lubuntu Software Center, Synaptic, GDebi), and the IceWM default Programs menu, with individual items for grun, lock screen, logout, etc. The Applications menu is a subset of my custom IceWM menu; File menu has file utilities (Catfish, Midnight Commander, PCManFM); Edit has editing stuff (Clipit, gucharmap, leafpad); Go has PCManFM launch links to a variety of folders plus LXterminal; and Help has IceWM FAQ, documentation, gman and Xman.

The IceWM theme is a remix of the taskbar from a theme called Mintee and the window setup from one called Nitrogen, with key definitions from the Remix theme.

Had a fun weekend...

- Don

 

[Irontooth]

For anyone installing Ubuntu 12.04 Remix or Macbuntu - a quick and easy partial workaround to the problem of packages missing from the repository pool is to have all the repositories active, then run:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade -m

The -m flag tells apt-get to process while skipping missing packages. On my system, this still leaves about 110 packages 'needing upgrade', but that is a lot better than nearly 450.

Unfortunately, there are still packages that are not able to be upgraded because of missing upgrades dependencies, such as Synaptic and Libreoffice.

 

[danimourinho]

First off, I have to admit that I have way too much free time. That said, I had a stray thought the other day about IceWM's Toolbar. Sure enough, the toolbar configuration works just like the regular menu configuration, menus included. So...

I reworked IceWM with Macbuntu to get this:
View attachment 1836784
That's IceWM's Taskbar without the menu or windows buttons, with the toolbar holding some MacOS-like menus, and LXPanel acting as a dock. The IceWM menu is available via hotkey, but I also have the Lubuntu menu at the left side of the dock.

It's a work in progress, but the Ú menu has similarities to the Apple menu, with submenus for System Preferences, software management (Lubuntu Software Center, Synaptic, GDebi), and the IceWM default Programs menu, with individual items for grun, lock screen, logout, etc. The Applications menu is a subset of my custom IceWM menu; File menu has file utilities (Catfish, Midnight Commander, PCManFM); Edit has editing stuff (Clipit, gucharmap, leafpad); Go has PCManFM launch links to a variety of folders plus LXterminal; and Help has IceWM FAQ, documentation, gman and Xman.

The IceWM theme is a remix of the taskbar from a theme called Mintee and the window setup from one called Nitrogen, with key definitions from the Remix theme.

Had a fun weekend...

- Don

Really impressive! well done!

 

[daniele81]

good morning guys, congratulations for your work.
I'm also trying to reuse my old G5. I would like to use it for emulation purposes.
i installed lubunto 16.04, not your remix .
i would like to compile some emulator and put on retropie. has anyone tried it yet?

at the moment my obstacle is that I have an old cmake some emulators require 3.8 and if I remember correctly I have 3.5. do you have solutions to update it? can i get it from some debian package?
i am still investigating why i don't compile emulationstatio
Thank you