Where to download Ubuntu for PowerPC and other frequently asked questions

UPDATE: using Kubuntu 12.04.1 LTS.

Community supported until April 2015. So far so good.

Messing with my PowerBook, in 2 days, i managed how to get sound and Airport Extreme to work. Later i got the PMU (power management) working.

I self-compiled and tested Linux 3.6.0-rc4 kernel (not-ubuntu) and the PMU stopped working. After that i run apt-get upgrade and got an update to the 3.2 kernel, which was somewhat better and stable.

I'm thinking to write a guide...

Bumping to prevent auto-close of the thread.
Much relevant information is collected here.

Hi folks,

Lubuntu is still committed to ppc, as are the people who make things like the kernel happen:


As of when the next rebuild happens [1] the kernel for ppc should now boot okay. This has been tested with servers (G3 & G5) only and how it behaves with the multitude of graphics cards apple shipped with their machines is an unknown. Below is the chat I had:

(22:55:56) phillw: xxxxx: do you know if linux-ppc [powerpc] (saucy-proposed) [3.11.0-0.1] is the kernel that will get ppc desktops back working?
(22:56:11) xxxxx: phillw: Should do, yes.
(22:56:27) xxxxx: phillw: I just smoketested it on my G3 and G5, and both work.
(22:56:57) phillw: great, so the cron build tomorrow should put the ppc-lubuntu testers back in the chase?
(22:57:45) xxxxx: phillw: Depending on how quickly I get it migrated, but probably yes.
(22:58:38) phillw: xxxxx: scheduled to start at 16:29 (UTC) is that enough time for you?
(22:59:22) phillw: or would you prefer an extra 24 hours?
(23:00:43) xxxxx: Oh, indeed, it's almost a day until the next build. Yeah, that one should be fine.
(23:01:31) phillw: xxxxx: okies, if you are sure, I will email the testers, obviously they are chomping on the bit to get back to work!
(23:02:43) xxxxx: I make no guarantees that various DRM/KMS drivers are working (I don't run consoles on any of my PPC machines, they're all servers), but these kernels at least boot on all my kit, which is a step up from the previous version. :P
(23:03:05) phillw: there's one sure fire way to check :P
(23:03:27) xxxxx: 3.11 includes a pretty massive changeset to the radeon driver, so that could cut both ways. Maybe it's drastically improved, or maybe it has a ton of new bugs that break it on !x86... We'll see.
(23:04:55) phillw: as always, we rely on the testers to let us know :) That the promise to have a kernel that at least stood a chance of working has been kept, they will be happy and do not 'rant' over bugs.
(23:05:42) xxxxx: Well, I can nearly guarantee that it should boot on pretty much any hardware we've supported before. Between yyy and I, we have a pretty wide array of stuff to boot and stress test on.
(23:05:49) xxxxx: It's just that he and I both only run headless servers.
(23:05:51) xxxxx: So, we'll see. :)
(23:07:07) phillw: the graphics cards that apple used were and are always an issue... they have gotten used to workarounds, only by letting it into the wild can these issues with the graphics cards be started to be investigated :)
(23:07:38) phillw: xxxxx: many thanks to you and yyy for this work, I do know ppc for desktops is a low priority :)
(23:07:42) xxxxx: It's not the cards, per se, it's that the radeon driver has become very x86-centric, and very few people care about fixing the PPC bugs with it.
(23:08:09) xxxxx: nouveau seems to suffer fewer of those issues (for whatever reason), so the nvidia cards that Apple shipped with later G5s seem to be in better shape.
(23:09:35) phillw: we're still working with G3's and g4's... as long as the darn thing will boot, the graphics cards could be seen as nearly a seperate branch of their own.
(23:10:19) xxxxx: Yeah, I haven't tried running X on the ATi Rage128 in my G3 for, like, a decade.
(23:10:38) xxxxx: I assume it probably sort of works. But I have no idea, and don't care, as it's a headless router/firewall in my house. :P
(23:11:14) xxxxx: Though, the offb driver would work for boring old 2D X. You'd just get zero acceleration.

So, allow the daily to build and start testing!!! [2]


Regards,


Phill.
1. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/Test..._they_build.3F

2. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/Testing

Nice to see there may be hope for an old Mac I have, it's a G4 but with an aftermarket graphics card. May have to revisit that if I get this current project stable.

I was successful in installing Lubuntu 13.10 ppc to my Powerbook G4 12" 667mhz, 256mb ram, nvidia geforce fx go 5200. I encountered no problems loading the desktop live cd and running the installation.
However, there are several problems encountered after the installation.
The wifi does not work and I had to install b43 firmware and restart.
I am unable to watch youtube videos in firefox so I had to download and use minitube instead.
No sounds are coming out of the laptop. Still looking for solutions.
Function keys are not working so I cannot adjust brightness, volume, etc. Still looking for solutions, especially to the brightness issue.
Battery applet would not load to the panel, although I can see my battery charge status in system profiler and benchmark. Just a minor issue.

Hello,

I've experienced the same sound issue as you've mentioned on my 12" Powerbook G4 and have tried every single stop from the FAQ (mainly deleting the snd-aoa entries from the blacklist), but nothing works out for me. Have tried Debian 7 in parallel and here sound works great. Do you have any positive news on your list of open points?

There seems to be a crash in the snd_powermac module during start-up:

[ 31.655474] ------------[ cut here ]------------
[ 31.655485] WARNING: at f2f22e30 [verbose debug info unavailable]
[ 31.655489] Modules linked in: cfg80211(F) uio_pdrv_genirq(F) snd_powermac(F) uio(F) snd_pcm(F) snd_page_alloc(F) snd_seq_midi(F) snd_seq_midi_event(F) snd_rawmidi(F) snd_seq(F) snd_seq_device(F) snd_timer(F) snd(F) soundcore(F) apm_emu(F) apm_emulation(F) hid_generic(F) usbhid(F) hid(F) nouveau(F) firewire_ohci(F) sungem(F) sungem_phy(F) firewire_core(F) crc_itu_t(F) ttm(F) drm_kms_helper(F) drm(F) ssb(F) uninorth_agp(F)
[ 31.655558] CPU: 0 PID: 23 Comm: kworker/0:1 Tainted: GF 3.11.0-4-powerpc-smp #6-Ubuntu
[ 31.655588] Workqueue: events device_change_handler [snd_powermac]
[ 31.655593] task: ef935ee0 ti: ef994000 task.ti: ef994000
[ 31.655597] NIP: f2f22e30 LR: c005c2c4 CTR: f2f22df0
[ 31.655602] REGS: ef995dc0 TRAP: 0700 Tainted: GF (3.11.0-4-powerpc-smp)
[ 31.655605] MSR: 00029032 <EE,ME,IR,DR,RI> CR: 42402028 XER: 00000000
[ 31.655620]
[ 31.655620] GPR00: c005c2c4 ef995e70 ef935ee0 f2f28780 00000000 ef994000 0000430d 00c69000
[ 31.655620] GPR08: f2f28784 00000001 00000001 00001032 42402022 00000000 c0064094 ef8c5df8
[ 31.655620] GPR16: 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 c15ff380
[ 31.655620] GPR24: c09f0000 00000001 00000000 c1602500 c15ff180 00000000 c5b0b400 00000000
[ 31.655675] NIP [f2f22e30] device_change_handler+0x40/0x290 [snd_powermac]
[ 31.655691] LR [c005c2c4] process_one_work+0x158/0x3cc
[ 31.655695] Call Trace:
[ 31.655704] [ef995e70] [00000001] 0x1 (unreliable)
[ 31.655712] [ef995e90] [c005c2c4] process_one_work+0x158/0x3cc
[ 31.655719] [ef995ec0] [c005cc44] worker_thread+0x134/0x3fc
[ 31.655729] [ef995ef0] [c0064148] kthread+0xb4/0xb8
[ 31.655736] [ef995f40] [c0017120] ret_from_kernel_thread+0x5c/0x64
[ 31.655740] Instruction dump:
[ 31.655746] 7c0802a6 7d800026 90010024 bf810010 9181000c 3d20f2f3 83c98790 2f9e0000
[ 31.655760] 419e0244 83fe0178 7fe90034 5529d97e <0f090000> 2f890000 409e022c 813f003c
[ 31.655775] ---[ end trace 34d3ae03e2af2a2e ]---

Great info here.

Are PPC versions still supported?

At least they are supported in 16.04.

You can download the Lubuntu ISO here (supported through april 2019) and Ubuntu (april 2021).

Another option is Debian.