My "test machine" and newest project...

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What use does she put her computer to?

Alright, I had OSX Tiger running on 350Mhz G3 IMacs at the previous school I worked at. They where actually a little fast even only w/ 128MB Memory and 4 GB Hard Drives.

As far as I know, just web browsing, e-mail, IM, and schoolwork, nothing terribly demanding. She's got a G4 iBook on OSX 10.3.9, so I know she's not using it for hardcore gaming. Flash has to work, though, since she's fond of YouTube. Right now I'm performing a command-line install of Ubuntu-minimal on the G3 iMac just to get it up and running. Debian can come over the weekend after I play with IceBuntu for a bit.

Knowing that I have this much RAM kind of takes the challenge and adventure out of it. I was almost hoping it would be a measly 62-128MB so I could feel 1337 for getting Linux to run like greased lightning on it. Now I know that it's plenty powerful enough that running Linux on it successfully isn't a big deal. Heck, this thing could probably run plain Ubuntu slowly. Oh well, now the challenge is to make it noticeably faster than Leopard on my 4GB monster laptop.

Hey! I havent heard of that! <goes to look>

I was just using that to refer to Ubuntu with IceWM. Like Fluxbuntu is Ubuntu with Fluxbox. Google tells me there's actually a spin-off called Icebuntu. I did not know that.

You mean you didnt know.. THIS?

ICEbuntu is supposed to be a very light version of ubuntu, I think. There seems to be many of any name-buntu's

Up above: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp1983909.html#1983909
I did install a full Ubuntu on that machine, at one point, but it did run a little slowly.

That 96MiB, 267MHz Compaq, from new, has gone through three installs, in the rather large number of years I've had it. SuSE, Debian and now (only briefly, so far) Puppy. It's retired, really, and it's heavy, and its battery died.

(NB. I'm not counting the Ubuntu install, because that didn't really work well enough to be practical. Although the lean versions weren't around at the time I did it.)

OK, so I decided to start off with an ubuntu-minimal install. I got the PPC ubuntu-minimal iso for 8.04 (the last one that had a ppc port) and went through the command-line installation. I got the barebones command-line system (which evidently has absolutely no functionality whatsoever). Then I decided to add xorg, xterm, IceWM, Firefox, and Synaptic so I could have a functional system to work with. However, trying to "startx" always just gives me a blank screen. And this is on multiple installation attempts, not all done the same way. I'm about to just give in and install a full desktop system with XFCE and then later switch to IceWM for speed purposes, but I'd rather not have to do that for my "real" installation on this machine using Debian. Any ideas on where I might be going wrong?

You need to tell us what happens when you do startx, other than the blank screen.
Have a look at what is reported in /var/log/Xorg.0.log
It should tell you what the problem is.
Typically, it will be that it is trying to use a resolution that your display can't handle.

Nothing. I type "startx <enter>" and some text flies by too fast for me to read (but I surmise it is the verbose output for X starting) and then the screen goes blank and nothing else does anything.


On at least one of my attempts, it has then resulted in every boot giving a blank screen after the system boots (I see the verbose output for boot, and then screen goes blank at the end where you would normally get a login prompt). I'm already in the middle of an attempt at Debian netinst, so no checking that now.


This seems likely.

You jinxed yourself when you complained it would be too easy will all that memory!

Well, you did want it hard! Now slog through!

I found this XF86Config in my old bookmarks maybe it's of some use to you: http://mac.linux.be/Xfree4_2_1/iMac400DV

Well, I meant it would be easy to get performance out of it. I could always wimp out and just install straight-up Xubuntu PPC, getting decent but not great performance. Heck, from that I could even install IceWM easily through the Synaptic GUI, then just use that as my default session. I've got a 30GB hard drive, space isn't a huge issue. But I wanted to do the real minimal install, building my system up from the ground. Maybe I will end up doing that at some point. Or maybe I'll reload OS9 and use it for nostalgia's sake.

Its a lot less stressful(even fun) when you are not messing with your production machine, eh?

I'm taking away your 'computer user' status and giving you a shiny new 'computer abuser' tag. Thrash the bits out of that machine!

And did you notice my link about there being more distros than linux users?

Just a thought, but you do know about Ctrl/Alt/F1 and the rest?

I.e when you have one X session that is being silly, it is on Ctrl/Alt/F7 and you have all the other six (F1-F6) as terminal logins.

Also, Ctrl/Alt/F8 is where the error messages live.

(That is, unless, like me, you start a second X on that)

(Actually, from a terminal screen, you only need Alt/F1-F8 to switch, but it doesn't mind you using Alt wth it.)

(Also, to kill an X, just hit Ctrl/Alt/backspace)

(Also, with some tinkering, you can stop it going direct to the GUI)