On Sun, Jan 18, 2009 at 2:01 AM, Wouter Verhelst
<wouter@debian.org> wrote:
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 10:07:16AM -0800, Logan Airth wrote:
> Good morning. I recently acquired a PowerBook G4 12" and I was
> thinking about installing Debian. I have had some experience running
> other flavours of Linux on the x86 platform. I have been doing some
> research however since the hardware that I am using is fairly old, I
> have not been able to find recent information regarding the install of
> the OS nor any complications that I may run into. I don't really want
> to partition my drive to try to install an OS that is going to involve
> days of work getting to a workable status let alone retain the
> portablity that I am accustomed to. On the otherhand I don't mind
> putting a say a day or so of work to get it running, I am not looking
> for a multiple day project.
Good; Installing Debian on my laptop (also a 12" PowerBook G4) is a
one-hour project, including configuration and everything :-)
It might've helped if you specified what type of 12" PowerBook, however.
The CPU clock speed is usually enough to figure that out.
> Regarding the install itself, partitioning-wise, I have been seeing in what
> research I have been able to do alot of the material has made mention of
> essentially dualbooting the system. Is this nessecary? I am not interested in
> retaining OS X.
No, it's certainly not necessary. I've used my powerbook for years
without OSX.
If you had an oldworld machine, it might be easier to setup in dualboot,
however; but since it's a G4, it's not an oldworld.
> Also it is not very clear what would be the best version of Debian to
> install. Would it be better for me to install the Stable version or
> the testing version?
Both will work. However, the testing version is close to release and
will have the more shiny new software.
If you have an nVidia video card, and you want the external video to
work, you will need the 'nouveau' driver, which is only available in
experimental; you would have to install at least testing, if not
unstable, for that to work.
The other problematic thing could be the wireless. In testing, you'll
want the b43 driver; in stable, you need to use the (older) bcm43xx
one. After that, you'll want to install b43-fwcutter/bcm43xx-fwcutter to
get the firmware, and your card should be working.
> And finally would there be any recommendations for alternatives to Debian?
On this list? Come on :-)
You could try Yellow Dog if you prefer a RedHat-like distribution, but I
can't vouch for its quality. There's a Gentoo port to PowerPC, too,
which I've played with in the past. Other than that, I dunno.
--
<Lo-lan-do> Home is where you have to wash the dishes.
-- #debian-devel, Freenode, 2004-09-22
Thank you all for your excellent information. My apologies regarding the lack of information on my platform. For those that care but about it, I am running a PowerBook G4, 1.33Ghz. with 60gB HD and the nVidia Geforce Go 5200/ 64mB. The outcome of the install is quite good. I ended up installing Lenny with my only issues arising from the install of the Broadcom wireless drivers. The repository had a package for the drivers, however when getting the drivers with apt-get the package was suprisingly broken as the package attempted to download further data from a external source that no long existed. However with some quick work from my friend google I found a source for the data required and promptly installed it manually (Which I might add was most likely the most ineffiecient method but it works). Other then that I had a further minor complications getting X up and running however currently I am using the nv driver, but I may make a further attempt with getting the above mentioned nouveau driver. Lastly I was able to get some right-click functionality by mapping my middle and right click to F11 and F12. I am happy to say that the overall experience took maybe two and a half hours, but I am by no means a vetern.
Again thank you for your help, and it was much appreciated.