Getting an iBook (G4)

[johng4]

Is Feisty still worth the effort in installing?

All bias aside, this laptop is planned to be one of my primary design/portfolio computers, and I need something that will work with minimal frustrations. I can provide the support for myself, thats not the issue.. what I'm afraid of is that the package lists will be lacking updates, or that Ubuntu's recent stance on PPC will diminish development for it alltogether.

As it is, the person I'm buying it from has FC6 PPC on it, and says that everything on it works with exception of the Airport wireless. No biggy for me.. not really on a lot of wireless networks. Either way, my top 2 choices are FC6 (possibly 7), and Ubuntu. I'm considering YDL, but I'm not a big fan of Enlightenment.

Either way.. for any iBook users, what are you experiences with Feisty so far?

[stmiller]

Feisty has support for the apple airport extreme now. And ubuntu ppc updates are still happening.

[bogoliubov]

I'm using Feisty on my iBook G4; works quite nicely! Nog desktop effects on dual-screens, but otherwise it's OK. Linux on PPC lacks flash though, but that's not a Ubuntu specific problem.

[johng4]

I saw something about sound not working properly on iBooks and Feisty.. is this true for all G4s?

[daniel ramirez corzo n.]

I am running fiesty in a ibook G4 and the sound works great just out of the box. The only problem I still have is the airport extreme wireless support.

[johng4]

I'm using Feisty on my iBook G4; works quite nicely! Nog desktop effects on dual-screens, but otherwise it's OK. Linux on PPC lacks flash though, but that's not a Ubuntu specific problem.

No flash? Whats the reason behind that?

Not that flash is important on this laptop, but it seems odd that x86 has it, but ppc doesn't.

Are there any other stand-out programs that do not cross over? I haven't had the chance to hook my iMac G3 up to the internet in some time, let alone do the upgrade, so I'm not sure what I can expect.

[ditsch]

Adobe doesn't support PPC Linux, so no Flash. You could try swfdec or gnash, but these are not the best way and some flash features remain unsupported.

Beside that, Feisty runs fine on the iBook G4 including Airport Extreme/WPA with bcm43xx. On the hardware side there are no restrictions for me so far. On the software side, everything I expected to work does work.

[dpny]

No flash? Whats the reason behind that?

Not that flash is important on this laptop, but it seems odd that x86 has it, but ppc doesn't.

Are there any other stand-out programs that do not cross over? I haven't had the chance to hook my iMac G3 up to the internet in some time, let alone do the upgrade, so I'm not sure what I can expect.

As said above, Adobe doesn't support/care about flash on PPC Linux. You can get semi-working flash, as in ads will work, but YouTube will not.

[stmiller]

You can watch flash on ppc with the latest vlc. Use something like this:

http://1024k.de/bookmarklets/video-bookmarklets.html

to download the flash video from youtube. (saves the .flv file) And then open that .flv file in VLC. Enjoy your youtube.

Note: you should install gnash for this to work. Otherwise the youtube page will redirect you, claming you have no flash installed.