I had Power Mac G5 that was being used in a small office before the hard drive died. It is a dual core with 4gb ram and an Nvidia 6600. It had MacOSX with outdated programs and running pretty slow at that. I decided I was going to install Linux on it to give it up to date programs and OS. I put in a hard drive and installed UbuntuMATE.
After spending about 2 weeks with it and reading blogs and forum posts, I would like to put together that steps that worked for me to get it working and stable with 2d acceleration. Most of this information is scattered around so apologies if it's redundant for some of you.
I decided to install the 14.04 LTS release so that it can continue to receive security updates for 5 years at least. No need bleeding edge software or shorter release cycles for a simple office computer. It's nice that 15.04 is an official ppc release, but it wouldn't even boot off the live-cd, spitting out an error about 'unable to open rtc device (rtc0)'.
Now, these powerpc releases are known for having graphics issues, so I will outline as well what I did to get a working desktop with 2d acceleration. When booting up the computer with the live-cd, I used
The toram argument loads the live-cd into ram so you dont have to keep waiting while the disk drive keeps churning when loading programs etc. The nouveau.noaccel=1 argument is very important, it disables hardware acceleration, which fixes graphical issues and random freezing. Go ahead and install it, I just picked the defaults and let it do its thing. Go ahead and reboot. Remember to add the nouveau.noaccel=1 argument again, so the prompt will look like
Now, I hadnt really used Linux for a couple years so I was bit rusty, and I wasnt really up to date on the whole PPAs business. So I did a dist-upgrade and broke the system, I had to reinstall. So when you do a dist-upgrade, remember to comment out the PPA sources for apt. I believe just a regular apt-get upgrade would also work without disabling the PPA sources, maybe someone can chime in here.
Wireless
Now, sound and wireless wont work out of the box. For the wireless airport card, just do
Now, I learned Linux using Debian-based distros so Im used to using a root shell and not typing sudo a million times, so for sudo, to get a root shell just do
Of course, I know most of you probably dont want to be in a root shell so just add sudo when needed when running these commands.
Now, you can reboot or do
to get wireless working.
Hotspot
To get wifi hotspot working, read this user's answer and the answer below it:
http://askubuntu.com/a/439530
Basically the gnome-frontend for the network manager didnt implement ap mode, which makes the wireless card act like a router so that mobile phones can also connect to it. As stated in the post, you edit the configuration file to change mode to ap or install the KDE connection manager, although it does pull in quite a few KDE libraries.
I tested this in a live-cd environment and the hotspot worked fine. I was able to connect to it using my android phone and the internet worked fine. However when I set up the G5 at the office we were able to connect to the hotspot but internet did not work. The G5 is connected to a Clear modem by Ethernet. I would like to point out that at first the internet did not work at first, but after many tries we were rerouted to Clear page and then finally the internet worked. Even apt-get had complained about clearsigned file isn't valid got 'nodata' error, but that went away. Im assuming there must be DNS issues at play, since I worked on the G5 at home and now its at the office, maybe Ubuntu had to get new DNS servers from the new ISP. Although the internet works now, it does not work for devices connected to the hotspot, if anyone has any idea how I can get it working it would be greatly appreciated. The problem seems to be that it doesnt pass the connection from Ethernet to wifi correctly. My android phone complained that the wifi may not supply an internet connection. I checked the Ethernet settings and things are still at their defaults.
Sound
For sound, I only had to add
to the /etc/modules files. If for some reason that doesnt work, you can also try adding
You can reboot or use modprobe.
2D Acceleration
Now, as for 2d acceleration, I suggest you read this blog post:
G5: Nouveau & 2D Acceleration
It explains whats going on in regards to nouveau not working. Basically some kernel configurations cause issues with the nouveau driver (pagesize and msi interrupts). You can either compile the kernel yourself or download the precompiled kernel that fixes these issues for you:
Debian Jessie 8.1 PPC64 Kernel
Its for Debian but it works great in Ubuntu :D
After you install using the .deb files, make sure you add the appropriate entries in your /etc/yaboot.conf for your new kernel, then do
Make sure to add the new kernel entry first as that will be the default kernel Ubuntu will use. Also check that the default kernel parameters match the other entries, I believe for mine it was "quiet splash toram" although I think toram isn't needed. I would also recommend adding the nouveau.noaccel=1 parameter to the stock kernel entry in case you ever need to boot using your old kernel. I will post my yaboot.conf here the next time I can get a hold of the G5. Reboot and enjoy 2d acceleration :).
Splash Animation
Now, for me the boot splash animation did not work anymore, it would show UbuntuMATE text, no logo, with the colored background and garbled text all around. The shutdown animation worked fine. I believe it happened after dist-upgrading, but at any rate, there is a very simple fix. Theres all kinds of advice to fixing the Plymouth splash animation but all you have to do is create this file
and add this line exactly
It basically makes Plymouth use an older technique for accessing video memory instead of KMS. After that do
I always throw in a
just in case.
Reboot and enjoy a working boot splash animation.
Miscellaneous
Here's some useful information regarding the LTS release
Ubuntu MATE 14.04 LTS Useful Information
I like the Windows desktop layout with the MATE menu and indicators, so I used
I will post a pic of the desktop next time I'm able to use the G5.
Firefox in powerpc seems to have a few issues or quirks but its not a dealbreaker. Tab groups dont work for me. If you disable Firefox Hello by toggling loop.enabled then session restore doesnt work. In Debian Jessie, Iceweasel wouldnt install any extensions, complaining that it couldnt modify the needed file, however it seems to be fixed in Ubuntu.
Hopefully this guide was able to help someone out with a Power Mac G5 with an Nvidia card. Maybe the modified kernel might even help ATI users if they have issues, who knows.
After spending about 2 weeks with it and reading blogs and forum posts, I would like to put together that steps that worked for me to get it working and stable with 2d acceleration. Most of this information is scattered around so apologies if it's redundant for some of you.
I decided to install the 14.04 LTS release so that it can continue to receive security updates for 5 years at least. No need bleeding edge software or shorter release cycles for a simple office computer. It's nice that 15.04 is an official ppc release, but it wouldn't even boot off the live-cd, spitting out an error about 'unable to open rtc device (rtc0)'.
Now, these powerpc releases are known for having graphics issues, so I will outline as well what I did to get a working desktop with 2d acceleration. When booting up the computer with the live-cd, I used
Code:
live-powerpc64 toram nouveau.noaccel=1Code:
boot:Linux nouveau.noaccel=1Wireless
Now, sound and wireless wont work out of the box. For the wireless airport card, just do
Code:
apt-get install firmware-b43-installerCode:
sudo iNow, you can reboot or do
Code:
modprobe r b43
modprobe b43Hotspot
To get wifi hotspot working, read this user's answer and the answer below it:
http://askubuntu.com/a/439530
Basically the gnome-frontend for the network manager didnt implement ap mode, which makes the wireless card act like a router so that mobile phones can also connect to it. As stated in the post, you edit the configuration file to change mode to ap or install the KDE connection manager, although it does pull in quite a few KDE libraries.
I tested this in a live-cd environment and the hotspot worked fine. I was able to connect to it using my android phone and the internet worked fine. However when I set up the G5 at the office we were able to connect to the hotspot but internet did not work. The G5 is connected to a Clear modem by Ethernet. I would like to point out that at first the internet did not work at first, but after many tries we were rerouted to Clear page and then finally the internet worked. Even apt-get had complained about clearsigned file isn't valid got 'nodata' error, but that went away. Im assuming there must be DNS issues at play, since I worked on the G5 at home and now its at the office, maybe Ubuntu had to get new DNS servers from the new ISP. Although the internet works now, it does not work for devices connected to the hotspot, if anyone has any idea how I can get it working it would be greatly appreciated. The problem seems to be that it doesnt pass the connection from Ethernet to wifi correctly. My android phone complained that the wifi may not supply an internet connection. I checked the Ethernet settings and things are still at their defaults.
Sound
For sound, I only had to add
Code:
snd-aoa-i2sbusCode:
snd-aoa-fabric-layout
snd-aoa-codec-tas
snd-aoa-codec-onyx2D Acceleration
Now, as for 2d acceleration, I suggest you read this blog post:
G5: Nouveau & 2D Acceleration
It explains whats going on in regards to nouveau not working. Basically some kernel configurations cause issues with the nouveau driver (pagesize and msi interrupts). You can either compile the kernel yourself or download the precompiled kernel that fixes these issues for you:
Debian Jessie 8.1 PPC64 Kernel
Its for Debian but it works great in Ubuntu :D
After you install using the .deb files, make sure you add the appropriate entries in your /etc/yaboot.conf for your new kernel, then do
Code:
ybin vSplash Animation
Now, for me the boot splash animation did not work anymore, it would show UbuntuMATE text, no logo, with the colored background and garbled text all around. The shutdown animation worked fine. I believe it happened after dist-upgrading, but at any rate, there is a very simple fix. Theres all kinds of advice to fixing the Plymouth splash animation but all you have to do is create this file
Code:
/etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/splashCode:
FRAMEBUFFER=yCode:
update-initramfs -uCode:
ybin vReboot and enjoy a working boot splash animation.
Miscellaneous
Here's some useful information regarding the LTS release
Ubuntu MATE 14.04 LTS Useful Information
I like the Windows desktop layout with the MATE menu and indicators, so I used
Code:
mate-panel --reset --layout redmond-indicators-freshFirefox in powerpc seems to have a few issues or quirks but its not a dealbreaker. Tab groups dont work for me. If you disable Firefox Hello by toggling loop.enabled then session restore doesnt work. In Debian Jessie, Iceweasel wouldnt install any extensions, complaining that it couldnt modify the needed file, however it seems to be fixed in Ubuntu.
Hopefully this guide was able to help someone out with a Power Mac G5 with an Nvidia card. Maybe the modified kernel might even help ATI users if they have issues, who knows.