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the_lemur
06-28-2005, 10:48 AM
I have an iBook G4, that I bought at $1100 just before the better $900 boxen came out. I have been thinking about installing Linux for some time (I have used dozens of distros on the PC), so I made an impulse purchase of a 200GB Maxtor external HD.

Error #1: Although it was less then obvious, I thought it came with USB and FW. It was USB only, and the FW version cost more. I should have taken it back to BestBuy and bought the FW version from Maxtor.

I then went on my way, backing up all my files to my external HD. I did not do this well, but for some reason Tiger kept telling me that "this file cannot be copied." I did my best to backup what I had. Then I tried to install Ubuntu Linux on my external HD, just to see if it worked, even though I was fairly sure it wouldn't. It didn't, as predicted. I then erased it, and proceeded to backup again, manually, without using the backup app that came with my HD. This was Error #2. I neglected to copy iLife at all, mistakenly assuming it was included on my Tiger DVD. None of my other proprietary apps that I DID copy worked properly, because I neglected to copy my "Library" folders, and just moved my home directory.

Next, I proceeded to erase and repartition my 30GB Internal HD, giving half for Tiger and half for Ubuntu. Everything went fine, and I installed Tiger. When I booted Tiger, I was horribly disappointed in the terrible backup job I had done. I tried to restore my most important files to my shrunk partition, and installed Ubuntu, which went fine. Once I booted Ubuntu, I discovered that i had to disable DRI to allow it to go to sleep, and that I had to download the development tools seperately. I also noticed that very liitttle of my my usual software functioned on Ubuntu PPC.

So here I am, with a botched installation, and no iLife, World Book, and many other applications, and having lost hundreds of MB of files.

techwise
06-28-2005, 12:54 PM
You have just had one of the best learning experiences you could have. (I did the same thing with iLife by the way)

For future reference, I use "rsync" for backups.

Yellow Dog is the best ppc liunx distro for the *Books from Apple.

IMHO - max out the ram on the iBook and just stick with Tiger on there. Its likely that you can use most if not all the linux apps you like in OSX anyway.

Mike

StarKnight83
06-28-2005, 02:05 PM
Im an advid supporter of TerraSoft Solutions (the makers of yellowdog) but ill admit that I spend about 70% of my time in OSX while booting into linux to play w/ and tweak and whatnot else. Though from my experience YDL does have the best support for the *books and just about everything works in them