Install On A Mac Powerbook G4

First, awesome forum! This looks like the hub I'm going to first for guides & tips.

Having said that...

If there are posts already about this, please show me a link to them to help narrow my search. I have looked through some of the posts thus far & I am finding myself in an information overload.

I have been trying to get either 10.1 or 10.2 on my Mac Powerbook G4 12" 1.33 ghz and I am at a point where I have no idea what to do. My computer HD crashed on me so I upgraded to a 100GB & I put in a DL DVD burner in as well.

clean slate for partitions =) I made three: 1 for boot, 1 for the MAC OS, & 1 for the SUSE that will soon be installed. Although all of them are the HFS format, I'm hoping that there is a way to re-format just one (or more) partitions through some of the SUSE software.

I got the 10.2 off a bit torrent & put it on some blank disks (5 I believe) & have that all prepped & ready to go.

Here is where I have the hangups...

The powerbook won't recognize the disk 1 as a boot disk for either the reboot holding "c" or the "opt" keys. I believe my only hope is to boot from the open source on my computer (command, opt, O, R keys on boot) & I am having one hulluva time navigating through it to find the right directories & running them.

If anyone has seen a similar post & / or solution to help out with this, it would be much appreciated if you could link it to this post. I've got a few days off to try to get this to work so hopefully the people here are good (and patient) troubleshooters.

If this is a new found problem, congratulations to me... Its a new headache... 5lbs, 7ozs! X(

~Jason~

Hi,
Welcome aboard!
This site is a guide for triple booting xp,linux and osx. It uses bootcamp and it says

You can boot your favourite Linux install CD easily enough using Boot Camp (just hold down option and alt at boot), but creating a bootable Linux install is no easy task, particularly if you want to triple-boot with XP. The problem lies in the rather fragile hybrid partition table needed to make XP's MBR partition table co-exist on a hard drive with the GPT partition table used by Mac OS X. The partition resizing tools that Apple added in OS X 10.4.6 can create a hybrid GPT/MBR partition table, and the EFI boot loader can chain-load a BIOS-style boot loader from the start of one of those hybrid partitions. It's a neat solution to a complex problem, but it's designed only with an XP dual-boot setup in mind.[/b]

So i think you may need boot camp but it should be easier if you are not installing xp. It might help if you google for information on bootcamp and it might give more information
hope this helps

from what i've read (albeit fairly old articles), linux for intel macs isn't well supported - There is something about the position of the bootloader that makes it difficult but last February redhat declared that it would support it and I think novell said they were going to wait to see what others did.
http://appleintelfaq.com/#10.0.1

Bootcamp may work though but I dont know anything about it

Thank you for spotting some info for me, however, I should've mentioned my mac is pre-intel, its a PPC G4.

I recall seeing some literature on triple booting similar to the previous posts here but fortunately, it might not apply to my computer. My goal is to have a dual boot either through lilo or the "option" boot through Macs Open Firmware that lets you select OS-es there.

If boot camp will work on the pre-intel processors, I should give it a shot & come back with the results. If there is in fact word of it not being able to be used, I'm back where I started.

I guess until then...

Thanks for the post(s), I feel welcomed [=)], & will come back with any results I have with the boot camp.

~Jason~

Oh, I found loads of stuff on that but I just assumed that it was intel for some reason!

Hopefully this will help, halfway down theres links to guides and things like trouble shooting on installation and booting. I think bootcamp is just for intel macs but I don't use macs and have very limited knowledge/experience with them.

http://www.suseforums.net/index.php?showto...mp;#entry156128

Thanks for the link, looks I might have found somebody that can give me some tips.

I am one step closer to having a dual OS mac & I can't wait!

I will keep updates posted on this thread so that the other G4 users can have this as a reference.

~Jason~

just an update...

First, I have been delaying my attempts of the install mainly because I am unaware if I burned the 6 disc / DVD correctly. I keep getting no response to a supposed "boot disk" that I burned from the opensource.org recommendation from a bit torrent. If anyone has known of this problem, please point me in the right direction. I was told I could go to osdisc.com & actually order a proper burn of the os just so I eliminate the user error part of this problem.

Secondly, I think I should try to use GRUB rather than LILO in attempt to hopefully get a decent boot prompt, unless, it is recommended to just use the default (opt) prompt & mod that through the open BSD so that it automatically boots to the OS choice menu. Again, if any guru has a good tidbit, please inform me.

And last but not least, Where should I put my install and how big should its partition(s) total? I am aware of the root, boot, swap technique but I am uncertain as to how much space should I use if I am choosing to make the SUSE my source for gaming through Cedega. I have abilities to put it on either my iPod (20GB however, 10G is already occupied by music), a partition on an external firewire hard drive (80GB @54k rpm, which has backup partitions for my wife & I, 30G a piece), or a partition on my Mac (which has an upgraded 100GB @72k rpm drive on it where I could use up to 30GB of space).

In regards to my own findings / support, I recently found a fellow openSUSE user that I have worked with for a while & I hadn't known about it that might have some insight. Problem being is that he's a PC user =P (no offense to PC users, you need a much higher level of tolerance with your OS & I commend you for that). I might be able to talk shop "post-install" but I have both the SUSE manual & the SUSE for dummies, which by the way, looks very informative to get me back up to speed with all its nuances that differ it from RHL from when I used that in 1999. Other than that, I am pretty much stuck in this spot until I can find out how to install properly.

Any news is better news than the "you snooze, you loose," news...

...Which is also a tongue twister for the nasally impaired (head colds if you're not PC)

=)

~J~

Any luck with the installation ?

I am stuck in the same way as you are

I could get it to working. The PPC iso was not booting. So i ended up booting again with a different ISO and installed via that. Works well.