In early 2006 I've bought an iBook G4. It was one of the last ones
with a ppc processor. The Intel based models were already announced
but I couldn't wait that long. The iBook had a 13" monitor and thus
it was very portable, the battery lasted several hours (long enough
for my needs) and it was amazingly quiet. But times changed and so I
didn't need a portable computer any more. The desktop PCs were more
open and customizable so that Linux worked almost out of the box.
But times changed again and at the beginning of this year I needed a
mobile computer again. After having an iBook gathering dust in a
corner for years I've rejected to buy a new notebook. Instead I've
tried to revive the iBook so that I can surf and develop again on
it. The machine was still very portable and very quiet. Even the
battery lasted some hours although it was the original one. The only
problem was the software. It was the same as in the old days and
there weren't any updates. So I was left with a Firefox 3.6, an old
and vulnerable Flash version, Java 5 and gcc 4.0. New languages like
golang don't support ppc at all.
For the web I've installed Camino.
It is a native Mac browser using the Firefox Gecko engine. It
doesn't execute flash directly but offers a one click activation per
embedded flash. So the old Flash version isn't such a great problem.
Unfortunately I've learned after a while that Camino uses an
embedding feature that is no longer supported by Mozilla. So the
future is unclear. There is an alternative but
I haven't given it a try.
For development I've started with gcc 4.6.3 in order to play around
with gcj and C++-11. I wasn't able to compile 4.6.3 until I've
registered at Apple as a developer and downloaded/installed XCode
2.5. When gcc version 4.7 was released I've tried to compile it too
but didn't succeed.
As I've seen no way to get Java 6 or newer on the iBook I've tried
to use what I've got: Java 5. The problems started with the IDE.
Eclipse requires only Java 5 but there was no Mac OS X carbon
version of 3.7. Only 3.6 was available and there only some packages.
As I'm writing this, an unsupported version of 3.7 is available for
download.
Then I've installed JBoss 5.1. It terminated with segmentation
faults when I was using the admin webinterface. Fortunately
deploying worked. I even was able to create a very little Java EE
app. The problem here was that Eclipse and JBoss required more
memory than the 1GB I had. So the computer was constantly swapping
and very slow. I've also tried to use Spring Roo as a light weight
alternative but although it was marked as Java 5 compatible it threw
a lot of error messages and didn't work.
This all added up to make me very frustrated. Using outdated
software is no fun. But I still wasn't ready to throw away good
working hardware. So I decided to install Ubuntu. Ubuntu doesn't
officially support the ppc platform but there is a community
version.
My greatest fear was that the system was not usable because the
mouse had only one button and you need three on a Linux system. It
turned out that this wasn't a problem. I've discovered that you can
emulate a right click when you place two fingers on the touchpad and
click. Three fingers emulate a middle mouse button. I don't know if
this works out of the box because I've changed some settings to get
the Mac feeling back. I've disabled the clicking per touchpad and
enabled the scrolling with two fingers.
The newly installed system seemed quit promising. I've got the
latest Firefox and although there is no Chromium (the disadvantage
of JIT) there is thanks to Epiphany a Webkit based browser. With the
program Minitube I could also watch Youtube videos and the Unity
desktop was showing its full advantages on the small 1024x768
display.
It got even better when I've learned that there is a Java 7 for
Linux on PPC. Redhat has created a version of the jdk that uses
"Zero assembler" (or at least only some hundred lines) and has a JIT
that is based on LLVM. There was also an Eclipse in the package
repository.
Unfortunately this is the end of the good news. It turned out that
my quiet little notebook transformed into a rearing monster with
Ubuntu. Even with little workload the fan started working and when
confronted with heavy load it got so loud that I've feared it will
explode every second. On the other hand all the programs seemed to
respond faster.
Things got even worse as I've found out that suspend to ram didn't
work with Ubuntu 11.10. According this forum
entry it is because of a kernel configuration error. I haven't
tried it yet because it was too close to the release of 12.04.
Additionally the graphics card was only supported partially. Some 3D
parts were supported but not all needed for Unity so I've got Unity
2D which is still very useful on the small display but not all the
cool effects work on it.
I've got also some trouble with the battery indicator. It didn't
appear in the top bar. The only solution I've found was to install
wmbatppc, run it manually and let it always stay in the foreground.
The bad news keeped going on as I've tried to install a Java IDE.
First I've realized that I can't get a version from eclipse.org as
SWT contains native code and they offer no download for Linux/ppc.
Then I had to find out that the Eclipse in the package repository
had some unsatisfied dependencies and wasn't installable. I've
installed SWT from the package repository and tried to patch a
Eclipse for x86. I've also found a way to start it without the
binary launcher. The iBook reared for minutes in order to start
Eclipse but the splash screen didn't appear and finally I've got an
error message.
I've then tried to install Netbeans as it has no native code but it
seems that the startup script doesn't like my system either. It
continuously claimed that there is no Main class.
Then I've wanted to to some C++-11 programming and installed the IDE
Anjuta. The fan started rearing after just a little clicking and
scrolling. I've then tried to use Code::Blocks. This IDE finally
worked without turning my iBook into a rearing monster.
Although I've finally found a working IDE I was so disappointed that
I've surrendered and bought a new notebook. After a few days using
the new system I have to say that this was the right decision. So
much is working out of the box that I can't call the iBook a working
system any more.