So it bit me again, I had to install a modern OS on my 10 years old iMac, which I keep (as the leftmost part of my triple "screen" synergy setup) mostly because its such an interesting object.
It's a 17 inch model from 2003 with USB 2.0 ports (fairly modern as these things go).
Detailed specs :
Model : PowerMac 6,1
G4e 7445 1.25GHz w/ 256kb cache
1GB RAM
nvidia Geforce Go5200 w/64M VRAM
10/100 networking
160GB PATA hard drive
Triple-boot setup (Linux, OSX Leopard, OSX Tiger)
I kept some notes as I went along, I'm sharing in the hope somebody might find it interesting.
The original idea was to try to reproduce Crunchbang Waldorf (based on Wheezy), which is the distribution I have been looking for since 1998, on the clunker.
I first started with the obvious :
Debian 7 Wheezy powerpc
=========================
Minimal install without a hitch.
Installed a lot of packages, mostly in an effort to reproduce crunchbang.
Was going well but got stumped by weird window redraw bug in geany text control when scrolling.
Upper part of text field would stay unchanged and lower part would turn to garbage.
I don't even know where to start looking.
This is usually where I loose all common sense and start distro-binging instead of fixing the darned problem. Lets see what we can find...
Lubuntu 13.10
=============
Nice alternate-iso powerpc image. (I prefer the good-ole debian installer, call me a Luddite.)
Super-Modern Kernel. No support for Suspend-to-Ram in kernel :-(
Installed without a hitch.
Small glitch in lightDM : It only shows in the upper left quarter of the screen (regular desktop is showing underneath, no biggy).
Beautiful, simple desktop.
Put the panel at the top where it belongs.
Had to resize all fonts down 1 step.
Disabled icons in menus and on buttons.
Easy to restore openbox right-click menu behaviour.
Very fast, low memory usage.
Might be the best for this old mac.
I remember having been very well served with old Ubuntu LTS releases (8.04 and 10.04) so why not try the latest one?
Xubuntu 12.04
=============
Downloaded 12.04 mini-iso powerpc. Only mirror was in UK. Not really a problem.
Selected Xubuntu in installer.
Gorgeous desktop. I like Thunar.
No support for Suspend-to-Ram in kernel :-(
Tiger and Leopard partition auto-mounted and were fully accessible from thunar.
Excellent useful Right and Middle click menu on the desktop.
Super annoying delay (3 full seconds) before appearance of right click menu (middle-click was instant). This was so weird I hunted in all the config panels for a setting thinking maybe this was working as intended (though misguided). Disabling application icons in the menu makes it MUCH faster.
Weird compositing bug with some applications (Sticky Notes, the default Terminal, Gnome-Terminal, Konsole and my cherished Terminator unfortunately). These apps would not draw to the bottom half of the screen. Would disappear when dragged down. Disabling compositing fixes this, but makes all window dragging a slow, tragic affair with extensive smearing, yuck!
Other apps (thunar, leafpad, kate, k3b, xfburn) did not exhibit this problem, so Xubuntu might be fully usable. Aterm was fine, so with tmux, might stand-in for terminator. Aterm did not show in Xubuntu menu however.
Kubuntu 12.04
=============
kdm is very nice, then login and boots to a completely black screen, with a nicely shaded mouse cursor. Switched to another console and rebooted.
Conclusion
===========
So I'm back to Lubuntu 13.10 for now.
I will try Xubuntu 13.10 to see if I still get the compositing bug.
I will also try to reproduce crunchbang from the Lubuntu base (starting from plain openbox), might be the ultimate thing.
It's a 17 inch model from 2003 with USB 2.0 ports (fairly modern as these things go).
Detailed specs :
Model : PowerMac 6,1
G4e 7445 1.25GHz w/ 256kb cache
1GB RAM
nvidia Geforce Go5200 w/64M VRAM
10/100 networking
160GB PATA hard drive
Triple-boot setup (Linux, OSX Leopard, OSX Tiger)
I kept some notes as I went along, I'm sharing in the hope somebody might find it interesting.
The original idea was to try to reproduce Crunchbang Waldorf (based on Wheezy), which is the distribution I have been looking for since 1998, on the clunker.
I first started with the obvious :
Debian 7 Wheezy powerpc
=========================
Minimal install without a hitch.
Installed a lot of packages, mostly in an effort to reproduce crunchbang.
Was going well but got stumped by weird window redraw bug in geany text control when scrolling.
Upper part of text field would stay unchanged and lower part would turn to garbage.
I don't even know where to start looking.
This is usually where I loose all common sense and start distro-binging instead of fixing the darned problem. Lets see what we can find...
Lubuntu 13.10
=============
Nice alternate-iso powerpc image. (I prefer the good-ole debian installer, call me a Luddite.)
Super-Modern Kernel. No support for Suspend-to-Ram in kernel :-(
Installed without a hitch.
Small glitch in lightDM : It only shows in the upper left quarter of the screen (regular desktop is showing underneath, no biggy).
Beautiful, simple desktop.
Put the panel at the top where it belongs.
Had to resize all fonts down 1 step.
Disabled icons in menus and on buttons.
Easy to restore openbox right-click menu behaviour.
Very fast, low memory usage.
Might be the best for this old mac.
I remember having been very well served with old Ubuntu LTS releases (8.04 and 10.04) so why not try the latest one?
Xubuntu 12.04
=============
Downloaded 12.04 mini-iso powerpc. Only mirror was in UK. Not really a problem.
Selected Xubuntu in installer.
Gorgeous desktop. I like Thunar.
No support for Suspend-to-Ram in kernel :-(
Tiger and Leopard partition auto-mounted and were fully accessible from thunar.
Excellent useful Right and Middle click menu on the desktop.
Super annoying delay (3 full seconds) before appearance of right click menu (middle-click was instant). This was so weird I hunted in all the config panels for a setting thinking maybe this was working as intended (though misguided). Disabling application icons in the menu makes it MUCH faster.
Weird compositing bug with some applications (Sticky Notes, the default Terminal, Gnome-Terminal, Konsole and my cherished Terminator unfortunately). These apps would not draw to the bottom half of the screen. Would disappear when dragged down. Disabling compositing fixes this, but makes all window dragging a slow, tragic affair with extensive smearing, yuck!
Other apps (thunar, leafpad, kate, k3b, xfburn) did not exhibit this problem, so Xubuntu might be fully usable. Aterm was fine, so with tmux, might stand-in for terminator. Aterm did not show in Xubuntu menu however.
Kubuntu 12.04
=============
kdm is very nice, then login and boots to a completely black screen, with a nicely shaded mouse cursor. Switched to another console and rebooted.
Conclusion
===========
So I'm back to Lubuntu 13.10 for now.
I will try Xubuntu 13.10 to see if I still get the compositing bug.
I will also try to reproduce crunchbang from the Lubuntu base (starting from plain openbox), might be the ultimate thing.