Nice Saturday Retro Mission!
I just installed modern Linux: Debian 14 "Forky" (kernel compiled yesterday), from the ground up on an:
Apple iBook G4/1.33 14" 1.25GB RAM (2004).
Wow, this is really fast and cool 😎
Index of /cdimage/ports/snapshots/2025-12-06

Doing some customising, the sound is now working and configuring Conky.

@Gammitin

Sadly there is no modern Linux driver for its GPU. 2D only. Its GPU is a Radeon R200 series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_R200_series support for which was removed from Mesa a few years back. https://docs.mesa3d.org/amber.html

Kernel mode setting is supported for this GPU https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Graphics_processing_unit#AMD so I guess a 2D-only Wayland compositor would work, but stuff like Kwin that uses OpenGL will be using (very very slow) software rendering (if it works at all).

Radeon R200 series - Wikipedia

@Gammitin

As you can see from that mesa3d.org link, there is a Mesa branch called `amber` where the GPU driver for the R200 lives on. I don't believe Debian ships it, though. You'd have to build and install it from source, perhaps by modifying the Mesa package, but I wouldn't know how to do that.

@Gammitin Definitely didn't go straight to eBay to look at prices. Nope.

@thelastpsion @Gammitin

I got one for EUR 56 last year.
It's now running MacOS 9.2.2.

PS: It would also run #openbsd and #netbsd.