Is that Pioneer DVD the original? I'm thinking if it had one matching any used by Apple as OEM you might not be presented with any need for a driver.

No, I don’t believe it is OEM. I guess I don’t understand why it appears to function properly yet it doesn’t have needed drivers. Any way to rectify that? Short of tearing out the drive and finding an OEM drive? I’ll research it further. Thanks for the inquiry.
Mav

What you have is an Apple question. Some forum or website catering to Mac users may provide an answer.

Apple has a history of making and using repair service and parts available other than via an Apple Store somewhere between vexing and impossible. This is likely one of its monopolistic obstacles.

Hopefully that works.


I would just use the graphical install.

In my experience, when the partitioner sets up the boot system, it creates a boot partition on the hard disk. My MacBook Pro was set up as follows (all on the hard drive, in this case /dev/sda):

Partition 1; size 537 MB; fat32; boot, esp (flags);
Partition 2; size 246 GB; ext4;
Partition 3; size 4022 MB; linux-swap

I chose to simply overwrite the whole disk, but I'm guessing that if I had had another OS on there when I was setting it up, that I could have set up it up for dual boot.

However, my MacBook is a MacBook Pro 5. I've heard that some of the earlier G5 Macs are quite tricky to set up for reasons I don't fully understand. There is a site that provides distros which supposedly deal with some of these Macs:

https://mattgadient.com/linux-dvd-im...e-2006-models/

A MacBook Pro has an intel chip, which is why (IMHO) it is much easier to load just about any Linux distro onto them. I have a MacBook (white) and a MacBook Pro that I used to see if the DVDs I was burning were going to work. They all worked great on the laptops but I quickly realized the difference between Intel and non intel Macs, even tho the G5, and in some circles the G4s are referred to as NewWorld.

So, My G5 Tower/Desktop, although 64 bit will not install typical 64 bit isos. I have gotten to the point in the install of the Debian 10 netinstall where software is being selected and installed. It has been stuck on 22% for nearly 24 hours. Ctrl-alt F4 showed that files were still being installed but about 2 hours ago, it started showing “Temporary Failure Resolving ‘deb.Debian.org’ IP 199.232.30.132 port 80” As long as every once in a while the error doesn’t occur, I’m letting it play out. I haven’t tried to go to a different terminal screen because I don’t want to screw up what’s going on right now. But I don’t have a lot of faith in where the install is either.

As for the G4 Debian 10 install, that came to a screeching halt yesterday when I erased the hard drive containing the Slackintosh distro and promptly discovered I couldn’t access ANY of the hard drives!!! All I got was a Floppy disk with a flashing question mark!!! After some PRAM,NVRAM and SMC resets I was able to get back into the G4 where I immediately clean installed OS 10.4 onto one of the drives. During this process the software installed DVD files so I hope to start the G4 Debian 10 install again. It’s been behaving ever since so I should be ready to go soon. I would really like to see the G5 get Debian before I go after the G4.

Very few if any of the installers I’ve used have/had a graphical interface. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I am several years late in attempting these installs but the Mac OS stopping at 10.5 for these Machines left them unfunctional for my needs. These machines have large hard drives, wireless internet and a host of other features that I am hoping Linux breathes a new life into them, even if the distros are old.

Thanks for your continued feedback
Mav

Debian has a graphical installer option.

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The two Debian installer isos I have (both net installs) do not have an option for a graphical installer. They are both menu driven and maybe I should use a different partitioning tool. I went with the manual partition choice and I was pretty sure I did it correctly. It does a really nice job of stepping you through the process. I just keep running into issues with less than straight forward solutions. I’m going to keep at it though, because I am convinced Linux is a great way to go for these older Macs.

I think if you're just getting the Grub command line at the beginning then the Debian net-install CD hasn't booted properly. You should be seeing the options as displayed in the image I posted in post #51.

That happens to me when I try the powerpc net-install CD on the MacBook Pro I've got, because the MacBook Pro's architecture is amd64 rather than powerpc. The powerpc net-install CD worked fine with the old G4 Power Mac Graphite machine, and likewise the amd64 net-install CD worked fine with the MacBook Pro.

I’ll try your original suggestion and boot from open firmware, I’ve had some (better?) luck booting from the screen I get holding down the option key and loading bootable disks to chose from. I’ve had no luck using Open Firmware so when the disk showed up on the boot screen, I went for it. I’ll give one firmware a shot.

BTW: I have been running Lubuntu 16.04 on my other G4. It’s been running for quite a while and can’t remember what my process was to get it on this machine. I believe I started with Lubuntu 12.04, and kept upgrading. I tried the same thing on the G5 and when 14.04 loaded the GUI was a mess, hence my attempting another distro.

I’ll keep ya posted!
Mav

My experience may not mean anything, but, here it is:

On the MacBook Pro 5 laptop I have, I was able to boot the install cdrom by simply pressing the options (alt) key. I'm including two photos. The first is after pressing the options (alt) key. The second is after choosing the EFI install option of the cdrom (it gives the initial screen as I earlier noted in post #51). For the MacBook Pro 5 laptop, I was able to use the common architecture of amd64. Pressing the C key always gave the BIOS mode for installing, which didn't work. So, for me, it was best to use the options (alt) key, so I could choose the EFI mode of install. And from here, I had the option of the "Graphical Install".

If you're not getting this, then, I feel, something else is wrong. What exactly is the device you're trying to install on?

On the Power Mac Graphite G4 that I have, I used the live-cd of Debian 10 (it's the powerpc architecture, which is an unofficial port of Debian, since Debian officially dropped support of the powerpc architecture). Neither pressing the "C" key nor pressing the Options (alt) key worked, so I had to access it via the Open Firmware prompt, as previously described.

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Devices I am trying to install Debian on:
Power Mac G5
PowerMac 7,3
PowerMac G5 (2,2) processor
Speed 2 GHz
CPUs 2
L2 Cache 512 MB
Memory 4 GB
Bus Speed 1 GHZ
Boot ROM 5.1.8f7
ATI Radeon 9600 XT Graphics Card

Power Mac G4
PowerMac 3,5
CPU PowerPC G4 (2,1)
CPUs 1
Memory 1 GB
L2 Cache 256KB
Speed 867 GHz
Bus Speed 133 MHz
Boot ROM Version 4.3.3f2

I downloaded the Debian ISO from your most recent link. It was larger than the one from your previous link, don't know why. Burned it to a CD and proceeded to boot up the G5, no graphic installer, but instead of grub, yaboot was the boot loader, again, don't know why. So, I'm in the process of partitioning the hard drive and erasing the information to do a clean install. I am also fighting trough a list of sites to do the net install from and haven't found one that will work, yet. I have plenty more to go through.

Mav

If the powerpc iso doesn't work on the G5, then perhaps the ppc64el iso will work on the G5.

OK, to be clear, I have only tried to load ppc64 stuff on the G5 and PowerPC stuff on the G4, sorry for the confusion. Both have not shown a graphical interface. In loading the PowerPC distro on the G4, two problems have arisen: 1) no valid or reachable site to obtain net install files for the G4. 2) base system install boots to a black screen.

The G5 pp64el iso found a valid site for the net install files and was in the process of installing them. I have not checked the process this morning. I will say this:

Successfully loaded Lubuntu 12.04 on the G5 (upgrade to new distros failed)
Successfully loaded and am using Lubuntu 16.04 on a different G4 than described above
Successfully loaded Ubuntu Edgy 6.10 on the G4 I’m trying too load Debian 10 on.

Would just like Debian on the G5, and G4
Mav

Black screen... that doesn't sound good. No command line? Just black? What happens if you press ctrl-alt-F2 (I think the Mac equivalent is ctrl-options-F2)? Do you get another terminal with the command line? If so, maybe you could sign in there so that you could try to fix things.

It might be best to just forget about installing Debian on the G4. Instead opt for Void Linux PPC iso with xfce. Here's the general site: https://voidlinux-ppc.org/

This black screen at reboot is nothing new as far as Debian is concerned. I've seen it before after I thought I did a successful install. No cursors, no access to terminals using Ctrl-alt-anything. Just blank. When I tried to upgrade the G5 from Lubuntu 12.04 to 14.04, I got a black screen but a pointer. So for fun I typed in my password and I was given access to the desktop but it was a mess with no obvious way to fix it. Windows wouldn't draw completely (you would have to guess where the "okay" or "cancel" buttons were), desktop was pixelated, pretty much unuseable.

I need to figure out why the ports, mirrors I try to use are unreachable. I'd like to think that once I get that figured out that maybe additional items will load to address the black screen issue.

Mav