Lin on Mac Powerbook G3 Wallstreet
 

Has anyone installed any distro on a Powerbook G3 Wallstreet?

I am looking to do this.

Any info would be helpful. (like snags you have run into?

I might look to do a live eval cd, but heard I may need to repartition to use boot X, is that true? FYI: This is a "old world" mac it will not boot using just a boot cd to either install or do a live eval cd.

TIA.

I installed and ran PPC Linux on a G3 Lombard back in... 2000, and back then it was a little buggy, now its just humorously simple. Yellow Dog or Mandrake PPC or Debian PPC, Gentoo, they all run pretty brilliantly on these.

Linux is Sooooooo not built for a 1 button mouse though, man its a headache.

Cheers,

Finegan

The only Mac I've ever had was a 266MHz Wallstreet (traded it for some other hardware because I'd break my back lugging it around all day), and it ran Debian very nicely. Yellowdog didn't have any problems either but since I already knew Debian that's what I used most of the time.

Just follow the installation instructions for your distribution. It is usually very simple to load Linux on these machines, and also make sure you check out Linux on Laptops for more information and helpful tips and tricks.

You may have to use a small OS9 partition for the bootloader though, at least that was the situation when I had my Mac.


Håkan

Not anymore. At least, in my opinion. I tried Yellow Dog for a few minutes on my iBook G3 (2001 model) and the middle and right mouse buttons were pre set to the F11 F12 keys I think. With Gentoo, I emerged pbbuttons, edited the config file and had the middle and right click set as my fn+ctrl/fn+option buttons. Perfect! Right where your left hand is already, just off the pad. Much better then removing your right hand from the pad to use the right hand F keys. It actually feels just as natural as a mouse now :)

Anyone do a bootx install on a preexisting mac system.

I have done installs for a few distros on pc based systems but never had to deal with bootx. Any pointers, I wanted to try and get this on my system and then boot to lin from there or a liveeval cd.

I don't personally have any bootx experience, but there is some info on it in the Gentoo install manual at gentoo.org that might help.

No bloody kidding? Wow... The Lombard was a pseudo-loaner. I had it to repair and then play with for a few months, nice that things have come along, back then framebuffering barely worked and yabl horked 1/3 of the time.

Too bad my PC laptops are so reliable and Macs just hold their value too well or I would be back on that... then again I'm a nut so I would probably go OpenBSD :)

Cheers,

Finegan

Yea, the macs don't get much cheaper do they? I picked mine up, still new in the box and fully loaded for $825 off ebay. not bad i thought. I kind of enjoy running Linux on PPC as its a bit of a challenge at times. Simply because it's nowhere near as popular as x86. Less documentation on the web...

I am learning all I can though and hope to help out the Gentoo PPC devs since their team is a little shorthanded. Also due to x86 being the predominant arch.

I took a look at you list of pc's there Fin. Very impressive! How do you have time to sleep? You don't, do you? ;)

I've just installed Debian on a Pismo (G3 500), it was quite easy, I had only 2 problems: you have to get used to the mac hardware before you can build your own kernel, and I still have some keyboard problems. The one-button mouse is not a problem.

installed debian sarge on my powerbook g3 wallstreet. no problems so far... it's downloading kde right now.