Today's positive object lesson was something I never expected to even attempt... I was cleaning out some more junk....namely, 4x PPC iMac's that were used many many moons ago for some polymodding experiments. These machines all work...but with OSX 10.5 being the last version supported by the PPC platform, they are pretty useless systems....especially when the newest version of FF they can run is 3.8.xx....they're just taking up space.
I have 2x 20" and 2x 17", which got carried from the attic & back office to by the back door so I could load them into the truck with some other stuff....some of which I was going to take to the recycler, the iMac's were going to the salvation army to be donated..... I had a recallection of Ubuntu supporting these a long time ago and being sketchy & wonky as hell....so I decided I'd just take a peek and see if support by Ubuntu ended or progressed. Well, apparently some of the geeks with Ubuntu have some love for the PPC, as its still supported officially...I was kind of surprised....so what the hell, I grabbed a 20" off the floor and after downloading the ISO for 16.04.
I remember trying this with v8.xxx, and it was a disaster, and I never looked back at it...but what the hell, lets try one more time. Lubuntu 16.04 ran live just fine, so attempting the install was worth a shot. At the end of the day, had to fiddle around with it a little to get the sound and the wifi to work, but otherwise its not bad. FF45.0.2 prepackaged and the usual stuff....but its stable and very usable. Is it a powerhouse? Hell no. PPC single core CPU @ 2.1GHz 2GB ram....yea, nothing to get excited about....but now they're not going to the salvation army for the tax writeoff. They are great web browsers for the shop in this state....if one gets chemicals splashed on it or knocked off a bench, its no loss.... Not bad!
Ratdude, you better dig yours out!
I have 2x 20" and 2x 17", which got carried from the attic & back office to by the back door so I could load them into the truck with some other stuff....some of which I was going to take to the recycler, the iMac's were going to the salvation army to be donated..... I had a recallection of Ubuntu supporting these a long time ago and being sketchy & wonky as hell....so I decided I'd just take a peek and see if support by Ubuntu ended or progressed. Well, apparently some of the geeks with Ubuntu have some love for the PPC, as its still supported officially...I was kind of surprised....so what the hell, I grabbed a 20" off the floor and after downloading the ISO for 16.04.
I remember trying this with v8.xxx, and it was a disaster, and I never looked back at it...but what the hell, lets try one more time. Lubuntu 16.04 ran live just fine, so attempting the install was worth a shot. At the end of the day, had to fiddle around with it a little to get the sound and the wifi to work, but otherwise its not bad. FF45.0.2 prepackaged and the usual stuff....but its stable and very usable. Is it a powerhouse? Hell no. PPC single core CPU @ 2.1GHz 2GB ram....yea, nothing to get excited about....but now they're not going to the salvation army for the tax writeoff. They are great web browsers for the shop in this state....if one gets chemicals splashed on it or knocked off a bench, its no loss.... Not bad!
Ratdude, you better dig yours out!
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