On 18/09/12 20:09, Victor Churchill wrote:
> I forwarded this query on to a mate who "does" Macs. With apologies to 
> those who don't like top-posting and weird formatting, , this is his 
> reply (mildly redacted)..
>> This came up on the LUG list and I wondered if you might know 
>> anything about this, or is it the wrong kind of Mac?
>>
>> Hi Folks,
>>
>> I am trying to install Ubuntu Linux (or any other flavour of Linux - 
>> I'm fairly agnostic in this regard) on a G4 Mac Mini.
>
> Its a G4 so ie not Intel and hence I dont think it will work, its a 
> Mac specific chip.  IF he had a later version it would be possible to 
> use bootcamp
Well, I am trying to install the Ubuntu PowerPC port, so in theory that 
should work, /if/ I can get it to boot into anything other than the 
installed OS (OS X 10.4.1).
---8<---snip-----
>>
> He could take it to the Apple store they should be able to re install 
> the original OS
>
>> The alternative to all of this malarkey is to get the drivers working 
>> for the usb wifi card  that my daughter bought (it's her machine, and 
>> she checked for compatibility before she bought it), but they appear 
>> to be fairly inadequate in that they don't appear to be accompanied 
>> by any software that might enable me to configure the card to connect 
>> to my network.
>
> That should not be that hard provided she runs it as a Mac and not 
> Linux they are pretty good at talking to networks etc ITS UNIX after 
> all ! and regardless of what the Linux people think its a very nice 
> iteration even the older versions.
>
>
> Hope this might be of some help one way or another?
Possibly thanks Victor. I hadn't considered taking it to a store, 
although I seriously wonder how much help I am likely to get with 
anything this old.
As I say, I installed the drivers that came supplied with the usb wifi 
device, but can't find any way to configure it to talk to my router. It 
occurred to me that I might be able to do it from the command line using 
ifconfig as I did in the old days with Linux, but I doubt my daughter 
wants to faff around with that.
In theory I should be able to install the Ubuntu PowerPC [1] port on it, 
and to be honest I think that's my preference given that I know a little 
about that from the point of maintaining it, and Ellen is familiar with 
it in its PC guise having used it on her laptop for several years.
Sean
[1] 
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/12.04/release/ [scroll down]
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