Need help installing linux on a iBook clamshell

Exactly what the title says.

I have an iBook clamshell G3 laptop, 300Mhz, 576MB of ram, 40Gb hdd.
Its currently running os 9.2.2 and osx 10.2.6 (wouldn't install osx panther for some reason.)

What I need to know is what variant of linux os is the best for my iBook. (Stable, fastest/efficient and has the best web browsing capabilities.)

Also, if someone could explain why osx panther wouldn't install, that'd be great too but not necessary.

It's very odd that Panther wouldn't install, my guess is it doesn't like the disc. You might try zapping the PRAM and trying again if the problem is with booting from it. Might also be one of those weird restore discs for a specific machine.

As for Linux, most distros don't support PPC anymore so your best bet would probably be Debian (or something based on it) with LXDE or Xfce as your desktop environment (the graphical interface). Your software choices will be very limited with such a small amount of RAM, and I've never had much luck making Linux usable with a one-button mouse. I think there may be a PPC version of Lubuntu in the works that would suit your machine.

I wouldn't waste too much time with such an ancient machine though, if that 40GB is the original hard drive it's probably going to die shortly after installing the OS. Happened to me about a year ago after I spent several hours taking one apart so I could pull the drive, use another machine to install Tiger on it, then pop it back in.

You might try Yellowdog. I think they still have a PPC version.
YDL.net

cradom said:

You might try Yellowdog. I think they still have a PPC version.
YDL.net

Click to expand...

According to Distrowatch their latest release is from 2009 and comes with Gnome 2.16 (an old version even back then), which would run pretty smoothly. Actually the first Linux that I ever used was Yellow Dog 4 on an iMac G3 at my high school, about the same vintage and speed as the OP's machine.