Ubuntu / Apple :: 11.04: Epic Fail On Powerbook G4
May 29, 2011
I have an Apple Powerbook G4 17" Feb'2005 (1.67GHz PPC G4 CPU, 1Gb RAM, 100Gb hdd) at home. Having the infamous "vertical lines" problem, I need to use use an external 1440x900 DVI monitor (same resolution as braindamaged Apple LCD). I also have some USB-serial hardware (weather station, Arduino, etc) and a Nokia N900 configured as a router (this lets me use a fixed IP on the Powerbook).
I had Ubuntu 9.10 running 24h/24 up to yesterday, so I just updated the yaboot.conf in /dev/hda2 (the boot partition) and booted natty off hard disk and USB pendrive (great thing having an yaboot on a bootable partition). Since Apple separated me from 2900 bucks (ouch!!) six years ago, I don't want to abandon this Powerbook until its very end. But it seems Natty is not a viable option...
[code]...
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May 7, 2011
I have gone from having 8.04 to 11.04 in 2days. 8.04, was a bit of a glitch as I found. Unfortunately I have had worst luck lately. Adobe flash has flunked its major and I have been going off my (crappy) intuition and every flash element has been a repetitive skipping box or a black box or the equivalent of an annoying pop-up that wont close. I am currently using 11.04.
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Sep 2, 2010
I have a Asus UL80j, Nvidia GeForce 310m w/ 1gb mem, i3 core processor and 4 gb ram. Windows 7 HP came on, I love Fedora so I dual boot. I installed the Fedora 13, did yum update all is good. I attempt to use the compiz for cool effects however, it freezes my system.
I attempt to install the nvidia graphics driver from thread [url] and follow the instructions to perform the install and reboot.
First it loads the fedora logo like always and then boom, black screen with a blinking white underscore mocking me. Reboot once more and get the load out of pass/fails and see nvidia.ko for kernel...... [NOT FOUND] blah blah [FAIL] blah blah [FAIL]
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Jun 2, 2010
I had a machine that dual-booted Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10. This past weekend I thought I'd upgrade to 10.04. I obviously selected the utterly wrong set of selections when prompted during installation to pick partitions for GRUB2 to manage. I am sorry I can't say what I picked, but I can tell you the results:
* Ubuntu 10.04 boots fine
* Windows 7 just blinks with a flashing cursor in the upper left
* I do have my Win 7 install disc and used the "repair" option and the command line commands, but the repair disc does NOT see any valid Windows partitions... no C:, nothing. I can't run the various repair options I've seen online because there's nothing to run it on.
* I can see the Windows partition when booted under Ubuntu... all the data is still apparently there.
* I've seen various threads about restarting with the LiveCD and re-running GRUB2 but am not sure I've seen a definitive page on how to re-run GRUB2 and what to select once I've done so.
I would be happy to get both Win 7 and Ubuntu bootable, but barring that, I would like to get Win 7 back with everything intact. If the easiest path forward is to reformat and reinstall Win 7, that's less fine but doable -- I've backed up what I can via Ubuntu to an external drive.
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Nov 20, 2010
Today I was trying to upgrade mysql and php.PhP went well, thats at the latest version, but the mysql went to 5.5x from REMI. This killed all my websites, no DB and worse.Well I typed the wrong this (totally my fault - serious EPIC FAIL)i typed yum remove mysql not downgrade...This removed plesk and a load of other stuff, and now im screwed.
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Jul 17, 2010
I have a Powerbook G4, 550MHz, and I had 10.04 on it, but the wireless wouldn't work. I know that there are tons of variants, but I am sick of wasting disk, time downloading, testing, ect. Has anyone found a really good version of linux that will work? Or am I better off with OS X 10.4?
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Apr 30, 2010
Just did a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.04 and I can't enable the Extra Visual Effects. I get the error "Desktop effects could not be enabled".
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May 15, 2010
Well currently I am having a problem on the installation, when it goes to step 3 "keyboard layout" and I press forward it just stays there loading and does not proceed. It does not freezes or anything but stays there forever and does no proceed to next step. Burned another live-cd thinking it may be the disk itself but still no luck.
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Apr 19, 2011
i installed ubuntu 10.10 on old powerbook g3 (6g hard disk, i think it lombard)m with xfce as desktop (xfce and not xubuntu wich is slower). anyway, everything works fine, but for some reson my vlc just cannot run video file. each time i play him it show a black screen and fall. i tried config his outpot video, and it still dont work, in smoe mode the audio working but the other not.i tried another movie player, and only totem, kaffeine and xine works ok, although very slowly (the video work not smoothly). kaffeine works fine, but not enough. when i had ubuntu 8.04 in the same computer vlc was the movie player i chose and he did his job perfectly.
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Mar 15, 2010
I want to use an old Powerbook i have as a music juke box and am thinking of using ubuntu to run it - assume that i will dual boot with a small partition for osx? and then run an external hard drive with flac encoded music - into laptop then usb dac to hifi Will ubuntu run ok on this machine? I have removed all the stuff on the old hDD - anything else i need to do?
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May 14, 2010
I'd like to try Ubuntu netbook remix 10.04 on my 12" G4 Powerbook, but I can't seem to find it. Does it just not exist? Apple have a range of older 12" models that are no longer supported that Ubuntu would work great on.
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Jun 27, 2010
I am trying to find out how to get the visual effects working on my PowerBook G4. I have 10.04 installed, and it's running an ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 M10. I can't access the xorg.config because it doesn't exist.
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Feb 21, 2010
I just installed Karmic on a PowerBook G4 Titanium. The install went fine after I figured out that I had to set the date in the open firmware because the PRAM battery is dead. Now when I boot, I get a white screen with black text telling me it's found the display then the splash screen shows up but I never get the login screen, just a blank screen. I can switch to the virtual consoles and fool around, but I haven't gotten it to work yet.
Edit: I've attached .xsession-errors (Has UF always required file extensions?)
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Mar 17, 2010
I am trying to install on my Powerbook G4 version 9.04. IT went well and I rebooted it boots up and appears to be loading... In fact says "Loading, please wait"
But the screen begins slowly to fade to white until I can't see anything.
There is one error that might be related I noticed "Radeonfb invalid rom contents".
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Mar 20, 2011
Installed Ubuntu 10.10 on my new-to-me Powerbook 1.67Ghz. PowerPC, as a platform, is most definitely *not* dead. Installation went normal. I installed with network connected to Ethernet rather than Wireless. Installed Wireless firmware. Then I had wireless.
Backlighting didnt work until I added 'i2c-dev' to /etc/modules. Restart, and backlight works, although its a little too sensitive. Hardware acceleration wasn't enabled, so I had to add this to a file called Radeon-kms.conf in /etc/modprobe.d/
"radeon options modeset=0"
Reboot. Then I had hardware acceleration and Compiz.
Install/run sensors and sensors-detect. Run as root. Detected HD temp, CPU, GPU temps and fan speed. Make sure this is in /etc/modules: therm_adt746x. Thats the thermal control stuffs. I then installed openjdk and netbeans and eclipse. OpenJDK is slow, but I feel that is due to OpenJDK itself, and not PowerPC.
This gave me a working CPU ondemand throttling:
apt-get install cpufrequtils
Installing this gave me a working battery-applet that reported a percentage:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:iaz/battery-status && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install battery-status
/usr/lib/battery-status/battery-status --indicator
I get really good battery life, and everything that shipped on this laptop actually works as designed. Forever PowerPC, Forever Ubuntu
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Jan 8, 2010
I've just installed Ubuntu 9.10 on an old PowerBook G4 I have, and when I go to Power Management, it doesn't provide the tab for battery-related settings (nor do I get the little battery/charge icon in the upper-right panel). I'm comparing this to the version of Ubuntu 9.10 I installed on my EeePC netbook, where those things are present. Is there anything I can do to get the Power Management preferences to recognize that the machine has a battery?
If it helps: the PowerBook had Ubuntu installed on it using the 9.10 "alternate" .iso, as I was having trouble burning the "desktop" .iso to a CD.
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Feb 12, 2010
I have a Good Way Technologies BU2220 CardBus USB 2.0 card which works fine on this same Mac under OS 9.1. It also works fine on a more modern mac with OS X. But I cannot understand why it's not working in Ubuntu 9.10. I had it recognized (I think??) when I had Kubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) installed on this system. I have an old dog - a PowerBook 3400c 240 Mhz 80MB Ram, with a 40 GB HDD. I have Mac OS 9.1 installed on a 5GB partition, and the rest is Ubuntu 9.10, using the LXDE GUI. I switch between Mac OS and Linux using Boot X.
When I slide in my USB card (making sure I have the external power supply attached to it), the system shows a bit of activity, and my display brightness reverts to default. Then there's no more activity. Of course, USB flash drives and USB mice won't work when plugged in. I navigated to /var/log, and looked in the Messages log. There were the following entries:
Feb 11 13:42:09 PowerBook kernel: [ 374.949456] pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket1: pccard: CardBus card inserted into slot 1
Feb 11 13:42:09 PowerBook kernel: [ 374.949881] pci 0000:05:00.0: PME# supported from D0 D1 D2 D3hot
Feb 11 13:42:09 PowerBook kernel: [ 374.949916] pci 0000:05:00.0: PME# disabled
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May 23, 2011
I have a Titanium (Onyx) 550 Mhz G4 Powerbook and the standard gnash does not work. I read that you can compile a custom version of gnash for laptops with low spec graphic cards. Could anyone give me guidelines how to do this with gnash? or swfdec? or lightspark?
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Nov 13, 2010
I installed Ubuntu 10.10 on my PowerBook G4 (I think that's powerbook 5,6 but I could be mistaken). Most everything is fine from a function standpoint except for the touchpad/trackpad. Unlike most users who seem to be getting an insensitive touchpad, mine seems to be picking up some interference from an unknown source. The mouse frequently jumps around the screen either horizontally back and forth or sometimes vertically. If I disable the trackpad it seems to stop (at least for a few minutes). Sometimes I can lay my palm flat on the trackpad and it will cause the mouse to stand still also which makes the external mouse usable.
Are there any solutions to this? (I did install the, what is it, gpointing-devices package? The one that provides the GUI for touchpad configuration and that has not helped at all, except that I can use it to periodically disable the trackpad for a temporary fix)
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Mar 14, 2011
I've had a Apple Powerbook G4 for a while now, but being mostly a Windows user I've never used it. I remember when it ran it's native OSX (Which I can't for the life remember) Probably Tiger? Anyways... I tried installing Ubuntu on it about a year and a half ago, the installation was botched and I left it sitting there with no purpose in life. :O
So I've decided to dust the laptop and give it another go. I've progressed a little further with my Linux experience, having installed and tested a few distros and even switching over to Ubuntu 9.10 for about 4 months. Enough of my life story and more to the point.Has anyone installed Ubuntu, or any distro for that matter on the Apple Powerbook G4? I know there are different versions of the G4 and I'm not entirely sure what my version is, It's the 1.6Ghz version with The Nvidia card (Err I think) and extra Wireless card installed. I am not very capable with Mac - After checking Apples website I believe it's the 15inch.
I've read the FAQ thread and will begin trying to install Ubuntu tonight at home, I just wanted some suggestion and some pointers in the right direction. What distro would be most suitable for my hardware? and What is easiest to set up?
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Aug 7, 2010
Anyway, I've a decent understanding of the various Linux console commands and know how to work my way around a text editor or file system. But I can't seem to fix what's wrong with my computer. I'll list my info here and then discuss the most pressing issues that I need help with.
It's a 17" PowerBook G4, with Airport Extreme (which I understand is a headache all on its own: I'll likely get to that later)
Results of ~$ lspci:
I downloaded the most recent .iso for the PowerPC from [url], specifically the 4.4 GB DVD copy.
During installation, I told it to install only the Desktop Environment and Base System. Installation went through without a hitch, though it failed to connect properly to my Wireless card.
The first issue I encounter after booting is during the login. When logging in as a non-root user, I'm told to change my password immediately (root enforced). I've done this every time I've logged in. Immediately after when I log in I'm told that the system clock is wrong: It's currently set to Jan. 1, 1970. If I try to change it, I get a message saying that I can't, and my desktop won't load properly. If I ignore the system clock issue and try to change it in System > Administration > Time and Date later, after entering my admin password I get a message that says
Failed to run time-admin as user root.
Failed to communicate with gksu-helper.
Received:
Changing password for root.
While expecting:
Apparently the password issue is related to the Time and Date settings (according to Google), but I can't fix those because it wants me to change my password.
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Jul 11, 2010
so i finally found my disk of ubuntu 6.10 that i know works. if booted fine and after the disk got formatted it proceeded to install. but to only gets about 73% through the install and then promptly crashes and when I tried it again it does the same thing.
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Jun 28, 2010
Two days ago, I was happily using 9.10 with no problems. I decided to upgrade to 10.04 because it looked really cool and every upgrade had been at least a litte better for the past 3 years of using ubuntu. I rarely use command line. I just don't like microsoft or apple very much. I do know a little about how to do it, but i need it broken down barney style. Back to topic...
When i boot my computer, everything goes fine until the purple screen that says ubuntu with red dots under it. I expect to see my login screen next, but it just goes black and responds to nothing. I started in failsafex and things seem to work ok. I assume the graphics settings are too high at default and i need to back them off some. Nothing I do fixes the problem. can i do something about this from root?
i use a laptop with external monitor and it has worked forever. now, the system doesn't recognize it at all in failsafex. I don't know if it will work once the distro actually works, but any hints would be great. I prefer to not have to erase everything on the computer, but if it will get me running again faster it's ok.
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Mar 9, 2010
I spent most of the day yesterday trying to make this work and haven't gotten really anywhere with it. Building from source quietly failed although it built without error and I got checkinstall to pack it up it didn't actually work.So I rolled back to the repository version of rtorrent.As I understand it, the things I need to do are (I am thwarted at every step):create user with --disabled-password optioncreating the user is no problem except they seem to have no shell, and running any command while su'd as that user throws an error like Code: Cannot open your terminal '/dev/pts/1' - please check.
I found somewhere that changing the permissions on /dev/pts/N solves this problem however N can change after a reboot, or probably following other events so that's likely not the right fix.create init script to run rtorrent as user in previous stepI found an example that seems like it works but I wont know for sure until I get the prior step worked out fully.
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Sep 21, 2010
I just installed Ubuntu 10.04 on my Powerbook G4 1.5ghz 15", and the ethernet port on the laptop doesn't work. So I can't search for drivers to install.
Is there a way to either tether internet to the laptop using firewire? find the necessary drivers so I can transfer them?
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Apr 29, 2011
trying to get debian working on an apple 12" aluminium powerbook from summer 2005. Right now, I am specifically trying to get the touchpad to work. Googling and searching the forums suggests that I need the appletouch module. I believe I already have this as it is now compiled into the kernel. I believe that I'm also supposed to get this to work properly with the synaptics driver. I've installed the synaptics input for X. I've also got pbbuttonsd though this doesn't seem to affect the trackpad even though there is a setting for it.
Right now, I can move with the touchpad but I cannot do anything else. I cannot tap to click and I cannot use, for example, two finger scroll. This is very frustrating because I'm so used to doing these things that I keep doing them expecting them to work any time I'm in a GUI environment!If I kill the display manager and x server and run Xorg -configure as root, Xorg always crashes so I've had no luck producing a base xorg configure file which I believe I probably need to edit.
I'm not currently using gnome. I've installed both lxde and xfce to see which I like best although I'm not sure this was wise because I'm confused about how to switch between them. When I tried ubuntu 10.04, the trackpad also partially worked. In that case, it was almost impossible to move with it, difficult but not impossible to tap and very easy to scroll. The trackpad works perfectly in os x so it isn't a hardware issue. (Ubuntu 10.04 ran like treacle even with no applications beyond gnome running - hence my not installing gnome.)
Debian's wiki has a (very, very brief) section on installing on a 12" powerbook which points to [URL] for powerbooks after february 2005 such as mine. But this page seems very out of date and to discuss an older version of the driver before it was included in the kernel. It also pre-dates support for airport extreme wifi etc. So it isn't helping much because I'm not sure what, if anything, might still be applicable.
Right now, pbbuttonsd tells me that it has no clients when I pass -listclients to the command-line interface. trackpad show says there is no trackpad. xfce's settings pane for mice shows a total of no fewer than four devices: my logitech mouse; the trackpad which it believes is another mouse; an xtest device of some sort; and mac mouse emulation. I'm not sure what the last two of these refer to.I realise as I write this that I'm not really sure what information might be relevant so if it is not included, perhaps somebody could let me know what I should add. Version of debian is stable (squeeze). PPC is a 7450 (G4 PowerMac 6,8) 1.5 GHz 512kB L2 cache 167 MHz bus with 1.25GB RAM.
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Jul 31, 2009
I downloaded the 7 isos and burned them to CD properly, but I can't seem to get my Powerbook to startup from CD 1. I've held down "c" while starting up just like usual, but it's not recognizing the CD as a startup disc. It simply goes into OSX or OS9. I'm a Linux novice, unfortunately.
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Mar 30, 2011
I have a Powerbook G4 1.67Ghz. My problem is that if I sleep my laptop by choosing sleep from the desktop menu in kde then it sleeps and wakes fine but when it wakes the pointer is locked to the x axis and tends to snap back to the same point when I'm not actively manipulating it. This is also the case if my laptop sleeps after 10mins inactivity. If I sleep the laptop by closing the lid this problem does not occur. When it wakes all is working well.
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May 7, 2011
Neither Ubuntu's Unity or KDE respond to the function keys on a regular Apple USB keyboard. I can plug in a non-Apple keyboard and they work just fine. What needs to be changed or configure so that F1 and company on the Apple keyboard work as on other keyboards?
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Apr 22, 2010
This morning I bought an Apple wireless keyboard and I got it connected through Blueman. It works like a charm, but I have on problem;
When I log out I can log back in by typing in my password. However, when I restart the computer it seems that bluetooth is not loaded yet and I cannot enter my password. So I have to log in using my wired keyboard, and then disconnect & re-connect to my wireless keyboard using blueman before I am able to use the wireless keyboard.
Is there any way that I can already auto-load bluetooth and connect to my keyboard before I log in?
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