My mom just gave me some cool retro tech I never knew she had!
I think this iBook G4 was released in 2003? It was last updated sometime in 2007. Been in a closet for years. Still works!
Obviously, I have to discover if I can slap #Linux on it! I have zero experience with Macs of this era, OR Linux distros of this era.
I once ran Debian on an iBook G3. Debian dropped official support for these machines a while back, though, and there aren't even unofficial CD images of it for the current Debian version, so you'll need another distro.
Fun related fact: the Linux kernel also still runs on many 680x0-based Macs, namely those with a 68020 or newer.
Which is remarkable, because #Linux dropped support for the 68020's #x86 contemporaries, the 386 and 486, years ago.
The #kernel devs were getting sick of working around the 386's multi-processor-related shortcomings https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=743aa456c1834f76982af44e8b71d1a0b2a82e21 and the 486's lack of a cycle counter and 64-bit compare-and-swap instruction. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/202504250[email protected]/
I guess it speaks to the skill of #Motorola engineers that their 680x0 design never provoked such frustration among the #Linux crew.
Jason Evangelho 🐧🎒
ARGVMI~1.PIF