Nice machine. I always wanted a cube, just for the shear cuteness.
I have a couple ppc machines. One stuck on Debian 8 and I dare not upgrade as I suspect I'll break it completely. It wont boot usb via open firmware and the CD is iffy (imac 333MHz) . I have a pile of coasters trying to get something newer on it. When I have the time I’ll stick the HD in one of My G4s and get an up to date distro on it, then swap it back..
I also have a G5 imac and several unused G4’s.
PPC are finicky at best. If your braver than me you might be able to upgrade from 8 through to 12 tweaking as you go. Fixing X is usually just a case of finding a xorg.conf file that works. The Xorg auto detection was always crap when it came to PPC. I'd definitely install 8 and grab as much info off it as possible before you have another bash at it. On something that old I'd always do a net install as a desktop install would be painful and again only really useful to gather info.
But in all honesty I would skip Debian on ppc for older machines. On the G5 I struggled to get Debian to install and boot so used the Debian install disk to partition and installed Void-ppc. Void ppc worked OOTB but I read the main dev has moved on to pastures new, so if I had to choose now I’d go for Gentoo the safer option, Adélie or T2 SDE. Good luck what ever you decide and be sure to post your progress if your succesful.
https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/#ppc
http://t2sde.org/architectures/powerpc/
https://www.adelielinux.org/download/
I have a couple ppc machines. One stuck on Debian 8 and I dare not upgrade as I suspect I'll break it completely. It wont boot usb via open firmware and the CD is iffy (imac 333MHz) . I have a pile of coasters trying to get something newer on it. When I have the time I’ll stick the HD in one of My G4s and get an up to date distro on it, then swap it back..
I also have a G5 imac and several unused G4’s.
PPC are finicky at best. If your braver than me you might be able to upgrade from 8 through to 12 tweaking as you go. Fixing X is usually just a case of finding a xorg.conf file that works. The Xorg auto detection was always crap when it came to PPC. I'd definitely install 8 and grab as much info off it as possible before you have another bash at it. On something that old I'd always do a net install as a desktop install would be painful and again only really useful to gather info.
But in all honesty I would skip Debian on ppc for older machines. On the G5 I struggled to get Debian to install and boot so used the Debian install disk to partition and installed Void-ppc. Void ppc worked OOTB but I read the main dev has moved on to pastures new, so if I had to choose now I’d go for Gentoo the safer option, Adélie or T2 SDE. Good luck what ever you decide and be sure to post your progress if your succesful.
https://www.gentoo.org/downloads/#ppc
http://t2sde.org/architectures/powerpc/
https://www.adelielinux.org/download/
Statistics: Posted by oswaldkelso — 2024-04-19 14:21