Do you have an old Mac G3 or G4 lying around doing nothing? Did you know that old dinosaur could make a great server or desktop with the help of everyone’s favorite open source operating system Linux? Most people don’t realize there are Linux ports for PPC. There are, and they will make that old machine seem like it’s younger and snappier than it ever did.
One of the issues with trying to use those older Macs is that they do not meet the requirements of newer versions of OS X. Within the last year I purchased an older eMac which had a 900 Mhz processor. I bought it mostly just to have it. It wouldn’t get too much use. When I received it it had the latest version of OS X it would support. The machine had a Gig of ram along with the G3 900 Mhz processor. I shouldn’t have to even type the fact that the machine ran very slowly. At first I attributed it to the processor speed. But after a few OS X updates I realized it wasn’t the processor but the version of OS X that was placed on it. That, of course, got me thinking…
I have installed Linux on a Mac before. The Mac in question was an old G3 800 Mhz iBook. With OS X the laptop felt sluggish. With Linux on the machine it felt much more powerful than it should have. The version I used on the laptop was Ubuntu. And man did it make a difference. I really felt like I was using a much newer laptop. On top of that I had the whole of the Linux catalog of software at my disposal.
And now I am faced with reviving an aging eMac in the same way. So I thought I would bring the possibility to the attention of the curious ghacks readers before they toss out those old Macs to make room for other projects.
Which versions to use?
There are a few distributions to use for Mac hardware:
Yellow Dog Linux
There is a Linux distribution that has been around since 1998 called Yellow Dog Linux. This distribution was originally based on Red Hat but has since been migrated to being based on CentOS (the Free enterprise version of Red Hat.) Yellow Dog Linux is a Linux distribution that is only created for PPC architecture. It installs like any Linux distributions. One of the only pitfalls of using Yellow Dog Linux is you might have to extract the firmware from your current, working OS X in order to get the wireless working. This is made possible with a tool called fwcutter (for Ubuntu or an rpm based distribution.
Download YDL here.
Ubuntu
Unlike most newer releases of Ubuntu (and Linux in general) the Ubuntu PPC installation is text based. If you are only used to the graphical installations, fear not – the Ubuntu text-based installation is very simple to use. Take note, however, sometimes, when using a G3, you might wind up with Ubuntu basically not wanting to install at all. If this happens you might want to upgrade your Mac’s G3 firmware. Once installed you will have one of the most user friendly versions of Linux on your Mac.
Download the ISO for Ubuntu for PPC here.
Final thoughts
Once you download your ISO images, burn them onto disk, and give the installation a try. Hopefully you will successfully end with Linux running your older Mac hardware better than it ran when it hosted OS X. This is not to say that all installations will go smoothly. I have found that, when installing Linux on PPC, the installations can be flaky. Sometimes they will install and sometimes they won’t. If you don’t get it on the first try, give it a second. The good news is that the effort will be worth it in the end. Your old G3, G4, or G5 will run faster and smoother than it did with OS X.
If you give this a go, please let your fellow ghack readers know how your experience went.
Related posts:
- Get To Know Linux: Live CD
- Should you upgrade your Linux distribution?
- Install Linux with InstaLinux.com
- Install Linux on a USB drive with UNetbootin
- Gain more battery life from your Linux-based laptop with powertop
- Get To Know Linux: Installation
- Review: System76 Pangolin Performance laptop
- Power saving tips for a Linux laptop
One of the problems with these distributions is that they require DVD players, which many of the old Macs do not have. I wound up installing Debian without the gui – http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/ – on my G4.
Ubuntu Jaunty is also available for PowerPC, WITH a graphical installer:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/jaunty/release/ubuntu-9.04-desktop-powerpc.iso
or the alternate CD:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/ports/releases/jaunty/release/ubuntu-9.04-alternate-powerpc.iso
Nice tips
“Yellow God Linux is a Linux distribution that is only created for PPC architecture.”
I think that’s meant to be Yellow Dog
If you need to install via DVD and the machine doesn’t have one you may want to look into UNetbootin if the machine can boot from a usb stick. The advantage is if the USB stick is big enough you can place an entire DVD on it.
Otherwise, look at a CD of a NetInstaller. They are ~100 MB installer that gets all of its packages during the actual installation over the internet.
Arch linux also has a PPC installer, it’s a text bases installer so you’ll need to follow the guide closely. Also too I’d recommend that Mac’s have at least 384MB of RAM, that’s what i got on my ibook and it just barely get’s by with Gnome.
http://www.archlinuxppc.org/download/
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Official_Arch_Linux_Install_Guide
Look also to fedora, using it on my ibook g4 and everithing is beautiful and leading edge ;))
I installed Ubuntu 9.10 on my old g4/450.
I was going to toss it, but I use it all the time now! Its quite slow launching applications, but once they’re up, everything seems to work well! I might drop in another video card (available cheap!) and some more RAM to speed performance up a bit, but It certainly feels good to get that box up and running again.
i have a g3 and i just bought the iphoto 08 and it wont work on my mac it need to be g5 is there anyway i can still get it to work?? please???/