I want to help getting Jaunty installed on powerpcs

Cal, can you please provide specifics on what you need help with? Also, and this is not meant to be offensive in any way, but if you are a beginner in Ubuntu/Linux, you may want to use a stable version of Ubuntu before you start dabbling with Alphas. Also, I know from experience that old hardware bugs and software bugs can be hard to tell apart, just warning you.

Hello Itai, Thanks for the response. No offense taken, it is my habit to jump in over my head.

I've been playing with installing Ubuntu on these older macs in part for fun and to learn. I'm a physicist so I enjoy learning from solving problems. And in part because if I can get them running then I have people to whom I can give them.

So far I started with an install of Xubuntu Heron on an old Dell Inspiron 4000. Then I bought a new Toshiba laptop and I have a dual boot Ubuntu Ibex and Vista on that computer which I use pretty regularly. I have a dual boot with OSX Leopard of Ubuntu Ibex on my dual 1.25 GHz MDD G4 but I had trouble with Yaboot that I didn't get squared away so I'm back to Leopard on this one. I've also installed Ubuntu and Edubutnu Ibex on several old PIIIs, two of which I've given away and also I installed Edubuntu Ibex on a custom rebuilt computer for a friend (microATX board with Intel Atom processor).

As you would expect all of the installs on the x86 machines went without a hitch. The exception being the Inspiron which had issues with the display and driver issues with wireless usb devices. It was my first foray into linux, editing xorg.conf, etc... .

I've subsequently tried to install Xubuntu and Ubuntu on a 500 MHz g3 imac with 256 MB ram (typo in my first post, I said 252 MB) and on the g4 Tibook. After spending a couple of weeks discovering and trying published solutions to the common problems on those machines, eg Thunar not working with the g3 imac I decided on a whim to try to install Jaunty and in the course came across other difficulties. (In a nutshell: First install was daily build 090220 and the install couldn't detect the HD. A few days later I tried a 1x burn of the 090224 daily build iso alternate powerpc and got past finding and partitioning the HD but got a failure installing Debootstrap and was unable to install busybox-initramfs... . I have some moderately more detailed notes.)

**** So, all that said, I don't quite understand the difference between old hardware issues and designing an os that will be compatible with the existing old hardware. I understand that making newer and newer versions of Ubuntu work well on old machines is not the highest priority, and rightly so. But since I have an interest in getting these older macs running with the most modern OS possible, if I can help by turning up difficulties, looking for bugs, and if that help is wanted/ needed then I would like to see what I can offer to the community. I really appreciate having been able to install and use or give away the Ubuntu systems that I have so far. ****

Thanks again for your answer and your time.

Cal

I'll look elsewhere for help. Thanks.