MintPPC

For the past couple of days I have been trying to get MintPPC installed in an easy way onto my iBook. I found out that using a preseed file with a repository elsewhere won’t work as the modern Debian netinstaller does not accept repositories as the installer environment does not have gpg to its disposal. Downloading a key works but the installer then fails to incorporate it (add-key). I also looked into live-build, a Debian tool to create live environments. Unfortunately this won’t work on PPC based computers: it only has support for i386 and amd64. Basically I am a little bit stuck here now. There is one more option that I am going to try now and that is trying to customize the Jessie Netinstallation CD / DVD to have MintPPC specific packages and other packages which are not in Debian-ports in an extra pool and to then repackage the whole stuff using a modified keyring, incorporating my own gpg key. Hopefully that will lead me somewhere. If not, the only option I can think of is for users to install Debian sid LXDE, add the MintPPC repository manually in the /etc/apt/sources.list and to then install all packages by hand. I could make a small script to get this all done. The latter is not ideal but might be the only way.

For those of you who are willing to go down the rabbit hole, I hereby present a quick guide to get Debian sid with an LXDE desktop installed reliably on PowerPC based computers.

Quick installation guide

Install an lxde-desktop with the latest sid image:
G3/G4: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/snapshots/2025-04-01/debian-12.0.0-powerpc-NETINST-1.iso
G5: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/snapshots/2025-04-01/debian-12.0.0-ppc64-NETINST-1.iso
older working images:
https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/ports/snapshots/2023-06-18/debian-12.0.0-powerpc-NETINST-1.iso and the corresponding pp64 variant at the same location

There is a glitch in video now. After booting you end up with a black screen and blinking cursor. We need to fix that first. Boot the system in recovery mode and do the following:

mv /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libglamoregl.so /usr/lib/xorg/modules/libglamoregl.so.bak

If you boot into a black screen, follow this page.

Then after reboot make sure that you have ntp installed
apt install ntp
as you need to have the correct time and date. On my old iBook the battery that keeps the date and time correct is dead, so syncing with a time server is needed. Now make sure you have the correct time and date.

We also want to fix the Home folder:
apt install xdg-user–dirs xdg-user-dirs-gtk

Then it is time to edit the apt sources file again:
apt edit-sources
and add the following line:
deb http://ftp.ports.debian.org/debian-ports unstable main
apt update
then it will complain about the missing key for debian-ports (outdated needs to be changed, key is old):
gpg --recv-keys 81DCBC61
gpg -a --export 81DCBC61 | sudo apt-key add -

uncomment the DVD/CD deb line as well as the sid repository you just added
apt edit-sources
and then update
apt update

The better way to have the right key is to download debian-ports-archive-keyring and install it with
dpkg -i debian-ports-archive-keyring_20xx.xx.xx
use the correct date

If everything went well you are in sid/bullseye!
cat /etc/debian_version

Reboot and enjoy your Debian sid LXDE.

It is very important to install the program hfsprogs. It is needed in case the boot partition gets corrupted. It happens when one tries to upgrade the kernel and the post installation process wants to write to the /dev/sda2 boot partition. It will then complain it is read only and can’t fulfill the task. One has to then do this fix:
sudo fsck.hfs /dev/sda2

Please feel free to give comments and corrections to this guide. I will try to make a wiki post out of it later.