OK, I don’t know if this counts as A Hack …

I don’t, really …

Although I think I might just run this past Adrian, Dan and Trevor, to see what they think …

Because what I‘ve done is a touch of … well …

Let’s call it exploring, for want of a better term …

Well, I say SAY exploring …

I’ve actually managed to install a copy of the Dapper Drake release of Xubuntu.

You know, I can practically hear Tim, Adele and Andrea, all going “Wha … ?” in the background; Tim and Adele are in Benfleet, and Andrea’s in Vegas!

No, seriously, ’Del, Andrea’s in Vegas; you know, gambling, fried chicken, Elvis impersonators?

Las Vegas …

I’m burbling, aren’t I?

What I’m actually trying to say is that I’ve managed — with some online guidance — to install a version on Ubuntu onto the vintage iMac.

Mostly because, while Mac OS 9.2 is a nice piece of kit, it does have trouble surfing the Web, and interacting with a ’net that moved on, since the original Ives designed iMac was introduced.

The fact that I’ve installed Ubuntu onto Tim’s laptop, and talked him through both reinstalling and updating it, got me thinking …

Mostly about the word derivative.

You see there’s a couple of version’s of Ubuntu.

As you may have realised, there’s a version of Ubuntu doing the round’s, called Ubuntu Studio; one that’s aimed at the creatives out there, who need to do some seriously heavy-duty video or audio stuff.

But that’s — if I’ve understood things correctly — is just a version of Ubuntu with a different selection of software, and tweaked in very small ways to match what you want to do.

Extra video or audio drivers, what have you.

There’s others.

The main two I’m thinking of, here, are what’s called Kubuntu and Xubuntu.

Did you know your desktop’s an application?

Sort of?

If I’ve understood things correctly — and I’m hoping Adrian will correct me, if I’m wrong — every OS going has what’s called a GUI, a Graphical User Interface.

That’s part of a ‘desktop’; there’s a lot more, I told.

It’s basically an operating system’s way of organising the folder, files and applications you see on screen.

But the main difference between Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Xubuntu, is that they all use different desktops.

Ubuntu uses the Gnome desktop, Kubuntu uses the KDE desktop and Xubuntu — an older version of which I’ve put on the G3 —use one called Xfce.

Now the other reason for using Xubuntu is relatively simple to explain.

It’s a lightweight version.

Well …

I know Adrian’s going to disagree there, but … !!

Basically, Xubuntu is a version aimed at those of us with older, lower spec machines that need an operating system and a set of applications, that uses less room on the hard drive, and the smaller amounts of RAM that go with it.

Which I think I can say is the case with the G3 …

Which is kinda where the problem’s start …

Well, not problems, per sé …

You see, what I’ve used is the three-year-old Dapper Drake version of Xubuntu; the last version of any Ubuntu derivative available for the older PowerPC processors used by Apple, at the time.

•••••

Just as a piece of opinion, here, I’m thinking the reason Apple switched from ppc processor to Intel ones, is the simple fact that the G5 processors were notorious touchy. And hot! I’ve seen inside a G5 PowerMac, and, while I think the design is pretty good, I do know that the cooling systems — complete with pipes not that much narrower than beer line cooling pipes — were the big vulnerable point in the design. Once those go …

Which is unfortunate; as I’ve always pointed out to an old friend, Dave, what would have become the much cooler running G6 is the central processor for his PlayStation 3.

•••••

Back to what I was saying, the version of Xubuntu I used was the 3-year-old Dapper Drake version; the last one still available for a G3 processor.

The actual installation process was the reason for this post title.

I’ve had to hack … sort of …

Well, not literally; that’d take more actually coding skill, and improvising that I think I’ve got.

But — because the Xubuntu ‘Live CD’ and Apple’s hardware aren’t as good a fit as they could be — I had to do some digging on Google, to find out how to install Xubuntu on to the iMac; the two linked posted I found that walked me through it are here and here.

The walk-through is actually a lot simpler than it actually looks; but, ten year’s ago, I’m not sure if I’d’ve been confident enough to do it! It was simply a case of going into Terminal — by pressing ‘ctrl’, ‘alt’ and ‘f1’ — and, at the prompt, typing ‘sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf’.

In the ‘Modules’ section of the resulting file, I had to change the line that read ‘Load “dri”’ to ‘ #Load “dri”’.

A little further down the screen, I had to change the ‘HorizSync’ settings to ‘HorizSync 58-62’ and the ‘VertRefresh’ settings to ‘VertRefresh 75-117’.

Bear with me, only a touch more … !

Once those are changed, you need to hit ‘ctrl’ and ‘O’. Then ‘ctrl’ and ‘X’.

Phew!!

Then, once that’s done, you type ‘sudo killall -HUP gdm’.

Even MORE ‘Phew’!

Now, there’s two more commands I’ve not yet performed, now I’ve got Xubuntu Dapper Drake installed on my machine.

I’ll need to run both sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade to make sure I’ve as many recent upgrades as possible.

But first things first, it look’s like I’m going to have to get a two-button mouse.

Would you believe … ?