Hi i want to install yellow dog linux on my beige g3 mac but its not capable of booting straight from the yellow dog cd.
There is a program called bootx that lets you boot into a linux cd on a mac but bootx only runs on mac os9 or lower which i dont have or plan on getting. Also i know of no one that has a mac os9 cd that i can borrow.
I know you can make boot floppies for it but my floppy drive is not working to well was wondering if its posiable to make a boot disk for it on a zip disk as i know my mac can boot from its zip drive.
Any help on this would be great as ive tried everything i can with no luck & am just about to give up on it.

I've always been told that YDL will not work on an old world Mac. The distribution most people recommend is MkLinux:
http://www.mklinux.org/

That's all I know, I'm afraid.

Samsara
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You might also consider the PPC port of Debian.

Thanks for that but it doesnt really matter what linux i try i still have the same problem i need to find away to get any mac linux cd to boot on my beige g3 mac so i can actually install it.

Holding down the 'C' key before 'Happy Mac' shows up on your screen doesn't work?

My mac the beige g3 is whats known as an old world mac which is all the old beige coloured macs and when holding down the c key to boot a cd will only boot a cd that has a valid apple system folder on it so holding down the c key wont boot a linux cd. Only new world macs thats any of the coloured macs can boot linux cds while holding down the c key. So i still need to find a way to use my osX to get the linux cd to boot.

If you do find a way to boot please post it as I am trying to accomplish the same task.

Mac G3 233Mhz - Is this the same system you're using? The Pre-USB system?

Debian has a boot floppy for older Macs for their installation. I've tried it before on an older version of Debian. The Debian installer also installs the "quik" bootloader into OpenFirmware, rather than BootX (which is nice since you don't want BootX).

So is there no way to load Yellow Dog then?

hold control+option+p+r at boot until you have heard the startup chime 3 times. this resets the pram, and that was what did the trick for me. also, there is a little button on your mobo next to the battery that won't hurt if you reset that with the computer OFF. check around on the mac forums for people who can't boot from a cd - it's a common problem. also, i noticed on mine that they media had to be high quality for me to boot from it. my old $0.10 CD's weren't going to cut it. had to use the memorex!

Maybe, but only YellowDog 3.0; see the installation guide for YellowDog 3.0. But on OldWorld Macs, YellowDog insists on using BootX to dual boot MacOS, instead of using the quik bootloader.

i agree bootX is the way, i hear about this and as far as i can remeber i think i tryed this once, it was about 3 years ago. on a beige g3 OWR machine

The disadvantage of using BootX is that you have to set aside a separate partition with a working classic MacOS system just so you can use BootX; quik doesn't need that; but its disadvantage is that you sometimes need to change stuff in the Open Firmware on Old-World Macs to make it work.

It seems to me that, if you're working with an Old World Mac, a small MacOS partition is a small price to pay for the ability to use Linux on the machine. How large a partiion are we talking about here? A couple of MB? Enquiring minds want to know....

its correct, you will need it installed on the machine, the best thing is you use os8.6 since this is smaller then os9, 8.6 needs about 150 mb max. os 9 about 500, or here is a workaround, if you have 2 cd drives, you have the followoing option, you can make a bootable 8.6 or 9.1 cd with the bootx loader, and insert the cd for startup only then you dont have to have it installed on to the machine, for creating the image file is the best thing you use TOAST, you have there and option which allows you to create an image from the harddist and then you can make it bootable, as far as i can remember in toast is an option (preferences) for the image files wher you can click a checkbox for make bootable.
i think the most recent version for the non X systen of toast wich works is 5.X, but please update it to the most recent version available for the system

ADDITIONAL
one more thing, i think im not sure about it, but as much as i can remeber you can download the sysyem from the apple website, since it is not supported anymore and an end of life product, please check out the apple website