linux on mac

well, i have had my mac for awhile now, and have been satisfied with it. but now i want more. i want linux on it. i just did a fresh install of osx 10.4 after repartitioning the harddrive and leaving the first partition open (as is recommended by terrasoft for ydl). i went to install YellowDog Linux 5 and I was able to boot into it. but the graphics were horrible. the text was cluttered, and when i went to do the actual install, it went to a video range outside of what my monitor will handle.
i tried ydl 4. same thing. i tried gentoo. same thing.

so what should i do?

here are the specs:

g3 b&w 300mhz
512mb ram
8mb ati vid card w/ adapter to standard 15pin pc monitor.

20gb drive split in two.
using a macally usb keyboard, a generic 2 button pc mouse (usb) that i got from radioshack.


also, the ydl 4 was cd, the ydl 5 was dvd, and gentoo was cd

Linux's architecture is totally different from a mac's

Windows, Linux, BSD, those all are used in x86 and i386 architectures, You'll need to use an emulator, or a special version of linux in order to get it going on a Mac

Maybe use a emulator inside of Mac of a very light version of linux?

Lemme just say i"m still a Mac-newb, so if its a intel or AMD processor, your good,

also, check mininum specs, and resolutions, they more or less may be un-compatible

laos said:

Windows, Linux, BSD, those all are used in x86 and i386 architectures, You'll need to use an emulator, or a special version of linux in order to get it going on a Mac

Click to expand...

No you won't. Intel Macs run Linux, mine will happily boot Knoppix Live.

OP, I'm not sure that Mac is going to run Linux too well, I didn't even know a Linux existed for a G3 Mac.

YDL or Yellowdog is a PPC linux and will run fine on your B&W. I install it every once in a while to play with it.
Once you get it installed and running the graphics are better, in KDE or Gnome.
Change the resolution to something your monitor can handle and it willl look fine.
However it will not look as good as OS X. Not the same eye candy.

Also try some other live CDs for PPC. There is a PPC version of Ubuntu that work work well most likely, though Yellowdog is the most common one because of the PS3 support. Since you have 512mb of RAM, just about any live CD/DVD should work just fine for testing. If you are getting resolution problems, you should edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (if your chosen distro uses Xorg) and make sure that it recognizes your monitor's settings properly. You can do this in a live CD as well, but instead of restarting just restart X (usually the key combination is ctrl-alt-backspace) or log out and log back on. Also, about the eye candy, both Gnome and KDE are very customizable, just check out www.gnome-look.org or www.kde-look.org for some skins/icons/backgrounds. I use Ubuntu on my desktops and I am pretty satisfied with my wide variety of visual options, though don't expect your CPU/graphics combo to run compiz or beryl anytime soon :-D Good luck!

i ran yellowdog 3 on my powerbook alongside os 9. i tried ydl4, ydl5, and gentoo on my b&w.

for the first couple posters, yellowdog is for mac only, not pc. the do offer for ps3 and actually lots of other interesting hardware.

i tried turning my res down in osx then restarting, the bootcd still tries forcing some enourmously high res.

I understand that Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) still supports the PPC architecture. I have also heard that this is the last Ubuntu release that does. Happily, 6.06 is one of their LTS (long term support) releases, so it will be supported for another several years.