My Brain Has Burned Out

[Frank Ciampa Champ]

Okay, a month ago I was a power mac newbie. I've learned a lot BUT not enough. My G5 dual 2.0 needs a Linux OS. The problem is I can't get any Linux install disks to boot from open firmware. Tried USB and DVD no difference. Usuallt says can't read device. I'm willing to try anything to accomplish this HELP!!!!

 

[barbu]

What Linux are you trying to use? You will definitely need a PPC Linux. Yellow dog used to be the thing for that. Not sure about now. But a google for ppc g5 Linux should be fruitful.

 

[Frank Ciampa Champ]

What Linux are you trying to use? You will definitely need a PPC Linux. Yellow dog used to be the thing for that. Not sure about now. But a google for ppc g5 Linux should be fruitful.

Have tried multiple distros and used the ppc versions. Only one that worked was Yellow Dog but too old and Lubuntu 16.04 actually installed but when I rebooted it wouldn't come back up. Have formatted in Mac and Fat but no good.

 

[sparty411]

I'm being 100% genuine when I say this.. Linux anything on these machines is an exercise in frustration at best, and a miserable time sink at worst. I've done successful installs with different distros on numerous occasions, but it just isn't worth the hassle. You're better off picking a Core 2 Duo shitbox out of the garbage, and installing a Linux distro on that. Not to mention, it'll be like 10 times more powerful than the PowerMac. If you'd like to use the PowerMac, just install OSX, and call it a day.

 

[wicknix]

I agree and disagree with @sparty411. While osx was meant for these machines and installs painlessly and has some good software yet, osx 10.4/10.5 are crippled with security holes and lack of modern browsers. If you want security and the modern web, then anything not osx (linux/bsd/morphos) is a better option. I hate to keep touting 16.04 remix, but I put a lot of work in to that to make it hassle free. All the post install quirks a stock install of any distro are taken care of so that the user has a good experience out of the box.

I have a few suggestions....
If your machine continues to boot yellow dog, then your drive never got formatted (or partitioned properly). Make sure the drive is in the upper drive bay, then during install of Ubuntu, when it asks have it use "the entire drive" and not "use available free space". That's pretty fool proof and always works.

Cheers

 

[z970]

But a google for ppc g5 Linux should be fruitful.

I can't believe I'm seeing this when there is a thread permanently stickied to the top of this forum literally called "The PowerPC Linux Wiki". It exists to detail information, walthroughs, guides, and links in order to make life easier for those running Linux on a PowerPC Mac so that they would not experience the frustrations and fruitless, unanswered questions I had when first learning and easing into Linux.

An insane amount of knowledge, effort, care, and trial-and-error were put into it over the course of almost a year now, and it amazes me every time somebody waltzes in asking questions about Linux that they could have had answered had they instead bothered to refer to it.

@Frank Ciampa Champ, @wicknix has similarly put quite a lot into Lubuntu 16.04 Remix to ensure it operates as smoothly and as trouble-free as possible on these very machines. I suggest using that in conjunction with what's available on The PowerPC Linux Wiki for troubleshooting and proper setup. It has sections dedicated to USB booting and manual partitioning.

My advice is to wipe the disk clean (Yellow Dog is old and useless), try booting from USB again with the Wiki's instructions, and manually partition Lubuntu by selecting the "Something else..." option in the installer. The manual partitioning guide meant for the CLI installer should translate over fine to the graphical Ubiquity installer, as not a great amount is different between the two. Should any questions or inquiries remain that are not helped by The PowerPC Linux Wiki, any one of us would be perfectly happy to offer assistance to the best of our abilities.

 

[TheShortTimer]

While osx was meant for these machines and installs painlessly and has some good software yet, osx 10.4/10.5 are crippled with security holes and lack of modern browsers. If you want security and the modern web, then anything not osx (linux/bsd/morphos) is a better option.

In terms of security concerns, you can always put those Macs behind an old PC running Smoothwall Express. I had it happily working on a headless 1995 Pentium box with 32mb and a 500mb HDD. I'm planning to set it up on a more up to date P4 with 1GB of RAM that I'd found abandoned.

 

[Frank Ciampa Champ]

I can't believe I'm seeing this when there is a thread permanently stickied to the top of this forum literally called "The PowerPC Linux Wiki". It exists to detail information, walthroughs, guides, and links in order to make life easier for those running Linux on a PowerPC Mac so that they would not experience the frustrations and fruitless, unanswered questions I had when first learning and easing into Linux.

An insane amount of knowledge, effort, care, and trial-and-error were put into it over the course of almost a year now, and it amazes me every time somebody waltzes in asking questions about Linux that they could have had answered had they instead bothered to refer to it.

@Frank Ciampa Champ, @wicknix has similarly put quite a lot into Lubuntu 16.04 Remix to ensure it operates as smoothly and as trouble-free as possible on these very machines. I suggest using that in conjunction with what's available on The PowerPC Linux Wiki for troubleshooting and proper setup. It has sections dedicated to USB booting and manual partitioning.

My advice is to wipe the disk clean (Yellow Dog is old and useless), try booting from USB again with the Wiki's instructions, and manually partition Lubuntu by selecting the "Something else..." option in the installer. The manual partitioning guide meant for the CLI installer should translate over fine to the graphical Ubiquity installer, as not a great amount is different between the two. Should any questions or inquiries remain that are not helped by The PowerPC Linux Wiki, any one of us would be perfectly happy to offer assistance to the best of our abilities.

 

[1042686]

Hi Frank, IIRC we have the same model a1047 (dual CPU 2ghz, 4gb pc3200 max) powermac G5. Erase the drive, reformat and use wicknix's flavor of Lubuntu 16.04. It installs pretty painlessly and boots up fine on this machine. IIRC I installed from a DVD but couldve been a USB, I truly don't recall. Anyhow, it installed fine first try.

If this build of Lubuntu is not working out for you and the support wiki is beyond your understanding, I recommend that you take Sparty's advice and install/run leopard 10.5.8. It can be DL'd off the macintoshgarden. Is it outdated? Yeah, but it will install seamlessly for you and as of right now, TFF is still supported & hardened somewhat, so will work for day to day surfing, email, word processing, music & games.

Linux can and does get frustrating real quick when it doesn't work out of the box and you dont have all year to learn why and how to fix it. OSX will install seamlessly and keep the fun in it. My A1047 PMG5 has Lubuntu 16.04 installed but it is the only one of my PPC macs to have any flavor of linux and it lives a pariah's life ( Just kidding linux guys) out on my work bench in the garage. All of my macs inside run OSX or macOS - certainly no shame there as Leopard is my personal fav release of anything mac - the OS really came into its own with leopard IMHO. Anyhow, there are definite security weaknesses with the age of the OS so be cautious and use common sense when poking around. As always YMMV, and best of luck on whatever route you take.