The issue of not being able to boot into GRUB on powerpc machines has been fixed in Debian. As a result, the Debian installation images are now working properly. I have created new installation instructions. MintPPC can be installed again. Please test the new installer and report your findings in the forum.
I installed Mint on a PowerBook G4 aluminium body which gives it a second life.
The installation ran very smooth with the new installer. Please follow the instructions regarding the partitioning carefully. I made a mistake by using a previous partition scheme from an installation with yaboot and during the installation the GRUB boot installer failed as it needs more space (128Mb) than a yaboot (1Mb) boot partition.
WiFi is working out of the box which is – comparing to other distro’s – very nice. Now I need to make sound working as the soundcard is not detected.
But overall Mint is working fine and smooth on this G4.
For sound I also refer to the forum. You have to run alsamixer and do a trick.
I have been trying to install MintPPC on my 1.42 GHz G4 Mac mini using the “automatic” installation method. Everything goes well until it comes to “Select and install software” whereupon it fails. It also fails at “Install the Grub boot loader.” The 40 GB disk is partitioned according to the instructions. Any thoughts?
Can you have a look at the logfile which is produced during installation? It can be retrieved from the Debian installer menu. Basically, the installer sets up a webserver on the fly which serves the logfile, which is accessible over a local network. Copy it and post it in the forums.
I assume you mean the syslog. I have sent you an email with the final page or so.
I got your email with the log file, thanks for the feedback.
I saw that the package mint-artwork is corrupt. I did a fresh installation myself to see whether I can reproduce this error. I got the same problem, so I will have a look into this.
Another more worrying thing is that GRUB did not install anymore. I will keep you updated.
It can be that GRUB does not yet work on the G4 Mac Mini:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-powerpc/2020/04/msg00279.html
Greetings. I just used the new Debian 10.0-powerpc-NETINST cd-rom to install a basic system on my G4 Mac Mini. GRUB now works just fine. I have also installed the non-free ATI firmware. Is there any way that I can adjust the /etc/apt/source.list file so as to install MintPPC?
First, in the existing Debian environment, install the LXDE desktop:
sudo taskselWhen you have an LXDE desktop, do the following:
https://www.u58733p55594.web0093.zxcs-klant.nl/installation/manual-installation-mintppc/
Then copy the config files to your user account:
cp -r /etc/skel/.config ~Everything went well until I encountered the following…
E: Unable to locate package mint-backgrounds-tina
Even plain Debian sid cannot be installed at the moment. A newer version of libasound2 was added to Debian-ports but not yet retrievable. This leads to a broken system (lxpanel, which depends on libasound2 cannot be installed). I wait another day….This is the trouble with sid….We have to be patient.
From the installer log:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
Jun 26 08:17:48 in-target: lxpanel : Depends: libasound2 (>= 1.0.16)
Jun 26 08:17:48 in-target: Recommends: pavucontrol but it is not installable or
Jun 26 08:17:48 in-target: gnome-alsamixer but it is not installable
Jun 26 08:17:48 in-target: E
Jun 26 08:17:48 in-target: :
Jun 26 08:17:48 in-target: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
ok, another day, and other problems encountered …
The good news first: I fixed mint-artwork. This is now installable again. This has been tested today. What I found out today however, is that Debian can still not be installed at this very moment:
It means that we have to wait until qtdeclarative-opensource-src and qtmultimedia-opensource-src can be built on powerpc. This is not something I have any influence on. This is done automatically by the Debian build servers.
Thank you for the update. I will wait to hear how things progress.
I just tried it again, I got the same error. We have to be patient.
I will wait until the package has been rebuilt. It is too much work to rebuild all the required packages.
wnlewis and tcarlson, please hang on. I am in the process of installing MintPPC32 manually. I will make a disk image and make it available.
Just so you know, I had no problem installing LXDE, either on my G4 Power Mac or my G4 mac mini, if I waited to install the GUI until after I had first installed a base system and applied the ATI firmware update which is only available if your sources.list includes …
# Non-Free (add this if you have an ATI GPU)
deb [arch=all] http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ unstable main contrib non-free
Well done Tom. For your information, I was able to make a disk image. I am now testing how to use such an image. I will have to write down instructions for this. It will not take long anymore.
Update: I installed MintPPC manually on my iBook G4 with a 40Gb hard drive. I made an image of this disk. I cannot use such an image onto a 8Gb stick, as there is not enough room. I thought that that would not matter but it does. I will now try installing MintPPC on an 8Gb stick and convert that into an image. I will keep you updated.
By the way, you can now install MintPPC32 and MintPPC64 the usual way. I took out the package that created the problems.
I was able to install MintPPC32 on both my G4 Power Mac and my G4 Mac mini as per “the usual way.” Other than missing the pretty background (Who is Tina, anyway?) everything works fine.
I noticed that when I went to do an update I got the following message…
W: Skipping acquire of configured file ‘main/source/Sources’ as repository ‘http://deb.debian.org/debian-ports sid InRelease’ does not seem to provide it (sources.list entry misspelt?)
Is that Debian’s way of “locking” the Sid repository?
sudo apt edit-sources
then comment out the deb-src line and make it look like this:
# deb-src http://deb.debian.org/debian-ports sid main
CTRL-x and y
There is no source repository in Debian-ports…
Thomas,
Do you log into a mint-lxde session from the login window ? You should see a nice desktop.
Everything now works great! Arctic Fox is so much faster than Firefox. Thanks for all your hard work.
Can you make a screenshot and send it to me?
Hmm… I went to install MintPPC32 again and it installed XFCE instead of LXDE. I went into the command line and purged XFCE and reinstalled LXDE. Now everything is fine again.
Really? That is very strange! Good that you know how to solve the problem. So you have now 3 versions of MintPPC running ? I should start asking for license fees 😉
I think it might have something to do with the fact that the current Debian 10.0 installer defaults to installing XFCE. When did that happen? It wasn’t the case with the older installers like the one I use to install Yaboot instead of GRUB.
### Package selection
tasksel tasksel/first multiselect standard, lxde-desktop
####
This behavior should not be as I configured the preseed file to install a lxde-desktop
Whatever it was, the installer is working fine now. Thanks.
You seem to be enjoying MintPPC very much 😉