I'm the author of these installation images. I haven't watched the video yet, but the GRUB fix should no longer be necessary. Make sure to use the latest images as of today (2022-03-28). Users have reported that installation on a PowerMac G5 worked without any need for a workaround. Edit: The "Illegal Instruction" in OBS Studio means that the application is using instructions the G5 doesn't understand. Most likely the code tries to use some POWER7 or POWER8 instructions. This should be fixable, I will have a look.
@@ActionRetro Thanks for the kind words. If you have questions, feel free to post them to the debian-powerpc mailing list. To give a little background on the GRUB issue: GRUB uses a completely different mechanism for booting Linux as compared to a standard PC. On a PowerMac, setting up GRUB involves creating a separate HFS partition, installing the GRUB first-stage bootloader files and "blessing" them with a special utility. In order to create an HFS filesystem, I'm using Apple's own hfsprogs sources from MacOS X which have been ported to Linux. I also restored Legacy HFS support in these tools because Apple removed them in a later version. Then I needed to get the partition layout right and figure out how to properly bless the files. And eventually, everything had to be integrated into debian-installer which is quite a tedious process due to all the small bits and pieces that need to fit together. So, that's why it took quite some time to get the GRUB installation process right. Previously, Debian used Yaboot on PowerMac but that's no longer supported by its developer. And most people are more familiar with GRUB anyway which is why I switched Debian on PowerMac over to GRUB. Oh, as for the graphics issues: Try installing the package "firmware-amd-graphics" from the non-free section (you may have to enable "contrib" and "non-free" in your /etc/apt/sources.list first). Most radeon cards need the firmware package installed to be able to run with full performance. I will address the firmware issue in future releases, meaning that the firmware will be installed automatically then. PS: Since this is a retro channel, we're also maintaining Debian for other old architectures such as Alpha, PA-RISC or even Motorola 68000. You can actually install a current release of Debian unstable on an old 68k Mac if you're brave enough ;).
@@genkiadrian Are you also the maintainer of Debian PowerPC 32-bit? The same fix should work on that afaik. If not, who is (if anyone?) Also, I can't find the image on the debian ports server. Only one from 2018.
@@DistrosProjects you need the one on Debian's cdimage server under /cdimage/ports/current (sorry I cannot paste link, my comments keep getting eaten when I try)
Man, I love the way you work on machines. This is going to come off sarcastic but I swear I mean it sincerely: it totally makes me nostalgic for high school 20 years ago when I was hot swapping IDE drives because CD-R drives were rare so I'd pay a friend 20 bucks to borrow his for the weekend. It zapped my PC with a giant spark, the thing wouldn't turn on anymore and then like a week later started working again like nothing happened. The dangling drives and cardboard shims just bring back memories.
My guess would be that the Radeon 9200 is on a PCI bus, for starters. AGP will have a massive bandwidth increase in comparison. Secondly, the Radeon 9200 lacks a lot of the hardware the window manager is going to want to use for compositing desktop elements. Try the desktops again, but with a better card like the Radeon X800 or GeForce 7800GS - they'll take a lot of the heavyweight compositing load off the CPU for a more resource efficient system, for everything from the window manager to hardware acceleration in the browser.
Not really - I already commented what the actual problem is. Mesa simply dropped support for anything older than the R300 chips a few months ago (it wasn't working entirely properly according to my tests anyways), so he's running on pure software acceleration. The 9200 has an R200 based chip. R300 based GPUs were introduced in mid-2002, they started with the Radeon 9700. Linux still includes the kernel driver for the R100 and R200 based graphics cards, however, meaning you do get an actual picture and modesetting capabilities - but that's not really enough for a modern DE.
A few years ago I remember installing Debian 6 on a G3. The experience was slow there but still kind of just worked anyways, which really is always the charm of Linux...
Hi Sean, you're not going to get any acceleration out of a 9200. Mesa has retired support for the R100 and R200 series a while ago. You need at least an R300 series GPU which got introduced in mid-2002. The kernel drivers are still in, however, so you still get modesetting support (and an actual picture).
Using olden memes in the title? You're showing you age! But then again, so am I. Great video! I love seeing Linux breathe life into this beautiful machines.
It's funny now how Gnome 2 which is what MATE is a fork of is considered lightweight, because back when Gnome 2 was out it was a fairly heavy full featured DE, although I think it was the peak of Linux Desktop Environments, after Gnome2 and KDE 3.5, everything just got bloated and they started caring more about "oooh shiny" versus, hey this works great and is very functional and still looks decent enough.
Ha! 12 years ago, I was using Enlightenment E16 because compared to Gnome2 and KDE3.5 and 4, it was light weight, but 20-25 years ago, E16 was super heavy weight. Oh how perceptions change.
@@jefffrasca4054 I’m reminded of how C was considered a high level programming language when it was new. Now it’s the lowest level non-assembly language!
I’m very excited to work on two powermac G5s I got for free essentially because they unfortunately got bent up in shipping. The internals seem good in both but the cases are quite damaged which needed a little fixing. One is a 2.5 quad and the other is a 2.0. They were bought untested but one shows signs of life at least, so now I’m waiting for the power cord for the quad. I got them just because I think they are awesome machines, and I really want a piece of the community that keeps PPC alive.
@@darthrevan2063 I pulled the trigger when I saw 2 untested ones selling on eBay for 35/per. The case was originally fine, but the shipping did a massive number on them. And yeah, these things are ancient, so problems are quite common unfortunately. I guess we will see how this goes… And if you really want one, you should probably get an air cooled version. They are very reliable in comparison. I just happened to get lucky I guess.
I really appreciate how thorough you are in making sure your experience is documented on platforms other than UA-cam, like when you post the information in forum threads. Way to give back to the community!
I daily Plasma and that looks like something in the rendering pipeline is broken. Thumbnails are generated using some library, and they had the same discoloration. Dolphin doesn't use hardware acceleration, explaining why it was unaffected. *Disabling the compositor in KDE's Display settings may fix this and improve performance.*
I'm looking at the list of unofficial ports, and I'm amazed. Not just PowerPC 32 and 64 bit, but DEC Alpha, PA-RISC (HP 9000 series), Itanium, SPARC 64-bit, and even 68k?!?! 🤯 Wow. Debian on DEC Alpha and HP 9000 systems?! Sun/Oracle workstations too? I'm also going to guess that the 68k port was the result of work by some members of the Amiga enthusiast community, but could also be the work of the X68000 and/or vintage Mac communities. Wow. (18:46) Arctic Fox is actually a fork of Pale Moon 27, in turn whose version 25 was a fork of Firefox ESR 24. I know this as I've seen another video talking about Arctic Fox for Mac, and Pale Moon is my preferred Web browser, though I can tell when a website was only designed with Google Chrome in mind when it doesn't play nice in Pale Moon, but plays nice in Firefox, which in turn is my secondary Web browser. Pale Moon 29 dropped support for legacy Firefox extensions that were never updated for it, if I recall correctly.
One easy way to show if 3d acceleration is available is to run "glxinfo | less" and scroll to the Renderer String. if it shows "llvmpipe" it's using the cpu to software render 3d, if the string is intel, nvidia or radeon something, it's using the GPU.
@@der0keks while that also works, searching for the renderer String by Hand Shows you Lots of other information, that you'd need to manually grep for If you wanted that information.
another mac soul has been purified :-) I use debian on 2 PC's mainly used for NAS with OpenMediaVault. One is ARM and the other X86. When you add in docker through omv the possibilities really expand.
amazed at how effortlessly you typed off all those complex commands bro!...that alone would freeze many of us in our tracks right there..congrats !! I still think snow leapord Looks so much nicer than any linux distro but I get that it allows you a more up to date interface.
I did a similar thing recently on my G5 Xserve… ended up giving up on the installer and using raspbian on a raspberry pi to partition up an SSD and then debootstrap to install a base system onto it, then i had to chroot into it on the pi with qemu and install a kernel, yaboot, and a few other things - but sure enough it did eventually boot when I put the SSD back into the Xserve!!
Random person walking by: “so ur into pain then, right? Ur into BDSM” Me: “No I’m into something worse than pain, I’m into Linux BSD on vintage PPC computers for literally no reason other than fulfilling a prophecy that most many not understand but those that do treasure with their lives”
this stuff is always great,bringing older hardware to tip top shape is one of the best uses for linux (especially if you don't feel any urgency to switch from windows or mac on your main machine).
Back at my mom's house I have our old iMac G5. I had a Ubuntu on it years ago, it must have been 10.04. next time I'm home I'm going to bring that sucker home and give this a try!
(15:44) Wow, that reminds me of the Debian 8 installation I have on my old ThinkPad R51, where I chose almost every desktop environment the former officially supported, with the exceptions being GNOME and KDE Plasma, then I also installed Trinity too, and a bunch of window managers too. The environments I spent the most time in on that installation were MATE (dressed up to look like Red Hat Linux 9 since Debian 8 shipped a GTK2-based version), followed by FVWM (using mostly default Debian 8 config), and Trinity (from official Trinity repositories).
TIL: KDE Connect exists. Looks fun to play with! But anyways, thanks as always for the videos! I had lots of fun with PPC Macs back in the day, and seeing you take them to the limit gives me a way to vicariously live my retro Mac dream.
I'm not a Mac type of person. Though, I am a Linux type! It's all for the thrill of doing something you're not "supposed" to do. Whether it's playing a game through a compatibility-layer like Wine or Proton, or simply breathing new life into hardware that the OEM would rather you forget about.
OBS Studio for Linux requires at a minimum a graphics card that is OpenGL 3.3 capable. I'm not sure if any PPC/OpenFirmware-equipped graphics card supported it.
Good info. Looks like it's the GF 8000 series and derivative Quadro FXes (not the FX 4500, sadly, since it's GF 7800-based) and Radeon HD family are the minimums for OpenGL 3.3 support, basically. And there were no PPC cards among them, either Apple OE or flashed. If you have some handy, maybe you could attempt to use a PC video card to see if it loads the desktop (once Debian boots; without a PPC/OpenFirmware video BIOS you won't get any image until the drivers load so you'd better make sure your install works/have a second supported video card before attempting).
@@alfiegordon9013 probably unlikely due to POWER9 being both little endian and 64-bit. PowerPC 32-bit hasn't been a tested let alone being looked at by the driver developers for a really long time.
I really need me a penguin like that. Especially a stuffed Adélie penguin. Probably the reason some programs throw illegal instructions or just run sluggishly is they need a POWER8 or e5500 (Amiga)/e6500 (PowerPC Notebook) processor.
Nice trip down memory lane. I was using one of these with Debian from 2011 till 2013 before I toss it. (It was only worth about $20 then). Never ran Mac Os on it. It sure wasn't a sun sparc system but it was usable.
Perfect timing, (video is from only about 1 month ago!) just had one of these dumped in my lap.. Spent the entire evening trying to get anythnigg useful to boot on it. Had hopes for Gentoo but any install media gives me the initial boot options but does a kernel panic and "CPU hard lock" whenever I try to run an installer or livecd. This is rather cool!
Question: are you sure you're not missing GPU drivers? Because there was a related error that popped up when you ran the script and KDE and GNOME show (in fact, GNOME disables animations when running with CPU software graphics, and indeed you have the animations off)
man the cheesegrater powermac is such a beautiful machine - much prefer the look it to the new version. this case with the internals of an arm mac pro would be heaven
My favorite lightweight environment is wmaker. It's surprisingly fast but difficult to configure. It is heavily inspired by NeXT so it's about as close to Mac as one can get on Linux/BSD
Really been enjoying the channel. Our families first computer was an Apple LCii, I still have the hardware. I do wish you'd play Action Quake 2 or other Quake variants on these ancient beauties as a benchmark.
I am a Linux newbie but I am going to install Linux on an identical model mac as shown in the demo - with the DVD intact and with WiFi and Bluetooth. I'll want to install a different SSD so I can always boot into Leopard, which is currently installed. Thank you for this helpful video. I really like your upbeat enthusiasm. It makes me want to enjoy my computing experience more and I love it.
Great! Just installed Sid on my iSight iMac G5 (17) - and it is working like a charm. Did go with XFCE though to have best compromise between lightweight and usability ... regarding the GRUB install error, it is interesting that the stock installer refers to /sda3 ... maybe this is where the problem comes from. And it is really a shame to see where the Internet did take us ... a 1.9 GHz (that is Billion Hz) CPU locked at 100% to render a webpage ...
Wow that is awesome! What did you do when it asked for firmware? I have been fighting with Debian 11 on an iMac G5 for quite some time now. I can't get it to read the DVD or CD-R It worked for Adelie, but not Debian. I would still love to see NetBSD 9 run on a 68040 with X11. I had NetBSD 6 on Quadra 800, but never got X up.
@@ActionRetro Curiously Debian 12 fails at installing GRUB with the same error message on my Imac G4 1,25 Mhz. Fails at installing a GUI too so maybe it's an other issue. But will definitely try the script to see if it works on Debian 12 too.
chroot is used to switch into the new environment (your new install on the ssd) from the current one (booting from the CD). Very useful for things like installing the bootloader. You tried to mount /sys after doing the chroot. You should mount /sys as well as /dev, /proc, and /run before doing the chroot. It didn't matter much this time because all you chrooted for was to install grub. You also probably want to do mount --rbind on those directories so that they are remounted from the existing mounts to the corresponding chroot locations. Also, after chroot, do ". /etc/profile" to use the new environment variables. Nice video.
You should be able to override the default kernel governor pretty easily. Try sudo apt get cpu-freq first as it comes with a nice GUI but if not (not 100% sure if its available on debian though it really should be) you can add a flag to the kernel startup by editing /etc/default/grub then recreating a fresh grub.cfg
It would be cool to compare minecraft on this g5 mac with mac os vs debian 11. It would be interesting if newer drivers, and a more recent kernel, and perhaps a lightweight system would gain a few fps'.
The trick there is to custom compile a kernel. Strip out everything you don't need and get a leaner system. It would also be fun to do that with a custom tuned BSD kernel.
The Debian installer has been broken on PPC forever. I remember having exactly the same problem in the early 2000s. I don't know what's crazier, that the official installer still doesn't work, or that you managed to get it going! Why'd you yank the 7800GS out? Is it not supported?
I had a dual 2.5GHz Power Mac G5. Three days after the 3 year warranty expired, it developed a coolant leak which destroyed both CPUs and heavily corroded the entire case. Was a terrible shame - it was such a beautiful machine. I replaced it with an Intel Mac Mini dual 2GHz, which was about twice as fast as the G5, and one fifth the price 😂. And it still works 16 years later.
Very funny to see this now. A couple of weeks ago I did the same thing with a G5 (7,2) I picked up with a 23” ADC monitor on a Nvidia 5200 card. No help from any third party script, I slogged my way through a manual grub install. You have got the key ingredient though, get a chroot shell while the installer is running so you can install and configure grub on the new filesystem. It was not trivial figuring this out manually but I will give the script a try on a different drive. Also I did not let the installer finish but rebooted after the grub install. That was a mistake as I then had to go back and manually do all the clean up that d-i does. I also did a manual install of Void PPC on another drive which was straight forward, quick and successful on the first try. Too bad they have decided to drop support for big endian ppc. Very nice and usable. I never booted the G5 from a optical drive but from usb with open firmware. You can also boot your system from open firmware. I also checked out Fienix. Does anyone know if that is still being developed? That was by far the easiest install for a G5.
Nice! We have 3 of these old PowerMacs at work just collecting dust in the storage room. I should get them out and try this. I was thinking about installing a different OS on each, maybe Debian - FreeBSD - OpenBSD? Sounds like a cool project!
I'd love to see a live CD / net install of Debian 8 on a G4 - it's not too old, and you should still be able to work with it. Bonus is, it's more likely to support older hardware.
Not a Yak, the GNU logo is an actual Gnu (named after the sound they make - which is another name for the Wilderbeast), hence its use as the GNU logo ...
I had similar entertainment from putting Debian 12 with KDE Plasma on my core 2 duo toughbook. Thankfully I didn't need to compile anything special, but it was the 32 bit version, so I had similar issues launching some stuff, but youtube worked for me, and even played a video, albeit at 1 frame every 1 to 2 seconds. It played a GOG version of pod mmx on it quite well too.
Great guide! I was just struggling to install FreeBSD on my dual G5 when I came across your video. Now I've got an almost finished Debian installation. Btw, the installer is bootable from USB using the command boot ud:,\\:tbxi
At 24:36 it looks like you have a repeated clip talking about KDE Plasma loading. This should be able to be fixed easily with UA-cam's built-in editing tools :) Nice video by the way! Keep up the good work!
Nice work. Good to see the underappreciated G5s getting some love. Is there a reason you're using a PCI Radeon 9200? The worst video card the G5 2.0DP came with as stock is the 5200FX Ultra which, while not great, is at least on AGP 8X. I don't imagine a stock G5 ADC Radeon 9600 (RV350) would be too expensive since nobody wants them (they'd prefer a non-ADC card like the GF 7800 usually, even a 66/6800) and it would be worlds better than the PCI 9200.
as an Apple hater (sorry i know) I still love the look of these old G5s they still to this day look more modern than 99% of anything on the market, and I would love to do one of the various mods you can do to make one ATX compatible and use it as my main desktop's case I am just too lazy and stupid to do it myself
I am now inspired to do something with a gigabit G4! Thank You!
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It works!! Thanks man! I’m so excited about this project, it works for me too. Mac g5 dual 2.3 ghz 60 gb SSD With Nvidia Quadro fx 4500 512 mb and 8 gb Ram Unfortunately, it seems to be a lot for this settings, Because graphics. They don’t go on so fine. Any way, it works and I’m so glad with you Thanks so much
I wonder if you could put in a newer graphics card and see how things perform. I know that's not really in line with what you usually do with these older machines but I bet you could get a lot of daily use out of that machine with the upgraded graphics.
It's a GNU. That's why it's called GNU. The Gnu, also know as the Wildebeest is an antelope like creature. Being older I had the advantage of growing up with Gary Gnu and the Great Space Coaster. Where No Gnews is good Gnews. (People in their late 40's to early 50's as of when I'm writing this will may understand the reference.)
Would be interesting to see youtube working on that machine as from what I recall it's just barely fast enough to play 720p h264 video on OSX so youtube would be somewhat usable.
After all your experience with Linux which distro do you think it the best currently? I'm trying to figure out how I want to setup my G5. I have been considering a multi-boot setup but I feel more then one linux wouldnt make sense. I will probably go with KDE seeing as its what I use on my main rig and doesnt seem as bloated as GNOME funny how before GNOME 3 my opinion on the matter was reversed.
Nice work... I've had similar problems on my old mac pro 1.1. Evemtually I got antix linus funning on it and for a few years it worked great, until I believe the power supply went bad on it... So I saved to from the recycling center for a which.... now it time for someone else to play..
I tried the 32bit version on an MDD and got to choosing the install method. But going with default install, it really quickly shows an error like, „could not find pha“ and then black screens, any idea?
Oh mannnn seeing GNOME 40 drag @$$ like that was painful to watch! haha I actually run GNOME 41, but on MUCH NEWER and x86-64 hardware... I have an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X with 32 GB of RAM haha, so ofc it runs well, but that was so sad seeing it struggle like that. KDE being janky too was interesting/sad. Still, though... This was interesting to see a 20 year old G5 running a modern spin of Linux...Next challenge/shenanigan? Compile Gentoo Linux from scratch on that very G5! hahah! Keep it up!
Debian 11 is bullseye and is stable, debian sid is the rolling release with no version number which is currently tracking debian 12 bookwoorm. I haven't gotten to the point where you boot yet to see what was actually installed but the statement "debian 11 sid" is slightly confusing as it's a contradiction.
I hoped so much that apple going to arm will make powerpc macs more relevant, but no, this is an awesome example what comunity can do. love those macs, sadly not viable for me dur to size and power consumption, so I sold mine few years ago. Nice vid!! more of that :))
I'm the author of these installation images. I haven't watched the video yet, but the GRUB fix should no longer be necessary.
Make sure to use the latest images as of today (2022-03-28). Users have reported that installation on a PowerMac G5 worked without any need for a workaround.
Edit: The "Illegal Instruction" in OBS Studio means that the application is using instructions the G5 doesn't understand. Most likely the code tries to use some POWER7 or POWER8 instructions. This should be fixable, I will have a look.
Wow, thanks for stopping by! Amazing! I'm definitely going to give it a fresh try.
@@ActionRetro Thanks for the kind words. If you have questions, feel free to post them to the debian-powerpc mailing list.
To give a little background on the GRUB issue: GRUB uses a completely different mechanism for booting Linux as compared to a standard PC. On a PowerMac, setting up GRUB involves creating a separate HFS partition, installing the GRUB first-stage bootloader files and "blessing" them with a special utility.
In order to create an HFS filesystem, I'm using Apple's own hfsprogs sources from MacOS X which have been ported to Linux. I also restored Legacy HFS support in these tools because Apple removed them in a later version. Then I needed to get the partition layout right and figure out how to properly bless the files. And eventually, everything had to be integrated into debian-installer which is quite a tedious process due to all the small bits and pieces that need to fit together.
So, that's why it took quite some time to get the GRUB installation process right. Previously, Debian used Yaboot on PowerMac but that's no longer supported by its developer. And most people are more familiar with GRUB anyway which is why I switched Debian on PowerMac over to GRUB.
Oh, as for the graphics issues: Try installing the package "firmware-amd-graphics" from the non-free section (you may have to enable "contrib" and "non-free" in your /etc/apt/sources.list first). Most radeon cards need the firmware package installed to be able to run with full performance.
I will address the firmware issue in future releases, meaning that the firmware will be installed automatically then.
PS: Since this is a retro channel, we're also maintaining Debian for other old architectures such as Alpha, PA-RISC or even Motorola 68000. You can actually install a current release of Debian unstable on an old 68k Mac if you're brave enough ;).
@@genkiadrian Are you also the maintainer of Debian PowerPC 32-bit? The same fix should work on that afaik. If not, who is (if anyone?)
Also, I can't find the image on the debian ports server. Only one from 2018.
@@DistrosProjects you need the one on Debian's cdimage server under /cdimage/ports/current (sorry I cannot paste link, my comments keep getting eaten when I try)
Hi all, i'm using debian-11.0.0-ppc64-NETINST-1.iso, installation completes OK, with no errors, NO boot, cant apply patch, any help welcomed
Man, I love the way you work on machines. This is going to come off sarcastic but I swear I mean it sincerely: it totally makes me nostalgic for high school 20 years ago when I was hot swapping IDE drives because CD-R drives were rare so I'd pay a friend 20 bucks to borrow his for the weekend. It zapped my PC with a giant spark, the thing wouldn't turn on anymore and then like a week later started working again like nothing happened. The dangling drives and cardboard shims just bring back memories.
Damn, I want to know if your friend is a billionaire today if he was charging you $20 for you to borrow his drive 20 years ago :D
Those were the days
Your channel has improved IMMENSELY since you got your new setup. You are a talented presenter! Kudos!
this channel has now established itself as THE preeminent authority for Linux and BSD on PowerPC Mac hardware; what a proud accomplishment, hey
My guess would be that the Radeon 9200 is on a PCI bus, for starters. AGP will have a massive bandwidth increase in comparison. Secondly, the Radeon 9200 lacks a lot of the hardware the window manager is going to want to use for compositing desktop elements. Try the desktops again, but with a better card like the Radeon X800 or GeForce 7800GS - they'll take a lot of the heavyweight compositing load off the CPU for a more resource efficient system, for everything from the window manager to hardware acceleration in the browser.
Not really - I already commented what the actual problem is. Mesa simply dropped support for anything older than the R300 chips a few months ago (it wasn't working entirely properly according to my tests anyways), so he's running on pure software acceleration. The 9200 has an R200 based chip. R300 based GPUs were introduced in mid-2002, they started with the Radeon 9700. Linux still includes the kernel driver for the R100 and R200 based graphics cards, however, meaning you do get an actual picture and modesetting capabilities - but that's not really enough for a modern DE.
HP Fire GL X3 flashed w x800xt reduced rom is much cheaper option than an x800xt and you dont need to plug in external power =]
A few years ago I remember installing Debian 6 on a G3.
The experience was slow there but still kind of just worked anyways, which really is always the charm of Linux...
Hi Sean, you're not going to get any acceleration out of a 9200. Mesa has retired support for the R100 and R200 series a while ago. You need at least an R300 series GPU which got introduced in mid-2002. The kernel drivers are still in, however, so you still get modesetting support (and an actual picture).
The only alternative PPC OS that I can get those older ATI radeons working with accelerated graphics is MorphOS
Using olden memes in the title? You're showing you age! But then again, so am I. Great video! I love seeing Linux breathe life into this beautiful machines.
I respect our elder memes 😂
It's funny now how Gnome 2 which is what MATE is a fork of is considered lightweight, because back when Gnome 2 was out it was a fairly heavy full featured DE, although I think it was the peak of Linux Desktop Environments, after Gnome2 and KDE 3.5, everything just got bloated and they started caring more about "oooh shiny" versus, hey this works great and is very functional and still looks decent enough.
Ha! 12 years ago, I was using Enlightenment E16 because compared to Gnome2 and KDE3.5 and 4, it was light weight, but 20-25 years ago, E16 was super heavy weight. Oh how perceptions change.
That's why I use Ubuntu MATE on my gaming laptop because I missed GNOME 2
@@jefffrasca4054 I’m reminded of how C was considered a high level programming language when it was new. Now it’s the lowest level non-assembly language!
I still wonder how people get Gnome 40 running at 60 fps.
I’m very excited to work on two powermac G5s I got for free essentially because they unfortunately got bent up in shipping. The internals seem good in both but the cases are quite damaged which needed a little fixing. One is a 2.5 quad and the other is a 2.0. They were bought untested but one shows signs of life at least, so now I’m waiting for the power cord for the quad. I got them just because I think they are awesome machines, and I really want a piece of the community that keeps PPC alive.
Also, I have no idea if the dexcool in the quad has crystallized and clotted the system cooling yet but I guess I’ll find out soon.
Man I really want a quad version of the g5 but all the stories I’ve read/heard make me think twice.
please check for leakage before you power on the quad!
@@virtualtools_3021 I did. No leakage spotted. The LCS in these things are incredibly well sealed (especially at 15+ years old).
@@darthrevan2063 I pulled the trigger when I saw 2 untested ones selling on eBay for 35/per. The case was originally fine, but the shipping did a massive number on them. And yeah, these things are ancient, so problems are quite common unfortunately. I guess we will see how this goes…
And if you really want one, you should probably get an air cooled version. They are very reliable in comparison. I just happened to get lucky I guess.
You are knocking it out of the park with the videos lately. Fantastic presentation and very interesting topics
I really appreciate how thorough you are in making sure your experience is documented on platforms other than UA-cam, like when you post the information in forum threads. Way to give back to the community!
I daily Plasma and that looks like something in the rendering pipeline is broken. Thumbnails are generated using some library, and they had the same discoloration. Dolphin doesn't use hardware acceleration, explaining why it was unaffected. *Disabling the compositor in KDE's Display settings may fix this and improve performance.*
I'm looking at the list of unofficial ports, and I'm amazed.
Not just PowerPC 32 and 64 bit, but DEC Alpha, PA-RISC (HP 9000 series), Itanium, SPARC 64-bit, and even 68k?!?! 🤯
Wow. Debian on DEC Alpha and HP 9000 systems?! Sun/Oracle workstations too? I'm also going to guess that the 68k port was the result of work by some members of the Amiga enthusiast community, but could also be the work of the X68000 and/or vintage Mac communities. Wow.
(18:46) Arctic Fox is actually a fork of Pale Moon 27, in turn whose version 25 was a fork of Firefox ESR 24. I know this as I've seen another video talking about Arctic Fox for Mac, and Pale Moon is my preferred Web browser, though I can tell when a website was only designed with Google Chrome in mind when it doesn't play nice in Pale Moon, but plays nice in Firefox, which in turn is my secondary Web browser.
Pale Moon 29 dropped support for legacy Firefox extensions that were never updated for it, if I recall correctly.
One easy way to show if 3d acceleration is available is to run "glxinfo | less" and scroll to the Renderer String. if it shows "llvmpipe" it's using the cpu to software render 3d, if the string is intel, nvidia or radeon something, it's using the GPU.
glxinfo | grep 'renderer string'
@@der0keks while that also works, searching for the renderer String by Hand Shows you Lots of other information, that you'd need to manually grep for If you wanted that information.
another mac soul has been purified :-) I use debian on 2 PC's mainly used for NAS with OpenMediaVault. One is ARM and the other X86. When you add in docker through omv the possibilities really expand.
amazed at how effortlessly you typed off all those complex commands bro!...that alone would freeze many of us in our tracks right there..congrats !! I still think snow leapord Looks so much nicer than any linux distro but I get that it allows you a more up to date interface.
I did a similar thing recently on my G5 Xserve… ended up giving up on the installer and using raspbian on a raspberry pi to partition up an SSD and then debootstrap to install a base system onto it, then i had to chroot into it on the pi with qemu and install a kernel, yaboot, and a few other things - but sure enough it did eventually boot when I put the SSD back into the Xserve!!
Random person walking by: “so ur into pain then, right? Ur into BDSM”
Me: “No I’m into something worse than pain, I’m into Linux BSD on vintage PPC computers for literally no reason other than fulfilling a prophecy that most many not understand but those that do treasure with their lives”
Too true, some of these installs are way more masochistic than BDSM 😂
Excellent video! Despite abusing the machine with Gnome 40, you've earned an easy sub from me. Cheers! :)
this stuff is always great,bringing older hardware to tip top shape is one of the best uses for linux (especially if you don't feel any urgency to switch from windows or mac on your main machine).
"Does it run Debian Linux"? I thought the game was "can I install netbsd on it?"
Great video. Top work!
Debian is the NetBSD of the Linux world. Runs on anything and everything (well, ok, not *eeeeverything*, NetBSD still wins there...)
Back at my mom's house I have our old iMac G5. I had a Ubuntu on it years ago, it must have been 10.04. next time I'm home I'm going to bring that sucker home and give this a try!
(15:44) Wow, that reminds me of the Debian 8 installation I have on my old ThinkPad R51, where I chose almost every desktop environment the former officially supported, with the exceptions being GNOME and KDE Plasma, then I also installed Trinity too, and a bunch of window managers too. The environments I spent the most time in on that installation were MATE (dressed up to look like Red Hat Linux 9 since Debian 8 shipped a GTK2-based version), followed by FVWM (using mostly default Debian 8 config), and Trinity (from official Trinity repositories).
PReP and CHRP booting nightmare flashbacks with this video! It was always so hard to get Linux running on RS/6000 and Mac PowerPCs.
TIL: KDE Connect exists. Looks fun to play with! But anyways, thanks as always for the videos! I had lots of fun with PPC Macs back in the day, and seeing you take them to the limit gives me a way to vicariously live my retro Mac dream.
I'm not a Mac type of person. Though, I am a Linux type! It's all for the thrill of doing something you're not "supposed" to do. Whether it's playing a game through a compatibility-layer like Wine or Proton, or simply breathing new life into hardware that the OEM would rather you forget about.
OBS Studio for Linux requires at a minimum a graphics card that is OpenGL 3.3 capable. I'm not sure if any PPC/OpenFirmware-equipped graphics card supported it.
far as i know most modern card is x1900 gt, it has partial "Support" for opengl 3.0 and 3.1
would open AMD drivers work on a ppc this old?
i know they do on POWER9
Good info. Looks like it's the GF 8000 series and derivative Quadro FXes (not the FX 4500, sadly, since it's GF 7800-based) and Radeon HD family are the minimums for OpenGL 3.3 support, basically. And there were no PPC cards among them, either Apple OE or flashed. If you have some handy, maybe you could attempt to use a PC video card to see if it loads the desktop (once Debian boots; without a PPC/OpenFirmware video BIOS you won't get any image until the drivers load so you'd better make sure your install works/have a second supported video card before attempting).
@@alfiegordon9013 probably unlikely due to POWER9 being both little endian and 64-bit. PowerPC 32-bit hasn't been a tested let alone being looked at by the driver developers for a really long time.
@@simonvannarath ah yeah, didn’t think about endianness.
Thanks for doing a piece on the Power Mac G5 Linux upgrade, it was quite good and enjoyable to watch.
I really need me a penguin like that. Especially a stuffed Adélie penguin. Probably the reason some programs throw illegal instructions or just run sluggishly is they need a POWER8 or e5500 (Amiga)/e6500 (PowerPC Notebook) processor.
Nice trip down memory lane. I was using one of these with Debian from 2011 till 2013 before I toss it. (It was only worth about $20 then). Never ran Mac Os on it. It sure wasn't a sun sparc system but it was usable.
Perfect timing, (video is from only about 1 month ago!) just had one of these dumped in my lap..
Spent the entire evening trying to get anythnigg useful to boot on it.
Had hopes for Gentoo but any install media gives me the initial boot options but does a kernel panic and "CPU hard lock" whenever I try to run an installer or livecd.
This is rather cool!
1:10 WAIT YOU GOT A 20th ANNIVERSARY MAC??? That’s insane wtf I wanna see this upcoming video so bad
Question: are you sure you're not missing GPU drivers? Because there was a related error that popped up when you ran the script and KDE and GNOME show (in fact, GNOME disables animations when running with CPU software graphics, and indeed you have the animations off)
man the cheesegrater powermac is such a beautiful machine - much prefer the look it to the new version.
this case with the internals of an arm mac pro would be heaven
The most beautiful space heater in history 🤩
My favorite lightweight environment is wmaker. It's surprisingly fast but difficult to configure. It is heavily inspired by NeXT so it's about as close to Mac as one can get on Linux/BSD
YOU RULES!!!! I've got problems with OpenBSD and installed RAM!!! THANK YOU MAN
Really been enjoying the channel. Our families first computer was an Apple LCii, I still have the hardware. I do wish you'd play Action Quake 2 or other Quake variants on these ancient beauties as a benchmark.
I am a Linux newbie but I am going to install Linux on an identical model mac as shown in the demo - with the DVD intact and with WiFi and Bluetooth.
I'll want to install a different SSD so I can always boot into Leopard, which is currently installed.
Thank you for this helpful video. I really like your upbeat enthusiasm. It makes me want to enjoy my computing experience more and I love it.
Those powermac cases look really nice!
5:22 Isn't GNU's logo just a... gnu? That would make sense :D
Great video. I love Debian Linux. Been using it since 2008.
Great! Just installed Sid on my iSight iMac G5 (17) - and it is working like a charm. Did go with XFCE though to have best compromise between lightweight and usability ... regarding the GRUB install error, it is interesting that the stock installer refers to /sda3 ... maybe this is where the problem comes from.
And it is really a shame to see where the Internet did take us ... a 1.9 GHz (that is Billion Hz) CPU locked at 100% to render a webpage ...
My old Power Mac G5 still has Debian on it from when I was experimenting many years ago.
Wow that is awesome! What did you do when it asked for firmware? I have been fighting with Debian 11 on an iMac G5 for quite some time now. I can't get it to read the DVD or CD-R It worked for Adelie, but not Debian. I would still love to see NetBSD 9 run on a 68040 with X11. I had NetBSD 6 on Quadra 800, but never got X up.
So I was following this guide, but I decided to use the Debian 12 iso, and grub doesn’t fail. The whole thing just WORKS, no issues, no extra script.
yeah it's totally fixed! i'm actually working on a video about that right now lol
@@ActionRetro Curiously Debian 12 fails at installing GRUB with the same error message on my Imac G4 1,25 Mhz. Fails at installing a GUI too so maybe it's an other issue. But will definitely try the script to see if it works on Debian 12 too.
chroot is used to switch into the new environment (your new install on the ssd) from the current one (booting from the CD). Very useful for things like installing the bootloader. You tried to mount /sys after doing the chroot. You should mount /sys as well as /dev, /proc, and /run before doing the chroot. It didn't matter much this time because all you chrooted for was to install grub. You also probably want to do mount --rbind on those directories so that they are remounted from the existing mounts to the corresponding chroot locations. Also, after chroot, do ". /etc/profile" to use the new environment variables. Nice video.
This was super helpful - now I’d like to try this on my DP G5! Thank you!
You should be able to override the default kernel governor pretty easily. Try sudo apt get cpu-freq first as it comes with a nice GUI but if not (not 100% sure if its available on debian though it really should be) you can add a flag to the kernel startup by editing /etc/default/grub then recreating a fresh grub.cfg
It would be cool to compare minecraft on this g5 mac with mac os vs debian 11. It would be interesting if newer drivers, and a more recent kernel, and perhaps a lightweight system would gain a few fps'.
The trick there is to custom compile a kernel. Strip out everything you don't need and get a leaner system. It would also be fun to do that with a custom tuned BSD kernel.
The Debian installer has been broken on PPC forever. I remember having exactly the same problem in the early 2000s. I don't know what's crazier, that the official installer still doesn't work, or that you managed to get it going!
Why'd you yank the 7800GS out? Is it not supported?
Pleas show us more Power Mac shenanigans! Great video!
here for future seinfeld mac video
I had a dual 2.5GHz Power Mac G5. Three days after the 3 year warranty expired, it developed a coolant leak which destroyed both CPUs and heavily corroded the entire case. Was a terrible shame - it was such a beautiful machine. I replaced it with an Intel Mac Mini dual 2GHz, which was about twice as fast as the G5, and one fifth the price 😂. And it still works 16 years later.
Impressive how this G5 can be used as a daily driver with Debian!
@Action Retro the slow/glitched parts of plasma are QML/QtQuick. The fast/correct parts are QWidgets.
QML is generally terrible.
Very funny to see this now. A couple of weeks ago I did the same thing with a G5 (7,2) I picked up with a 23” ADC monitor on a Nvidia 5200 card. No help from any third party script, I slogged my way through a manual grub install. You have got the key ingredient though, get a chroot shell while the installer is running so you can install and configure grub on the new filesystem. It was not trivial figuring this out manually but I will give the script a try on a different drive. Also I did not let the installer finish but rebooted after the grub install. That was a mistake as I then had to go back and manually do all the clean up that d-i does.
I also did a manual install of Void PPC on another drive which was straight forward, quick and successful on the first try. Too bad they have decided to drop support for big endian ppc. Very nice and usable.
I never booted the G5 from a optical drive but from usb with open firmware. You can also boot your system from open firmware.
I also checked out Fienix. Does anyone know if that is still being developed? That was by far the easiest install for a G5.
Nice!
We have 3 of these old PowerMacs at work just collecting dust in the storage room. I should get them out and try this. I was thinking about installing a different OS on each, maybe Debian - FreeBSD - OpenBSD? Sounds like a cool project!
I got everything working great on my power mac g5. I wish it came with a web browser. Thanks for your videos sir.
the GNU logo is a gnu, aka a wildebeest
Oh how loved and totally do not miss my G5.
Years waiting for this!! YAY!!!
I'd love to see a live CD / net install of Debian 8 on a G4 - it's not too old, and you should still be able to work with it. Bonus is, it's more likely to support older hardware.
Better yet, debootstrap into debian-ports, which has impressively up-to-date packages. This is how we're doing debian on linux-wiiu right now.
Wow, I’ve got that same machine, if I knew how to make it dual boot Debian and OS X I’d definitely do it.
Not a Yak, the GNU logo is an actual Gnu (named after the sound they make - which is another name for the Wilderbeast), hence its use as the GNU logo ...
I had similar entertainment from putting Debian 12 with KDE Plasma on my core 2 duo toughbook. Thankfully I didn't need to compile anything special, but it was the 32 bit version, so I had similar issues launching some stuff, but youtube worked for me, and even played a video, albeit at 1 frame every 1 to 2 seconds. It played a GOG version of pod mmx on it quite well too.
Great guide! I was just struggling to install FreeBSD on my dual G5 when I came across your video. Now I've got an almost finished Debian installation. Btw, the installer is bootable from USB using the command boot ud:,\\:tbxi
At 24:36 it looks like you have a repeated clip talking about KDE Plasma loading. This should be able to be fixed easily with UA-cam's built-in editing tools :)
Nice video by the way! Keep up the good work!
Hahaha whoops
Great video. Your dedication shines through. Thank you for taking the time to share this knowledge with us ^_^
Nice work. Good to see the underappreciated G5s getting some love.
Is there a reason you're using a PCI Radeon 9200? The worst video card the G5 2.0DP came with as stock is the 5200FX Ultra which, while not great, is at least on AGP 8X. I don't imagine a stock G5 ADC Radeon 9600 (RV350) would be too expensive since nobody wants them (they'd prefer a non-ADC card like the GF 7800 usually, even a 66/6800) and it would be worlds better than the PCI 9200.
as an Apple hater (sorry i know) I still love the look of these old G5s
they still to this day look more modern than 99% of anything on the market, and I would love to do one of the various mods you can do to make one ATX compatible and use it as my main desktop's case
I am just too lazy and stupid to do it myself
Debian 10 actually works a lot better from my experience than Debian 11. 11 has trouble with old ATI graphics and 10 works perfectly
That giant machine has all the horsepower of a Raspberry Pi 4
The wonders of miniaturisation, eh?
@@kaitlyn__L yeah it’s honestly mind blowing
I had no idea is was pronounced mar-tay . As an Aussie I always assume it was Mate (although to pronounce that properly - maaaaaaaate)
I am now inspired to do something with a gigabit G4! Thank You!
It works!! Thanks man!
I’m so excited about this project, it works for me too.
Mac g5 dual 2.3 ghz 60 gb SSD With Nvidia Quadro fx 4500 512 mb and 8 gb Ram
Unfortunately, it seems to be a lot for this settings, Because graphics. They don’t go on so fine.
Any way, it works and I’m so glad with you
Thanks so much
I wonder if you could put in a newer graphics card and see how things perform. I know that's not really in line with what you usually do with these older machines but I bet you could get a lot of daily use out of that machine with the upgraded graphics.
Putting in a newer graphics card is actually precisely the kind of thing he does with these older machines :P
It's a GNU. That's why it's called GNU. The Gnu, also know as the Wildebeest is an antelope like creature. Being older I had the advantage of growing up with Gary Gnu and the Great Space Coaster. Where No Gnews is good Gnews. (People in their late 40's to early 50's as of when I'm writing this will may understand the reference.)
There won't be more beautiful machine than G5.
Please inform your viewers that Linux ppc does NOT support smp (dual cpu) power Mac.
Love the channel bc it has been educational and entertaining.🙏
"Debian runs on anything!" There used to be a joke something like twenty-five years ago about installing Linux on a dead badger.
Doom would fly on that dead badger for sure....
Great Video man!
Going to do this to mine , Thanks Man
Nibbles is probably based on the qbasic game from DOS :-)
Would be interesting to see youtube working on that machine as from what I recall it's just barely fast enough to play 720p h264 video on OSX so youtube would be somewhat usable.
After all your experience with Linux which distro do you think it the best currently? I'm trying to figure out how I want to setup my G5. I have been considering a multi-boot setup but I feel more then one linux wouldnt make sense. I will probably go with KDE seeing as its what I use on my main rig and doesnt seem as bloated as GNOME funny how before GNOME 3 my opinion on the matter was reversed.
If you keep your home folder on a separate partition from the root partition, you can reinstall different distros without affecting your user files :)
Nice work... I've had similar problems on my old mac pro 1.1. Evemtually I got antix linus funning on it and for a few years it worked great, until I believe the power supply went bad on it... So I saved to from the recycling center for a which.... now it time for someone else to play..
I tried the 32bit version on an MDD and got to choosing the install method. But going with default install, it really quickly shows an error like, „could not find pha“ and then black screens, any idea?
You seem very big on linux. Is it something you have used for a long time?
Oh mannnn seeing GNOME 40 drag @$$ like that was painful to watch! haha I actually run GNOME 41, but on MUCH NEWER and x86-64 hardware... I have an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X with 32 GB of RAM haha, so ofc it runs well, but that was so sad seeing it struggle like that. KDE being janky too was interesting/sad. Still, though... This was interesting to see a 20 year old G5 running a modern spin of Linux...Next challenge/shenanigan? Compile Gentoo Linux from scratch on that very G5! hahah! Keep it up!
Oh dear…Gentoo on it…ouch
@@sadmac356 YAAAS make that old man Mac suffer!
Debian 11 is bullseye and is stable, debian sid is the rolling release with no version number which is currently tracking debian 12 bookwoorm. I haven't gotten to the point where you boot yet to see what was actually installed but the statement "debian 11 sid" is slightly confusing as it's a contradiction.
MintPPC’s Debian variant installation script normally works, instead standard Debian Sid
Another Linux PPC variant built on-top of Debian SID is Fienix
Will never forget when you acidentally two of these 😅
😂 old timer right here!
Accidentally the whole Linux
Now all we need is a boot .ISO with all of that done automagically :-)
I hoped so much that apple going to arm will make powerpc macs more relevant, but no, this is an awesome example what comunity can do. love those macs, sadly not viable for me dur to size and power consumption, so I sold mine few years ago. Nice vid!! more of that :))
That surely is the only occasion I've heard some saying Debian is bleeding edge. By comparison with the G5, it certainly is.
As the Dutch would say: Lekker bezig.
Quite amazing for Linux on a Power Mac G5!