So this conversation at the last Geek Gather & Munch inspired me, and so while Amy and I are awaiting the birth of our first child, I decided to spend a little bit of time trying to put new life into an old iBook G3-500 with a lean installation of Ubuntu. I like the idea of a second life for old computers.
I successfully ran the Ubuntu live CD on this machine and therefore decided to download the “Breezy Badger” for PPC from Ubuntu’s website. Installation commenced without any incidents – slow, but steady. During the second part of installation though (this is the part where the installer configures the system without the need for the CD, from the harddrive) it turns out that something is not working as planned. The typical “click-grrr, click-grrr” sound is ringing all too familiar in my ears. At this point I take a second look at the sticker someone posted on the lid of this vintage Mac: Motherboard fried (or something to that effect). Well, turns out that the motherboard works just fine, but another essential component named HD is apparently not feeling up for the challange. Oh, well – fortunately there are more iBooks where that one came from. Let’s try this again, after all the live CD promised decent performance from this outdated system.

Next up: another iBook. A shabby looking one of its kind – visibly abused by privious owners, a prime subject for the Ubuntu challenge. If it runs decent on this neglected piece of laptop history, there is hope. Just to be sure that everything is cool, I download the Breezy Badger again, and burn it on a brand CD-R – not to forget, I verify the burned CD and everything looks good. I hold down the mouse button and this iBook willingly opens the CD tray during startup. In goes Ubuntu and off we go to another hour and a half of installation. CSI is on, what better way to pass the time. The installer runs a lot faster on this machine than it did on last one, cool. That is until it hits a wall and tells me that crucial components cannot be installed for reasons that it wasn’t willing to reveal. Oh well, let’s see how important those components are – reboot, and tada: here we go. Ubuntu, yeah. That wonderful Linux look and feel, and the performance is actually pretty decent, compared with the Tiger installation on yet another 500MHz iBook that had the pleasure of becoming a Tiger music server. Anyhow, the wireless card works out of the box, and Firefox is fast as always. All is well, until I decide to download a newer version of Firefox, only to discover that whatever is needed to actually browse and view files did apparently miss the installation train. Scheißdreck! Please excuse my German. CSI is long over and here I am looking for my Finder or even an Explorer – no luck. Ubuntu tells me it cannot find the Desktop and I am thinking, this doesn’t look so promising after all. Not to blame Ubuntu though – let’s just try this again, who knows.
For all of you who are still with me in this article: In goes the CD and I watch that beautiful blue screen for another hour, installing the lean Linux magic. No problems during installation this time, awesome. Once everything is installed and configured, the installer decides to fetch two quick downloads form the www – sweet. The display reads, 2 of 2 – 6 hours. Oh, well, it’s time to go to bed anyways.
I get up, all excited that I revived this dinosaur, only to find the same message I had seen last night still present on the 12″. Verdammter Scheißdreck, another one bites the dust. Who is to blame? Ubuntu for its OS with mankind in mind, Apple for hardware that should have passed away years ago, or me… (you fill in the blanks). Hey, but I am an optimistic kind of guy – I will give it another shot, 3 is the charme, right?
In goes the CD. Format HD, find wireless network, install: yes. Everything seems very familiar at this point. Successful install of the CD, then config of base system, AND: RIESENGROSSER, VERDAMMTER SCHEISSDRECK: click-grrrr, click-grrr. Need I say more? And the moral of the story? You figure it out… Anybody have another iBook for me ;) Oh wait, we got a baby coming soon – peace out, Geeks!