I have an iMac G4 PowerMac6,1 which has already seen some years and I would like to install Ubuntu on it (any version) by overwriting the current OS X installation which I can't and don't want to access in any kind of recovery mode or something (no passwords and no intention to get in touch with the system). Is there any change I can get into an Ubuntu live session or a more rudimentary form of installation (the really prefer the former in order to be able to make a dd
backup of the disk easily)?
I've tried so far (pressing left alt key before boot sound to get boot device selection menu):
- booting with USB stick inserted created with usb-creator-gtk with 16 GB USB stick (creates 1 partition fat32, boot and lba partition flag and installs grub bootloader)
- with 14.04 amd64 (not using the MAC version as the download redirected me to the same file as default amd64 version and I don't see mac version available e.g. on http://mirror.serverloft.eu/ubuntu/releases/14.04/) with 2 GB persitence
- with 14.04 i386 without persistence
- booting with USB stick inserted with image of 14.04 amd64 and i386 copied to stick with
sudo dd if=/dev/loopX of=/dev/sdd
(ISO image mounted on loop device) with mac and gpt partition table
boot device selection menu appears in some cases, in others not, but USB stick is never listed (only the primary hard drive).
I know that there're a lot of solutions for installation with access to Mac OS X (e.g. with creation of USB stick on Mac)!
Update (after @BlottoBot 's answer): I tried Ubuntu 12.04, 13.04 and Lubuntu 14.04 with PowerPC architecture from CD or DVD and it got recognized at boot. Unfortunately it gets stuck after. As recommended in the boot screen it tried both
- simply hiting Return
- enter
live video=ofonly
and hiting Return
The made a photo of the output and hope it helps (please comment if you need a transcription)
After the photographed output on the screen it turns white for ever (> 10 Min checked for every OS)
Update 2: Ubuntu 14.04 Server with PowerPC architecture works, i.e. gets beyond the white loading screen (with a blinding yellow screen). What could that mean? Can I - after installing from 14.04 server live CD - install the packages I would have gotten from a desktop live CD by installing e.g. ubuntu-desktop
?
Update 3: I can boot from an USB stick with Lubuntu 14.04, but the behavior is the save as for the live CD (which screen), I also tried custom boot command live video=radeonfb:1440x900-16@60
from the ubuntuforums.org thread, but it doesn't work (because I don't have a Mac Mini, maybe someone knows the right boot command for me).