Ubuntu on an iBook

C

Cowcaster88

[H]ard|Gawd
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Feb 26, 2005
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I just downloaded the Ubuntu Live CD for use on my iBook but I'm having issues getting it to boot. I've gotten it to self boot on a x86 PC which was easy but I'm having an issue to get it to boot from the DVD drive. I'm sure that this is a simple solution but I don't really know.

Anyone else use the Live CD? Does it have drivers for most of the Mac (iBook) hardware; things like Airport and Scroll Pad.
 
You need to get the version that supports PPC architecture - that's what you're ibook has. X86 is for a processor you dont have. That's why it works in one and not the other.
 
You need to hold down C while the computer is booting in order to boot from a CD.
 
x86 != PPC

Also, what did you burn the CD with? In order to get a bootable CD for a Mac, I think you have to use Disk Utility (or maybe that was just with bootable OS X CDs?).

Anyway, why do you want to install Ubuntu?
 
Cowcaster88 said:
Anyone else use the Live CD? Does it have drivers for most of the Mac (iBook) hardware; things like Airport and Scroll Pad.
Click to expand...

The trackpad will work fine, but if by Scroll Pad you mean the new feature where you can use two fingers to scroll a page in any direction, I'm not sure about that.

I do know Airport will not work, but this is not something specific to Ubuntu. I have OpenBSD/macppc running on a mini, and Airport is unsupported as well.

Plenty of wireless cards do work under linux and *BSD, it's just Apple, for whatever reason, has never released enough information about their Airport cards.

However, there's a long thread over at the Gentoo Forums where someone has gotten their Airport card to work using a certain driver, so it must be possible.
 
No I'm not installing it; Yes I know you need the PPC version to make it run on an iBook; Thanks for letting me know about the hold C thing.

You're right most of the iBook hardware (Airport & special track pad) does not run. Also running it live from the CD, you can't get access to your hard drive. But this is great because it allows me to somewhat taste Linux.

Thanks.
 
Cowcaster88 said:
you can't get access to your hard drive
Click to expand...

Just identify your OSX partition, then try something like this
mkdir /mnt/macosx
mount /dev/hda8 /mnt/macosx -t hfsplus
 
lannen said:
Just identify your OSX partition, then try something like this
mkdir /mnt/macosx
mount /dev/hda8 /mnt/macosx -t hfsplus
Click to expand...

Ok, I'm a total true Linux noobie, but how would I identify my OSX (same for a Windows machine) partition? Will it read hfsplus (ntfs)?

Burned the Ubuntu x86 Live version to try on my parents machine it was actually really nice to use with an ethernet internet connection. If I were to ever built a PC again I'm not installing Windows I'll just head over to the freeLinux.
 
It'll read/write HFS+ just fine, but NTFS is a bitch, because Microsoft doesn't tell people how it works. It can probably read fine, but writing might not work.
 
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