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I’ve spent my evening concocting an interface skin for Whamb, which is a lightweight audio player for OS X. It is freeware, and works nicely, with a very small footprint. The skin is basically a slapdash of standard UI elements and some iTunes elements. It is meant to be small, easy to use, and fully featured.

If you’d like to download it, go nuts. It is a zipped bundle, and needs to be unzipped and installed in /Library/Application Support/Whamb/Skins to work. You can also put it in the ~/Library equivalent if you want it enabled only for your user. If you want to try the skin out without installing it, just drop it onto the Whamb program logo. This skin may require version 1.2 of Whamb, but I don’t know for sure. When in doubt, upgrade!

On January 22nd, 1984, Apple ran an advertisement during the Super Bowl that introduced the first Macintosh computer. Almost at once the Macintosh revolutionized the idea of personal computing. Tossing aside crude interfaces, and adopting the attitude that anyone, and everyone, can use a computer, they changed the entire industry. Apple hasn’t always been on the forefront, but they have deeply affected how our culture thinks about computers, and still provides a driving force of innovation that trickles through the entire computer industry. My family’s first computer was a Mac IIsi, and after years of using Windows, Linux and everything else, I’m right back where I started, on the Mac. I still use Windows, and I still love Linux, but for now, there’s nothing quite like Mac OS.

I’m pretty pleased to be using a Mac, and when I consider how far things have come in 20 years, I’m pretty excited about what the next 20 have to offer.

Panther now lives on my Beige G3! Currently, the 10.3.2 update is installing, and things have been going well. For the curious, here was the basic procedure…

My Mac’s stats are as follows:

• Beige G3 Rev. A
• XLR8 G4/466MHz processor upgrade
• 768MB RAM
• Stock 24X CD-ROM
• Generic USB card
• ATI Radeon Mac Edition

• ATTO PSC UltraWide SCSI card

  To install Panther, I removed all but one stick of ram, all my USB devices, and the ATTO card. I backed up my critical data onto another drive, and pulled it from the system for good measure.

  I then partitioned my drive into two pieces, a 512MB and a 5.5GB from the remainder. I booted off of an OS 9.2.1 CD, and then installed OS 9.2.1 on the small drive. After running into an issue where OS 9 would crash on boot, which was solved by booting with extensions off (holding down ‘shift’ while booting) and removing some offending extensions, I proceeded.

  I downloaded version 3.0a11 of XPostFacto and ran it. I inserted the Panther Install CD, and in the options menu, I specified a throttle of 10, set my input device to Keyboard, and my output device to my ATI card. The ATI card is required, because Panther does not support the onboard video on these Beige G3’s. It is a shame, but on the other hand, the onboard video sucks, so you really should be upgrading anyway.

  Fiddling with the ‘options’ menu on XPostFacto can take the most time. I tried many different combos before finding something that worked. What worked for me may not work for you. I recommend checking out OWC’s Tech Forum and reading about other people’s experiences.

  After initiating the installation from XPostFacto, the computer rebooted, and began loading the installer. I got all sorts of crazy text messages, which could be identified as the BSD kernel loading. Eventually, the installer loaded, and I began the standard procedure of installing and choosing options.

  After the installation of the first CD finished, the computer booted up, but then failed, giving me CLAIM Failed errors in Open Firmware. I booted back into OS 9 (with the assistance of the Startup Disk control panel on the OS 9 boot CD), reran XPostFacto, and reinstalled BootX, the Extensions, and the Startup Items. Then I used XPostFacto to choose the 10.3 partition, and used it to restart the computer.

  It booted back into Panther, I finished the installation, fiddled with my settings, and installed the 10.2.3 update, which seems to have gone fine!

  I still have some things to do, mainly reinstalling my USB devices, my ATTO ExpressPCI PSC SCSI card (this will be the one to give me trouble, if anything does), the extra memory, and the Powerlogix CPU Director software to activate the cache on my processor. Then of course there is all the software reinstallation and backup restoration.

  But for now I can breath a sigh of relief, and go to bed, confident that everything is going to be downhill from here.

  Update: After a day of installing stuff, things are working quite well, with one exception. My ATTO ExpressPCI PSC card is detected by the system, but drives connected to it do not mount. The card was once an Apple BTO card, but has been reflashed to the ATTO firmware v.1.66. The system detects the card, and the ExpressPCI configuration lets me view the card’s details (even showing the connected drive), and the Panther drivers for the card have been installed, but still, no mounting. I may need to play with the termination settings some more, as it seems others have gotten this card working with Panther on Beiges.

  In good news, my Wacom Graphire2 works great, my Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse work great, and early boot video is enabled thanks to XPostFacto (set the keyboard as the input device and your video card as the output in the NVRAM settings, then reboot and enjoy). The video looks great thanks to the new card, and I’m loving Panther’s speed and features. It is clearly faster than Jaguar, and the Finder finally feels like a real product instead of being sort of half-assed. Expose is a great feature as well. I’m also enjoying the improvements to Mail, mostly speed, improved Junk filters and threading! PDFs load lighting fast, and Photoshop and Illustrator (both CS) run like a dream. Sound works fine, including global volume control.

  In terms of network performance, I’m amazed that finally, for true, OS X will detect and mount my PC’s shared drives! And the PC will mount OS X’s shared drives! Previously, this feature just wouldn’t work. Not at all. Along the same lines, I can now use my PC’s printer over the network. Unfortunately, I still have some driver issues to work out there, but the basic functionality is there, which is another first for OS X. I’m amazed at what Apple does with OS X in each revision. More and more this is feeling like the OS I really want to be working in.

  Aside from this ATTO problem, I’d say things are working quite swimmingly. More updates as I try to work through that remaining issue.

  Update II: The printing issue has been solved thanks to the Gimp-Print drivers included on Disk 2 of the Panther install! A driver for my Deskjet 1120C (connected to an XP box via the parallel port) was included, and works great.

Feeling sympathy for my mac problems of late, Billy has bequeathed to me a Radeon Mac Edition PCI, which is in fact, the perfect card to solve my problems! Now, I haven’t installed the card or Panther yet, and there is a dangerous road ahead fraught with alpha software, unsupported hacks, totally ridiculous lengths of SCSI ribbon cable, and a long handled spoon. But, Jebus willing, I’ll have Panther on this Mac by morning. I’ll post my experiences as soon as I’m able. Thanks, Billy!

Today has been a pretty good day in general. I got some good job-related news. A nice man sent me a copy of the service manual for the Phase Linear 700 Series II which Berg and I are attempting to repair. The procedures described in the manual will make life much easier for us. Also, I got to eat both sushi and falafel today. And when we went to get the falafel, the cheerful shop proprietor had several young women behind the counter so he could show them how to use a hookah. He sells them in the restaurant, and is quite skilled in their use, which isn’t immediately obvious to the novice. While we ordered, he had it drawing well, and was showing them how to place the coal, keep it drawing well, etc. I like that guy a lot.

Update: Its 3:30AM, and no luck yet. Curses! However, the video card is working great! Its just that dumb ol’e Panther does NOT want to install on this Mac. Not surprising, since it is technically unsupported, but I am failing where other’s have succeeded. I still have a few tricks up my sleeve, but they may have to wait until tomorrow…

After trying to install Panther (OS X 10.3) on my Beige G3, I realized that it isn’t possible with my current configuration. Technically, the Beige isn’t supported by Panther, because it doesn’t have any built-in USB ports. However, some people have had success installing it with the assistance of XPostFacto a utility that previously allowed Old World non-G3 Macs to install OS X. Ryan, the author, is now updating the software to assist Beige G3 owners in the installation of Panther. It seems that it is possible, and some people have had success, but the major block at the moment is the fact that Panther does not support the internal video on the Beige. XPostFacto may solve this problem in the future, but currently it does not.

The only way anyone has had success with this install is by using an additional video card, such as the Radeon 7000 PCI or the Rage 128 PCI. There is a Mac version of the Radeon 7000 PCI, but unfortunately it still costs just over 100 dollars. There is a PC version of the same card which only costs $40. However, it lacks the second monitor output, and has a little less RAM. The card won’t work directly in a Mac, but a savvy user can flash a PC card with a Mac ROM and allow the card to be used on a Mac. This may be the path I have to take.

If anyone has one of these Radeon 7000 PCI 32mb DDR video cards they would be willing to part with for a reasonable price (20-30 dollars), let me know!

In the meantime, I’m trying to get Jaguar back on this Mac, but I seem to have misplaced my install disks. If I let you borrow them, please get them back to me soon! However, its possible I just lost them around the house…

So for now, the Mac is totally non-functional. Weep bitter tears for the last of the Old World Macs…

Update: I found my 10.2 disks! They were hidden amongst all the Space Ghost VCDs for some odd reason… I would never have found them if I wasn’t overcome with a desire to watch Space Ghost again last night.

On the way into work this morning I passed a garage sale, and my eagle eye spotted an Apple monitor amongst the merchandise. I almost stopped, but then realized that I would be late to work, so I sighed and drove on. On my way home from work, I remembered the sale, and saw it was still running. I pulled over, jumped off my scooter, and ran over to find that my suspicions were correct, and that there was indeed an Apple monitor for sale, and it still hadn’t been sold! $15 dollars later, I was the proud owner of an Apple Multiple Scan 20 monitor. Its 20”, and supports 1280×1024 at 75Hz. Score!

I also bought a nice Swiss Army laptop bag, which was also $15 and brand new (it still had its original product tag on it). Its a very durable and cool bag, and I’m sure I’ll find something good to do with it. I even picked up a pair of shoes I thought would fit Madalene, because they are pretty sweet shoes. However, they were a bit too small. No big deal, I’m sure we can find someone that they will fit, they are a women’s 6 1/2.

I had to scoot home and get the car in order to pick up the monitor, but it was worth it. 20” of goodness is now gracing my PC. I’ve got a bit of a quandary now, because I have a very nice Hitachi 19” monitor on my Mac, which supports great resolutions and looks wonderful, but now there is this multiple scan 20” which doesn’t support as high of resolutions, and doesn’t look quite as good, but is still larger. The higher resolutions of the Hitachi aren’t in use right now, because I don’t have a very good video card in the Mac, though I’m planning on getting one at some point. So which monitor goes on which computer? Well, for now, the 20” will stay on the PC, because the slightly larger size doesn’t fully account for the slightly lower visual quality. Also, I like to watch movies on the PC, to keep the Mac open for real work, and the larger monitor will look nice for that, despite the fact that it isn’t as well converged.

Either way, I’m happy.

I know its silly, but today I celebrate the birthday of Mac OS X, one of the most innovative and powerful operating systems of recent years. OS X 10.0 was released two years ago today, and its been nothing but improvements since then. Thanks, Apple, for a quality product, and the only operating system I’ve ever felt compelled to purchase my own copy of (excepting a CD of FreeBSD I bought for 10 bucks long, long ago, when my internet connection was too slow to download it). Here is to another year of improvements and creativity!

Huzzah! The browser formerly known as Chimera has finally hit 0.7 after much waiting and trepidation. All Mac users go download and enjoy the goodness that is the new version of your favorite browser. Unless its not your favorite browser, in which case you should go download it anyway so you can give the new Camino a second chance.

The browser formerly known as Chimera for OS X has been renamed “Camino” and now has a new webpage! Don’t go looking for downloads yet, however, because the new version isn’t available yet. However, I’ve heard that 0.7 is basically complete, they just need to finish going through and replacing every instance of Chimera with Camino. This means 0.7 should be available really soon now. An annoying setback for a project like this, but an unfortunate reality.

As to the name, some people are afraid that it brings to mind images of 70’s era half-car/half-pickup monstrosities, but I find the name perfectly acceptable. It means “path” or “road” in Spanish, and seems to be rather appropriate. And besides, I don’t care what its called, as long as it continues to bring forth all that delicious browser goodness that it has already brought me.

Its X.2.4 time, peeps. Get on that software update, and lets pound the Apple servers silly!

Also, in a nice little flurry, we have Moveable Type 2.6 released, and Kung Log 1.3 released. So much great software out there, its both exciting and intimidating for a newbie developer like myself.

Check it, people. New Powermacs. They come in a single 1Ghz, a dual 1.25Ghz, and a dual 1.42Ghz. They feature bigger 2Mb L3 caches on the dual 1.42Ghz, and 1Mb L3 caches on the others. The new macs all feature Firewire 800, and Airport Extreme (802.11g, the newer, higher bandwidth brother to 802.11b (which is fully backward compatible, don’t worry)). They also support internal Bluetooth, and come with ATI Radeon 9000s, with GeForce4 Titanium and Radeon 9700s available as custom options.

The other sweet thing available now is a new 20inch widescreen Cinema Display, and amazing new pricing on the 23inch Cinema Display. The 23” is only $2000 now, where it was $3500 before. The 20 inch is only $1300, and the 17” has been lowered to a very affordable $800.

I’m really jazzed about the displays. I’ve been hoping for them to release an expanded display line for a while, and the prices really needed to come down a bit (and they came down more than I expected, too!). The new powermacs are nice too. With the price drops, a totally pimped out, dual display, everything maxxed to the gills dual 1.42ghz powermac is now just over $10,000, where as the previous generation would hit close to $15,000 if you pimped it out fully. Also, the single 1Ghz powermac is a very affordable $1500! Then its only $500 more than that to go up to a dual 1.25Ghz. The dual 1.25Ghz seems like the best deal at the moment, as far as I can tell, based on speed and features per dollar.

Oh well, not like it matters for me, I can’t afford any of them! Someday though, someday.. Just bide your time.. Bide your time.. Muahaha!

Note: This is a geeky post. Feel free to ignore it unless you find the petty politics between software developers interesting.

For anyone in the web development/open source browser scene, you are surely aware of the interesting controversy stirred up by Apple’s release of Safari, the OS X specific, Apple branded web browser. The most recent and in my opinion, interesting, development in the controversy is based on claims that some members of the Mozilla development team were offended by Apple’s choice of kHTML (the KDE library) as their rendering engine, instead of Gecko. (Though more reading into the issues seems to indicate that most of the development team isn’t bothered by Apple’s decision at all.)

I was a bit surprised myself when Safari unveiled using kHTML instead of Gecko, especially since Apple had hired on Mozilla developers like Dave Hyatt to work on the Safari project, but on many levels, it may have been a good decision to go with kHTML. The codebase, for one thing, is phenomenally smaller and easier to work with. Gecko offers drop-in cross platform usage, but at a cost to speed and efficiency. Safari is lacking in some areas of CSS compliance, but they make up for it with a very high speed browser with a lean feature set.

Chimera is still my main browser, because Safari still has quite a few little problems, but, Safari development is proceeding well. In the end, I think that this will be good competition for the browser market. I’m heartened by the fact that in all these discussions of Mozilla/Gecko vs. Safari/kHTML, no one mentions IE. no one asks, “Why didn’t they choose to base the browser off of IE? Why didn’t they stick with IE as the primary official browser for Mac OS X?” The reason no one asks those questions, is because they are quite ridiculous questions. Open source browsers rule on the Mac, because the supplied IE is almost universally distrusted. This is great news for both kHTML and Mozilla, because with both of them in the lime light, they are free to speed up development, and try to adapt to the benefits the other offers. Mozilla needs to work on speed and code size. Safari needs to work on CSS and DOM compliance, as well as features like tabbed browsing (or some similar method of browser window organization).

Another thing that pleases me is the fact that, even though Safari chose kHTML, they still hold Gecko as the ‘Gold Standard’ for standards compliance. This is a quote (emphasis mine) from Dave Hyatt’s blog (Dave Hyatt is a developer for Chimera, Mozilla, and is now employed by Apple to work on Safari).

The last paragraph is important, in my eyes. Safari developers still look to Gecko as the ideal rendering engine in terms of CSS and DOM compliance. Gecko, despite being a touch bloated, is still really damn good at what it does, and people give it props for doing so.

If you’d like to keep up on this issue, and read some very interesting responses, I highly recommend checking out Dave Hyatt’s blog “Surfin’ Safari”. It is very well written, addresses individual concerns that people bring up, and gives honest feedback about the coding progress. His most recent post mentions a bug he just fixed in table layout code by bringing over the most recent kHTML table code, and then specifically mentions two bloggers who complained, letting them know that their blogs now work properly in Safari. Now if thats not some very respectable feedback from a developer, I don’t know what is. On the other side of the coin, check out blogs like Dive Into Mark, specifically, this post about some of the continued problems Safari is having.

My short sighted personal conclusion? Safari has the potential to be a great browser, especially with competent developers at the helm. However, Chimera can still be a greater browser, because it too has competent developers, and now has some good competition. I don’t know who will end up as my primary browser, but it will be an interesting rush to 1.0 for these two browsers.

WOO! I just checked the Chimera Homepage to see if any progress had been made in the nightlies, and what do I find, but that Chimera is now up to .6! We are rocking along at a nice pace towards the 1.0 release! Anyway, I recommend that all Mac OS X users out there go upgrade, because Chimera is a superior browser! That made my evening.
——
Oh, and if you were just thinking “How can an incremental update to a little browser application make him so happy? He must be a real geek.” Then let me remind you that the thing that made me happy before that was that I could use malformed pointer arithmetic in C to poke around in unallocated memory space. I found environment variables. Sweet, huh?

UPDATE 1-23-03: Apparently some of the files necessary for this procedure are no longer available from the download locations listed below! I’ve made all the files available locally in this directory, PLEASE NOTE: I do not have any part in maintaining these files, making updates, etc. If a new version of these files exists somewhere, I wouldn’t know about it! I’m putting the files up in this state for people who need them, just remember that I probably won’t be keeping them up to date. Also, all files retain their original licenses/copyrights. I didn’t make any of them myself.

Here are my experiences installing Yellow Dog Linux 2.3, a distro of Red Hat customized specifically for the PowerPC (Macintoshes). The base installation is suitable for all PCI PowerMacs and up. Anything with a G3 or G4 is suitable, and any of the x500 and x600 series OldWorld macs. For these computers, use the installation method recommended by Yellow Dog.

The computer I will be installing YDL (Yellow Dog Linux) on is an 8100/80AV. This is a Nubus mac, in the same class as the other x100 series Powermacs. This computer is technically unsupported, though people have made some strides in kernel modification allowing installations to work on these Macs. Because they don’t have PCI slots, they are useless with modern hardware. Forget USB or firewire, there are no nubus USB or firewire cards that I’m aware of. You are stuck with ADB mice and keyboards and SCSI hard drives. However, these macs came with an ethernet card built-in (though sometimes you need an adapter to make the old style apple network jack into a standard RJ-45 jack. This ethernet adapter means that the computer can be happily run as a server in command line mode. It won’t do anything fancy, but can be a reliable webserver/ftp server.

Here is the process I used for the installation. Much of it was gleaned from the YDL page on Nubus installation, as well as various other sources. It took me many tries, and hopefully this info will help you learn from my experience. However, keep in mind that we are going to be installing an unsupported OS in an unsupported way on a computer that is no longer supported. No one but yourself is reponsible for anything that happens. Attempt this only if you are experienced with computers (and preferably with linux as well), not afraid of failing, willing to experiment, and capable of searching the Internet for documentation (linux is supported only through user assistance. The web is a HUGE resource for linux. If you have problems, detailed searching online can often help a lot). If you are willing and ready, lets get into it!

The process goes like this, I’ll go into more detail on each step as we go through the document:

1. Install MacOS (as early as 7.1) onto a small partition on the hard drive.


2. Obtain a copy of the YDL 2.3 install disk. You can buy this directly from Yellow Dog Linux or you can download it from their website in the form of an ISO disk image that can be burned onto a CD.


3. Install the MKLinux BootLoader from The Nubus Pmac site. The filename you are looking for is: Apple_MkLinux_Booter.sit.hqx


4. Modify the lilo.conf and MkLinux.prefs files.


5. Download two kernel files from Etsushi’s ftp server. You want one file from the YDL section, it is called (at the time of this writing): “MachKernel_YDL23_2.4.19-rc2” (without the quotes). This is a linux kernel modified for nubus macs, with a YDL installer file built-in. The other file you want is from the current directory, it is called (at the time of this writing): “MachKernel-2.4.20-pre9-021008” (without the quotes). This is a linux kernel modified for use with nubus macs.


6. Rename the installation kernel “mach kernel” and place it in the Extensions folder. Reboot the computer into Linux. The installation process will begin.


7. After the install, reboot and select MacOS. Remove the “mach kernel” file from the Extensions folder, and rename the other kernel you downloaded “mach kernel” and place it in the Extensions folder. Reboot into Linux


8. You should have a working YDL installation!

That sounds nice and simple, doesn’t it? Well, lets go through the process in a little more detail.

Installing MacOS:
For this, you should be able to use almost any version of MacOS that your computer will run. I recommend either 7.5.3 (because it can be freely downloaded from the internet) through 8.1. You could use a later version, but they take up more disk space, and offer more than you need. When you do the installation, make two partitions, one to hold the MacOS, and one empty, with the rest of the disk space in it. I got OS 8.0 to install on less than 40mb. To be conservative, and to give yourself the ability to move files around a bit, make the MacOS partition around 60mb-80mb. Install the OS with the ‘custom’ option, and remove anything you think you won’t need, which is almost everything. If you have another Mac, it is handy to have them networked, in which case you’ll need to install networking stuff like Open Transport. Forget Quicktime, documentation, etc. Just the basics! You want to save as much disk space as possible for the YDL installation on the other ‘free’ partition. I got a stripped down YDL install to fit on less than 500mb, but if you have more than a gig, you will be in great shape. If you have less than a gig free space, you’ll need to manually edit the YDL install during the install process, which can be a hassle. If you have more than a gig available, then the default installation process should work fine.

You will also need Stuffit Expander installed! You will have to move this over from another Mac, download it from the internet, or copy it from an installation CD (I used the version off of a MacOS 9.0 installation CD).

Obtain a Yellow Dog Linux 2.3 Install Disk
You can download this from their website in an ISO format ready to be burned to a CD. You can also buy it from them for a small charge. You can also get a copy from a friend. The beauty of GPL software is that you aren’t considered a pirate if you copy it and give it to a friend. The easiest method is just to buy it from YDL, and you get the added benefit of supporting the project financially.

Install MkLinux Booter:
MkLinux was a linux project embarked on by Apple a long time ago. The distro is aged, and not very useful for our purposes. However, the MkLinux boot loader is a handy tool! Download it from the Nubus Pmac site. The filename you are looking for is: Apple_MkLinux_Booter.sit.hqx. You install the Booter by extracting the files, and moving the files to their locations. ‘MkLinux’ goes to the Control Panels folder, ‘MkLinux Booter’ goes to the Extensions folder, and ‘lilo.conf’ and ‘MkLinux.prefs’ go to the Preferences folder. When you restart the computer after installing MkLinux Boot Loader, a window will appear shortly after restarting asking if you want to boot into Linux or MacOS. This is how you will choose to boot the computer into Linux. Don’t restart the computer yet however, we have some files to modify first!

Open the Preferences folder and opne up the MkLinux.prefs file. Edit the file so it looks like this:

bootos=MkLinux   # Boot to either "MacOS'" or "MkLinux"
bootdelay=10     # Seconds to pause at boot dialog

Open the lilo.conf file and edit it so it looks like this:

	

		
'rootdev' defines the location of the root device
	
	

		
After installation use these two lines with YDL 2.3
	
#rootdev=/dev/sda5
#mach_options= video=ariel2fb:bpp:8,vmode:13
		
Use these two lines for the installation process.
	
	

		
Comment them out after installation is complete.
	
rootdev=/dev/ram

mach_options= ramdisk=16384 video=ariel2fb:bpp:8,vmode:13

Download Kernel Files:
Download two kernel files from Etsushi’s ftp server. You want one file from the YDL section, it is called (at the time of this writing): “MachKernel_YDL23_2.4.19-rc2” (without the quotes). This is a linux kernel modified for nubus macs, with a YDL installer file built-in. The other file you want is from the current directory, it is called (at the time of this writing): “MachKernel-2.4.20-pre9-021008” (without the quotes). This is a linux kernel modified for use with nubus macs.

Take the first kernel, the installation kernel, and rename it “mach kernel” (without the quotes). Move it to the Extensions folder. This is the kernel that MkLinux Booter will use when you next restart the computer. The kernel has the YDL installer built-in to it.

Begin the Installation:
To begin the installation, restart the computer. When the MkLinux booter screen comes up, select Linux. If all goes well, the YDL kernel will load, and you’ll enter an installation menu.

You can choose default install or custom for more options. When you reach the step to partition the drive, you want to create three partitions in the empty space you left on the hard drive. The first partition you’ll create in the free space should be about 10MB. It should be of the type “Bootloader.” The next partition will be between 64mb and 128mb in size, and will be your swap partition. The last partition can take up the rest of the space on the drive, and will be of standard linux partition type (ext2). Important: While partitioning the drive, remember the device number (IE. /dev/sda5 or /dev/sdb8 or whatever) of the root partition. The root partition, remember, is the one with mount point ’/’ and is the largest partition you’ll make.

When you are taken to the package installation, you can choose Home/Office if you have enough disk space (more than 1gb), otherwise you’ll have to choose another type, and probably select the option to manually select packages, removing any packages that you don’t need. This can be difficult to decide.

When the installation completes, the computer will restart. This time, choose “MacOS” at the MkLinux bootloader and boot back into MacOS.

Remove the “mach kernel” file from the Extensions folder. Take the second kernel you downloaded, rename it “mach kernel” (again, without the quotes), and move it to the Extensions folder.

Now, go into the lilo.conf file in the Preferences folder, and uncomment the first two ‘rootdev’ and ‘mach_options’ lines. Change the rootdev line, that started out saying ’/dev/sda5’ and change it to whatever you remembered from the partitioning phase of the installation. It might be sda5 already, meaning you have no changes to make, or it could be something else. Mine is currently sda8. Comment out the second pair of lines (enter a # at the start of the line). This changes the boot configuration from how we wanted it at install to how we want it for actual linux running.

Boot into Linux:
Now simply restart the computer, select linux at the MkLinux prompt, and if all goes as planned, you’ll be in linux! From here, you have ultimate power. Please refer to the rest of the internet for info on how to set up servers, install stuff, etc. That is the part that I’m not very good at yet, but that many other people have written webpages about. I hope this guide helped you get into Linux on that old 6100/7100/8100 nubus powermac!

Please leave me comments if there is anything that needs to be corrected!
——UPDATE——
Because of my limited harddrive space, I had to do the install as a ‘base install’ and then go to the packages directory on the install CD (/mnt/cdrom/YellowDog/ppc/) and manually install the packages I need, using the command ‘df -h’ to show the available disk space as I went. It now reads ‘10mb’, LOL. It is currently running sshd, apache, proftpd, and has XFree86 and KDE installed. However, I think I will remove XFree86 and KDE, as things slow to an utter crawl while using KDE. I mean seriously slow. Besides, this thing is meant to be a headless server anyway. So I will uninstall those (rpm -e), and install perl, PHP and mySQL.

One issue I ran into very early on in the configuration is the lack of an editor program that I’m familiar with. Saddly, I’m not familiar with vi or emacs, pico being my favorite editor for linux. Unfortunately, the Yellow Dog install CD doesn’t include pico! I hadn’t downloaded the Yellow Dog 2.3 Extras CD yet, so I went online at Rpmfind.net to get the package for Nano, a GNU editor that emulates Pico, but adds nice features like search-and-replace and auto-indent for code writing. Sweet. Since I hadn’t been able to get gcc installed yet, I was in a bind, because I couldn’t build packages from source, and i386 packages won’t work (the most common kind). However, when you search for packages on RPMfind, you can scroll down, and often find one in the form of *.ppc.rpm indicating that it was compiled for PowerPC, and those will work fine. RPMfind had the right nano package, and I was able to download it and install it just fine.

The other problem I ran into while installing packages is something I call the ‘dependency game’ where each time you try to install something, it complains about dependencies not being fulfilled. So you go down the list of dependencies, installing those one by one, except that most of those will have dependencies that you have to manually install. It takes forever to get something like XFree86 installed because of the extreme number of dependencies involved! Does anyone know of an RPM command that will install any required dependencies automatically?

Also, a few generic hints: Don’t bother installing the telnet server, its bad news! OpenSSH works better, and is a million times more secure. Installing telnet servers is like bending over and hanging a big ‘come on in’ sign over your ass. Seriously. Its very insecure. Sshd is easy to get running, is more secure, and lets you tunnel insecure protocols, and forward X server requests securely. Its great stuff.