Upgrading--to what?

[jmelton]

I pretty much gave up using Linux on my iBook G4 for a while because I could never get wireless to work, and believe me, I tried every single thing people have recommended on these forums. I'm getting a MacBook in a couple of days, but I'll probably keep this machine as a backup.

At the moment I'm running 7.04 (Feisty), which I see is no longer in the repositories. So, it's time for an upgrade. But to what? Which of the subsequent versions has worked best on PPC machines, in people's experience? Of course, one specific issue I'm concerned with is wireless, since that has never worked for me up until now (except occasionally on unencrypted routers), so, which edition of Ubuntu provides the best PPC wireless functioning? Or, for that matter, should I consider a different distro than Ubuntu altogether? Although I'm not a newbie, I don't have a lot of time to hack around, so I'm looking for a relatively painless installation.

Also, I'm wondering whether I should do a fresh install, or a dist-upgrade. Which seems to produce the fewest problems?

[chrisamiller]

If you're planning on upgrading more than one version, it's usually not worth your time. Just do a clean install. I don't see much of a reason to go with anything but intrepid (8.10). It's been out for almost two months now, so most critical bugs have been squashed.

[Poyntz]

xubuntu is less resource intensive, if you're worried about the cpu giving more time to other process and less time to wireless resources. - this probably won't be much of an issue off a fresh install unless you really do have a tiny amount of memory.

[stream303]

Before you do anything, be sure to backup your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and /etc/yaboot.conf file for future reference to any upgrade.

Normally I'd say either upgrade or install fresh to Hardy 8.04, or perhaps Debian Lenny-Testing, but if you are looking for a fresh experience, OpenSuse 11.1 is coming out tomorrow!

I have been enjoying Debian and Ubuntu on ppc for years, but wanted to expand my horizons so opensuse 11.0 on my G5 ppc is working fine too.

I'm looking forward to 11.1, since that is running with the relaxed Eula licensing that kind of turned me off before.

I can't vouch for wireless since I don't run it, but just wanted to toss this out as a possible fresh start. The only thing is that you have to download a dvd or do a netinstall for ppc. No CD images are available for ppc with opensuse.

In the sig you'll see some other options aside from Debian / Ubuntu, although I still prefer either one at this point in time.

[mkvnmtr]

I am on an IBook G4 and I have decided not to upgrade for a while. I am sorry I have no idea if wireless works. For security reasons I use a wired connection. I have not even found wireless connections in the area that the mac con see. Good luck on your pick. There is not really a wrong pick. It only takes about an hour to install something else.