iMac (G3 heap of crap) PPC Ubuntu

[Super_X]

Hey. A friend of mine bought an iMac from good will for $50, took it home, then phoned me to ask what was up with it. I went over and saw it was running Debian (not sure what specific ver.) I fiddled with it, only to find X wouldn't work, so I popped in my Ubuntu disc (5.10 PPC) and tried that. It installed correctally, and loads the OS fine, but X still wont load. It just goes to a black screen. What should I do? My thoughts were check the version of X, and see if I could get an older one, perhaps the video card wont handel this version.

I'm not an expert, well, I'm more so a novice, so I came to the people that know ever thing; X86 (hopefully PPC is well known here, too!)

What should I do, any tips, or tricks to find more information so I can be more specific?

Thanks, Guys. (Girls, too. If Ergot's gotten that opperation.)

[Newby]

Check what error x is giving you. xorgconf or modify xorg.conf as appropriate.

[Ergot]

Check what error x is giving you.

That can be done by looking at /var/log/Xorg.0.log

[Joe]

Hey. A friend of mine bought an iMac from good will for $50, took it home, then phoned me to ask what was up with it. I went over and saw it was running Debian (not sure what specific ver.) I fiddled with it, only to find X wouldn't work, so I popped in my Ubuntu disc (5.10 PPC) and tried that. It installed correctally, and loads the OS fine, but X still wont load. It just goes to a black screen. What should I do? My thoughts were check the version of X, and see if I could get an older one, perhaps the video card wont handel this version.

I'm not an expert, well, I'm more so a novice, so I came to the people that know ever thing; X86 (hopefully PPC is well known here, too!)

What should I do, any tips, or tricks to find more information so I can be more specific?

Thanks, Guys. (Girls, too. If Ergot's gotten that opperation.)

I don't know PPC but I can tell you that my G3 iMac runs Ubuntu just fine. It might be something specific to your box. Try getting your hands on an Apple diagnostic CD.

[nslay]

In my experience, Linux, FreeBSD, and even NetBSD don't do so well on PowerPC.  While I am not a fan of OpenBSD, it is the only one that ran extremely well on PowerPC.  All the ports all compile and run properly...X runs properly...everything works well.  There are a few gotchas but overall, you won't notice them. 
If you're curious, I installed and configured OpenBSD on an iMac G4.

NOTE:  I do NOT recommend OpenBSD for the faint of heart. 

[Newby]

OpenBSD's a megabitch.