They said it was a waste of time. They said it probably wouldn’t work. They wondered out loud why I was doing it.
Every time you achieve good results doing something in the present unless you stumble upon them accidentally, you probably revisited the past in order to get there.
I was looking for a way to revive a more than aging Apple G4 Mac Mini. I think the last security update for Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) was sometime around 2009 and the last one for Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) was sometime around 2011.
Microsoft Office 98 for Mac was working decently on the Mini which was running Leopard. I had TenFourFox as my browser and while also decent performance-wise, some sites did cough and sputter. Notice I said some, not most. TenFourFox is an up to date browser courtesy of Cameron Kaiser, and if not for his efforts there would not be a modern web browser for these operating systems.
I’m someone who really appreciated Apple pre-iPhone. Once the iPhone came out and sales soared, Apple began neglecting the Mac. That neglect is evident still today with operating system misses such as Catalina that remain bug-ridden after its recent final update. We can only hope Big Sur (why not Big Madam?) will be better. But I digress.
The days of PowerPC Processors were a time when Apple was still fiercely competing with the Wintel (Microsoft and Intel) hegemony. I was a huge fan of PowerPC and plunked down on a brand new Mac “Un-” Performa 5215CD desktop computer.
PowerPC had a huge club of Apple Fanboys of which I was one. We participated in forums on Apple’s web pages and elsewhere, looking to coax every drop of performance out of our machines as possible.
Per specs from the fine folks at everymac.com, the Mac Mini I was considering reviving featured, “a 1.5 GHz PowerPC 7447a (G4) processor with the AltiVec “Velocity Engine” vector processing unit and a 512k on-chip level 2 cache, 512 MB of 333 MHz PC2700 DDR SDRAM memory, a faster 5400 RPM 80.0 GB Ultra ATA/100 hard drive,” and “a slot-loading 8X DVD/CD-RW “Combo” Drive in the US$599 configuration.”
I upgraded the Mini’s memory to its 1GB maximum before I began researching the available routes to Linux on the diminutive computer. Here’s where the stumbling upon part occurred.
There is a page on Mac Rumors which features a quite hefty thread titled, “Lubuntu 16.04 Remix (updated).”
Many, if not most modern Linux developers have dropped support for 32-bit computing architecture in favor of 64-bit–what today’s closed off, zoomed up and skyped out Internet runs on.
Community developers like “wicknix” (the leader of the Remix thread) have been left to take up the cause for those wishing to try Linux on Apple PowerPC computers.
I downloaded and used a Power Mac G4 Sawtooth with an aftermarket Super drive to burn the Lubuntu 16.04 remix image to DVD. I restarted the Mini, excitedly placed the disc in the Mini’s combo drive, and held down the “c” key to get the mini to boot from the DVD. The desktop for the “live” version of Lubuntu 16.04 came up but quickly faded to a semi-blinking picture going on and off, before freezing entirely. I was disappointed, but like most home computing aficionados I remained undeterred.
Wicknix also has a link to Lubuntu 12.04 Remix-4 available to try. This version of Lubuntu features a more “period correct” software and base operating system. This sounded like just what the Mini might prefer (over Lubuntu 16.04).
Sure enough, this time the installation went off without a hitch.
I did some exploring, some messing around with it, and confirmed the snappiness that many in the thread raved about.
Feeling like I was back at home, in the good old days of Apple computing (pre-Intel), I decided that I would keep the Mini for myself (instead of selling it on eBay).
Now, it was time to get to work and so I wrote this piece right here on the Mini–courtesy of wicknix’s masterpiece of work.
End of story.
Literally.
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