Booting Gentoo PPC LiveCD: Gets stuck at probing the CPU type.
 

So I am running an old iBook (G3, 800Mhz, 256MB Ram), I think it is a NewWorld type since the CD does load up a boot prompt after holding "C" since the chime.

However, when booting in to the CD, it gets stuck at an area where it tries to probe the CPU.

smp_core99_probe
core99_setup_cpu done

It does not get anywhere else, it just sits there for minutes (if I leave it alone), I have to power the machine off by holding the power button.

An Ubuntu PPC LiveCD works, but since the ram is so terribly limited, it keeps swapping back and forth making the system unusable. I need an environment that is just the command prompt.

Does anyone have a suggestion?

If Ubuntu works, I would go for just base Debian then. Running Gentoo on that machine isn't going to give you much benefit since you are going to have to end up doing a binary install anyway as the compile time is going to be pretty harsh.

To that end, in terms of just day to day use, you probably want to be using binary packages as well rather than compiling everything from source.

I am not looking for an opinion on what I should do, I am looking for someone to help me with my problem. I've already wasted too many blank CDs for Linux CDs, and the fact that I do not like Debian/Ubuntu Package Management discourages me from going that route.

So please, with a cherry on top, do you know of a solution to this problem?

If your only interest is getting Gentoo to boot, then you should ask on the Gentoo forum.

Already did, so far no answers there. I believe in finding solutions in other places just to cover all my bases. Besides their PPC section is not very active.

Now, any other suggestions would you like to make?

Once I installed ubuntu on my computer when I had 256MB (After install I couldn't get open office to open but everything else seemed to work), I just made a little swap partion (512MB) and mounted it while installing (I ended with two swap partition but got ubuntu to work).

Maybe you could get a xubuntu ppc version.

Install a BSD (FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD).