Hey all, HELP! Putting a different OS on a Powermac G4?

Morning all, please help!

I became an Apple convert about 4 years ago, but had to sell my goodies when my business hit hard times, anyway....................

Just yesterday I brought a 2004 PowerMac G4, 1.2ghz (or might be 1ghz) processor, 512mb ram, running osx 10.4, as I thought it was silly cheap at £30 (I'm in England)

I brought it for one of my kids to use, with the thought I could put Ubuntu or Joli Cloud on it, Joli Cloud preferably as Ubuntu 12.04 I think would slow it down.

But, I'm banging my head against the wall.

I'm not very techy, and googled how to start a mac from cd, pressing and holding c while it's booting, or a combination (which I can't remember now) while booting, but neither would make the computer boot from the cd drive.

I cannot find anything on the internet to help me, so have signed up here for some help.

So, in brief, I have jolicloud/ubuntu OS's on CD, both iso images, which I'd like to put on this G4. I don't have any Apple OS discs.

Is what I'm after possible? if so, could anyone please spare the time to talk me through.

Many thanks in advance
Nick

First of all welcome to the Forums.

Here is some basic info on OS X and Macs. It doesn't directly address your question, but might be of some use
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/os...49-what-os-disk-do-i-need-brief-overview.html

Regarding Linux Distros, I'm not a expert, though we have a number on this forum. My question would be is the G4 up to running any of the recent Ubuntu distros (not familiar with Joli Cloud)?

There are a few posts on running Linux on older Macs. I would suggest doing a thread search and having a read. Expect one of our Linux geeks will post in fairly soon to add their 2 cents worth.

Many thanks for the welcome and again for the reply.

It should run Joli Cloud lovely, as my Asus netbook runs like a new computer using it, I believe it's based on Ubuntu 10.something and has been designed to bring life back into old slower computers.

I have not searched on here, but will have a good look to see if I can find an answer.

I naively thought I could put the disc in and it'd boot up and install like on a windows machine.

Thanks again for the reply, and I will have a look at he link you provided to see if I can learn anything.

Many might be asking why I don't stick to the OSX OS, the answer is, we don't have wired internet upstairs and I can't get the Tenda USB wireless stick to work through the OSX OS, again, probably due to lack of knowledge.

Are you sure you have the PowerPC version of Ubuntu on the CD? Is there even a PowerPC version of the "Jolicloud" distro?

I just have the generic .iso version of both, didn't know I had to have specific powerpc versions, or there were any to be honest.

Just googled and found Ubuntu for powerpc but it's 12.04 and that'll slow the machine to a snail, guess I'll have to try and get a usb wireless stick working and leave it with osx

Thanks for your reply