Powerbook G3 Wallstreet - which distro?

[1sikbITCH]

A coworker dug it out of her basement and gave it to me.

It's got everything except installation discs for OS9, which is pretty alien to me but also seems to be junked up with kids games and other stuff. So rather than reinstall OS9 I would rather just put a linux distro on it.

I am looking for something with a GUI that is at least somewhat similar to Windows so I can get around. I know there are a few older distros; I just cannot determine which recent releases are compatible with the G3 and which would be the most noob friendly.

I will only be using it for surfing the net and checking email while sitting around at home, so as long as a couple clicks will get me to Firefox and an email client I will be happy.

As always, thanks for any input

 

[jhu]

Is it considered a New World Mac or Old World Mac?

 

[1sikbITCH]

I don't know what it's considered. I never even heard of one until today. However, it was discontinued in 1998 so I am guessing it is "old world". Here it is:

http://lowendmac.com/pb2/wallstreet-powerbook-g3-i.html

I found a few sites and posts from the early 90's talking about Xubuntu 6.10 (Edgy), one talking about a Gentoo distro, and also one suggesting Yellow Hat, but since my only experience with linux is a trial run of Ubuntu 8.4 as a media server, I wanted to see what experienced users would suggest before getting started.

 

[1sikbITCH]

Ok I did some reading and it's definitely Old World. It looks like I am going to have to use an older distro as pretty much everyone has stopped supporting them. that's ok for me though, as long as I can get a wireless card or adapter that will support WPA2 to work. The more I read the less confident I am about that.

 

[jhu]

For old world macs, booting is the trickiest part. The easiest way, as I recall, is to make a small (~20 MB) partition and put Mac OS 7.5.3 on there (get it here). Next install BootX on that same partition. Copy the kernels you want booted on that same ~20 MB partition. And off you go.

 

[jhu]

Or maybe it was miboot. Come to think of it, I don't think I ever installed full blown Mac OS 7.5.3, but rather a small boot environment capable of running BootX.

 

[Hooray_Yogurt]

Any PPC build will work. Depending on how much ram you have, you'll want to stick to the lite window mangers (fluxbox, xfce, etc...). Xubuntu wouldn't be a bad choice.

 

[PCTC2]

There's PPC builds of Ubuntu and Debian. I would recommend installing Ubuntu. Removing the ubuntu-desktop package and installing either lubuntu-desktop or xubuntu-desktop. I prefer LXDE (lubuntu)

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/OldWorldMacs

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1454430

 

[Crusty]

Once upon a time I went through a stage 2(i think) Gentoo install onto a G3 PPC machine.... I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking at the time.