Re: Problems with 32 bit PPC upgrading/autoremoving on '04 iBook G4
H Fritz,
Fritz Hudnut wrote:
Adrian:
Just providing feedback on the Debian Sid/PPC install that I ran a
couple months back and then today did an apt dist-upgrade that brought
in 489 packages. Because the machine has a 933 MHz cpu it doesn't do
anything too fast, but it did get through the installation of 432MB of
data in about an hour, but there were some errors . . . . I guess it
installed the 6.5 kernel, but then did not dpkg it for use, then it
showed that 6.3 kernel is "to be removed" but numerous attempts to
remove it have failed . . . . I forgot to check uname -a??? for
running kernel. Problems with grubieee1275 also, although a grub
window opens and boots the system OK . . . . And then an issue with
linux-image-powerpc as well have the dist-upgrade error out.
I think you need to share your errors. They way you described, it is
difficult to understand.
Perhaps your boot partition is too small and a second new kernel can't
be fitted on it?
While upgrading, I prefer a safer method, which conusmes more disk
space. First I do "apt-get upgrade", reboot and test, then "apt-get
dist-upgrade" and then "apt-get autoremove".
I was hoping that I could use the machine as a distributed.net
<http://distributed.net> "mule" to just slowly kick out some stats,
for hours and see how that would work.
I remember when running seti and distributed.net with NetBSD on a MacII
with 68020 with FPU...
But the provided "web browser" is that epiphany?? launches briefly and
then crashes. Tried that a couple times. I tried to install
"firefox" via console and that had so many unmet dependencies that
failed, and same for "chromium" . . . no candidate.
No way you can expect to use firefox or chromium on such computer, just
because of the RAM! I don't know how chromium fares, I try to avoid it,
but firefox is a big monstrum not very big-endina friendly nowadays, but
remember that also the web pages have become heavier in 20 years: CSS,
JS, layers, compositing, videos with backgrounds...
For "quick" access you can browse with things like midori, or try your
luck with ArcticFox (there is no official deb package though)
So, there is a GUI, but somewhere in there the kernel got botched
up?? or the machine can't support 6.5?? and won't remove 6.3 . . .
the machine is very slow in spec, not sure if I could wget the right
distributed.net <http://distributed.net> "ppc" package and install it
via console . . . . Ran out of time to mess with it, the lack of a
browser kind of cuts down on usefulness, but had that problem with the
OSX 10.4 install that was on there and the possibly Lubuntu 16.04???
browsers were almost dysfunctional . . . I think it has 946 MB RAM???
Don't think it has enough kick to run your SidsterPPC system??
A computer is not just for browsing... and your iBook can do linux,
since I also have a G3 iBook and G4 iBook.
Email (with a client, not webmail), image viewing, mp3 music, even some
image editing can be done Simple text processing, coding...
Just don't expect YouTube in a browser, although you might be able to
watch videos with VLC or similar.
A useful trick is to hook up ssh/telnet/whatever and do browsing on
another system and then copy links and wget them
Riccardo
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