Installing Ubuntu Linux 12.04 "Precise Pangolin" on an Apple PowerBook G4 1.5

My notes on making this overpriced slab of style jive with Ubuntu's latest long-term support release.

Hardware specs

PowerBook G4 specs on EveryMac

 

Installation procedure

1. Clear free space on your Mac's hard disk, because we're going to shrink the Mac OS X partition by at least 10 gigabytes, perhaps a bit more if you have space.
2. Download the Ubuntu 12.04 Power PC live CD from here.
3. Use the OS X Disk Utility and perform a full verify and repair (if needed) of your system volume (and any other volumes, if you've partitioned your disk).
4. Boot from your OS X system CD/DVD and run Disk Utility again, and this time resize your system partition (and/or any other partitions, as necessary) to give at least 10 GB of free disk space. Allow the operation to fully complete and then restart the computer, removing the system CD/DVD.
   
   
5. Now, boot from the Ubuntu live CD and run the installer. Choose to install Ubuntu alongside OS X. Answer all other prompts to your preference, and allow install to complete.

 

Post-installation Tweaks

1. Install the older Mesa libraries to enable user space mode setting 3d hardware acceleration. Look for the section on this problem here.
   
2. If you want read/write access to Mac filesystems from Ubuntu, disable HFS+ journalling, by booting into Mac OS X and running (if you already have more than one Mac/HFS+ volume, you'll need to repeat this for each one, giving the correct device file name):
   
     sudo diskUtil disableJournal /dev/disk0s1
   
3. Edit the /etc/yaboot.conf and modify the line beginning 'append=' so that it reads as follows:
   
     append="quiet radeon.modeset=0 video=radeonfb:1024x768-24@60 radeon.agpmode=-1 nosplash"
   
   These settings will ensure the best graphics support, with virtual terminals and suspend working properly.
   
4. Update yaboot to use the new settings:
   
     sudo ybin
   
5. Edit /etc/modules and add the following lines to load kernel modules for sound support automatically on boot:
   
   snd_aoa_i2sbus
   snd_aoa_fabric_layout
   snd_aoa_codec_onyx
   
   NB: Use alsamixer to ensure all volume levels are up, and check that the 'Speakers' control is unmuted. I didn't notice this control for the longest time and was pulling my hair out.
   
    
6. Modify the relevant sections of /etc/X11/xorg.conf as follows.
   
   i. First, optimise the ATI Radeon video support for best performance:
   
   Section "Device"
           Identifier  "Card0"
           Driver      "radeon"
           BusID       "PCI:0:16:0"
           Option     "AccelMethod"                "EXA"
           Option     "MigrationHeuristic"         "greedy"
           #Option     "BusType"                   "PCI"
   EndSection
   ii. Next, set up Synaptics support for the AppleTouch pad (in my case this made the pad a lot better to use and stopped it clicking on things when I only wanted to move the pointer):
   
   Section "ServerLayout"
           Identifier     "X.org Configured"
           Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
   #       InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
           InputDevice    "Touchpad" "CorePointer"
           InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
   EndSection
   
   Section "InputDevice"
           Identifier  "TouchPad"
           Driver      "synaptics"
           Option      "Device" "/dev/input/mouse0"
           Option      "Protocol" "auto-dev"
           Option      "LeftEdge" "100"
           Option      "RightEdge" "1120"
           Option      "TopEdge" "30"
           Option      "BottomEdge" "310"
           Option      "FingerLow" "25"
           Option      "FingerHigh" "35"
           Option      "MaxTapTime" "180"
           Option      "MaxTapMove" "220"
           Option      "VertScrollDelta" "25"
           Option      "MaxDoubleTapTime" "180"
           Option      "MinSpeed" "0.40"
           Option      "MaxSpeed" "2.00"
           Option      "AccelFactor" "0.1500"
           Option      "SHMConfig" "on"
           Option      "TapButton1" "1"
           Option      "TapButton2" "3"
           Option      "TapButton3" "2"
           Option      "VertTwoFingerScroll" "1"
   #       Option      "HorizTwoFingerScroll" "1"
           Option      "EdgeMotionUseAlways" "1"
   EndSection
   
   Section "InputClass"
           Identifier "touchpad catchall"
           Driver "synaptics"
           MatchIsTouchpad "on"
           MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
           Option "SHMConfig" "on"
           Option "TapButton1" "1"
           Option "TapButton2" "3"
           Option "TapButton3" "2"
   EndSection 

Optional Tweaks 

1. Install the FlashVideoReplacer plugin for Firefox, and also the mozilla-vlc package. Remove mozilla-totem.