Hello! I'm trying to get GNU/Linux running on an Apple eMac. It's got a G4 CPU (1Ghz), 256MB RAM, and ATI Radeon 7500 graphics. The distro I chose is Debian 5.0.7 PPC. The installation went smoothly, with only minor hiccups: The sound didn't work, which I fixed by adding snd-powermac to /etc/modules; and X11 wouldn't start, which I kind of fixed by using this xorg.conf (which I found through Google). That xorg.conf works okay, but there's like half an inch of black space all around the edge of the screen, so there's still something I need to adjust.

As for Flash videos, since apparently there isn't a PPC version of the official plugin, I installed Gnash from the Debian repository (using apt-get, and then setting the symlinks, etc.), but it just gives me a black display where the video is supposed to be. The plugin is recognized according to the plugins page in IceWeasel. My guess is that the Gnash version in Debian's stable branch is just way too old. If anyone here has any experience to share about getting Flash videos to work on PPC, it would be greatly appreciated.

Currently, I don't have access to the eMac, but I should within 12 to 24 hours. My plan regarding the Flash issue (this post is really about two issues, one being the half-inch black borders on the screen, and the other being the Flash videos) is to download the latest and greatest source code for Gnash directly from the GNU website, and compile it on the eMac. Does this sound like my best bet? I remember reading somewhere that one could also use QEMU to get the x86 version of the official Flash plugin to run on PPC.

I will be updating this as soon as I regain access to the eMac, but in the meantime please don't hesitate to share any pointers you might have, as it could prove extremely useful to me (and others in similar circumstances who might run into this thread down the line). TIA!

you Might want to try Slackintosh I noticed it has been kept updated clear up to this month.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean.

How would a Slackware PPC port help get Flash videos working on this box (or fix the display size issue)?

long time ago I figured out instead of fighting it find a distro that was built for the hardware. and is kept up to date.
I installed Gnash from the Debian repository (using apt-get, and then setting the symlinks, etc.), but it just gives me a black display where the video is supposed to be. The plugin is recognized according to the plugins page in IceWeasel. My guess is that the Gnash version in Debian's stable branch is just way too old.

Yes, download gnash from the website and compile it. This is how I configure gnash (or used to):
Right now, I don't have it installed, because it's not that stable either. Instead, because I only use youtube, I have a greasemonkey script that lets me download them.

As for display size, I don't know. You may need some modelines or something. Or maybe there's a way to stretch the screen using some buttons on the display ?

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If you want Flash your best bet is to use Mac OS X. That machine will run Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) which whilst not supported by Apple, will still run the latest version of Firefox and Flash. If you put a decent amount of RAM in to it then it'll meet the system requirements for Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) which is still supported for security updates. You'd have to check what type of RAM it takes, there is a 1GHz G4 model that takes SDRAM and a later one that takes DDR.

You'll probably find that machine struggles to play back a lot of Flash video in a watchable manner anyway. My 800Mhz G4 iBook usually displays Flash video as more of a slideshow., though your experience might be better with the extra 200MHz.

There's a section for people with Macs over at the Ubuntu Forums. http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=328 though how much discussion is about PPC I don't know.

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The box's hard drive died (with Mac OS), and the box's owner doesn't posses the Mac OS disk(s) anymore. I installed a new hard drive, and the owner agreed to pay me to install GNU/Linux on it. When we made our agreement, the Flash situation on GNU/Linux PPC slipped my mind (I've never really worked on PPC before), and needless to say if I can't make this box play YouTube videos and stuff like that half-decently, the owner is gonna be extremely disappointed with the whole thing. Anyhow, I've finally regained access to the eMac and will proceed to get started on this ASAP. I don't know how well the Flash videos play on this machine, as I haven't gotten any to work yet. Hopefully that'll change today.