[Cialug] Old Mac PowerPC

[Renegade Muskrat]

How old a Mac are we talking about? I have a 400 MHz G3 iMac (which 
shipped with OS 9) that runs Linux well enough that it could be my 
primary computer if i wanted it to. I'm running Debian Sarge, booting 
off an external firewire disk. On a side note, there aren't complete 
instructions anywhere on the web that i could find for getting Debian 
(or any other distribution) running on an external firewire disk, so if 
someone wants to know how it is done i could type something up.

You mention SCSI which makes me think your machine is even older than 
my old iMac. Is it one of the earlier G3 models? Or is it before the 
G3? Those really old machines are going to be rather slow. If you don't 
run X it should do great. Or if you do run X, if you use one of the 
minimalist window managers it will probably still be OK. As for which 
distribution to use, that's obviously up to you. Yellow Dog is one of 
the more well known PowerPC distros, though i haven't really used it. 
At one time i had Mandrake (now Mandriva?) running on a G3 Powerbook. 
Now i use Debian if i want Linux on PowerPC. Ubuntu also has a PowerPC 
release.

At 09:23 PM 6/16/2005 -0500, you wrote:
 >I have an old Mac computer OS 9 sitting around and I'm thinking of
 >putting Linux on there.  What do you all recommend?  Do any of you 
have
 >experience working with this kind of setup and have any pointers I
 >could benefit from?  I probably won't do it until late summer with my 

 >schedule as it is, but just gathering information.  It does have an
 >external SCSI drive and the Zip Drive as well.
 >
 >Also, I wondered if you had any solid Quickbook replacements that 
would
 >
 >run on Linux.  I have heard of like GNUCash or something like that, 
but
 >
 >last I had heard there were no "mature" platforms that were really
 >ready for use.  Any feedback on that?
 >
 >Thanks in advance,
 >
 >Stuart Thiessen
                                                -- Dan
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       Daniel Ramaley                  3118 Cottage Grove Ave Apt 8
       dramaley at spatulacity dot cx        Des Moines, Iowa 50311
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