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Linux on iMac G3 in 2023 (project review video)

fra9000

fra9000

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 28, 2020
47
72
Italia
Hi,

Just wanted to share the status of the project I have worked on for some months on trying to get the best possible Linux experience on the iMac G3. I was going to detailed it here in text, but then it was too long so I recorded a video instead! :)


Video contents:
  • Hardware specs
  • Project intro
  • OS experience and apps overview
  • Watching videos
  • Browsing the web with ArcticFox
  • Playing 2D games
Few history notes on it.
This is the continuation and direct consequence of the attempts I performed some years ago trying to get @wicknix Ubuntu respins to work on the iMac G3. I posted on that thread my findings in order to boot and install it.

I then also realized the experience was very poor on the 700MHz G3 CXE processor so I kept on modifying the distro in..many, many different way :). Eventually I managed to enable graphic acceleration on the ATi Rage 128 Pro running on 1024x768 24bit resolution.

I have also tried in parallel to install several other distros (Adelie, Void, BSD Unix, Fienix, Mint and so on), but overall I didn't get better results.

The project is still ongoing and you can check the status in the video.
Depending on available free time I will try to go on with that.

Cheers
 
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Great video, congrats.

That's an issue really: Try to have an modern Xorg with proper graphics acceleration, that was discussed in the past, but usually with no success, so it's relatively "simple" paths:

A) Have an specific "period correct" kernel/XORG with graphics acceleration, but "more limited/ancient" packages

B) Have the most "cutting edge" kernel/XORG/everything but having to deal with the quirkiness/incompatibilities and most likely no graphics acceleration. But having access of modern software (that can require other features like AltiVec for PPC like it was with SSE fowards to X86)

I don't have any G3 systems, but I would love some iMac G3, iBook G3 (that was a beautiful design period of Apple)

In your video when you was showing the VLC playback capabilities, I don't remember you talking what was the resolution of the videos, because that (to me) it's an important point.

When discussing the YouTube playback capabilities, that's my personal approach to this subject: In every machine that I have (PPC or X86 even the more modern ones) I don't like to "use my browser like a video player", because I don't like this philosophy, it's really inefficient and needs much more resources (at least 30% or more on PPC) to execute the same task that an specialized program requires.

So in my Void (either 32 or 64 PPC) I use pipe-viewer because I can directly play the videos on the appropriate player of choice, but it has some "limitations" compared to the X86 counterparts (at least in mpv):

1) Since I discovered SponsorBlock it changed my experience of viewing videos, because "I can cut the crap" and makes much more enjoyable. But since mpv on Void (I don't know if in other distros) can't solve the URL I can't play directly and as an consequence can't use SponsorBlock, making an "less than ideal" experience.

2) I use on my Firefox an extension called Open With that enables to configure clickable softwares (it it's design to open links in other browsers, but I use to mpv and YT-DLP) and I didn't have the time to search an alternative to the limitations of the older extensions that the browsers available needs to function.

Good luck with your project.
 
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Dronecatcher said:
Did you try compiling an Altivec free Mplayer - it might save a few more CPU cycles than VLC?
Click to expand...

Nope but you are right, I can try.

Recently it has become quite a pain even recompiling stuff since many dependencies' packages need to be downloaded from repos which are currently quite broken. For instance I was able to easily recompile VLC 2.0.x some years ago. Now same procedure fails because of some wierd dependencies issue (luckly I saved my 2021 vlc deb :)).

I will check Mplayer. On MacOSX partitition I was using that.
 
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Adelie is being worked on to support our G3’s. I’m in the Telegram group and can confirm it’s on their to do list for RC3
 
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MacPro2006VBox said:
Adelie is being worked on to support our G3’s. I’m in the Telegram group and can confirm it’s on their to do list for RC3
Click to expand...

Yep I'm in the group as well ;)
And I have a free partition ready for that..however..

According to my reasearch it is not possible to enable R128 hardware acceleration after 3.x kernel AND (strong &&) after MESA 7.11 due to multiple reasons. So it really depends on what kind of experience Adelie gives with the fbdev/r128-NoAccel driver.

At the same time I have contacted one of the open source driver developers that had contributed long time ago to the r128 drivers. And I have half of a promise he may look into enabling KMS for the ATi Rage one day.

Otherwise we pay him 😅
 
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dextructor said:
Great video, congrats.

That's an issue really: Try to have an modern Xorg with proper graphics acceleration, that was discussed in the past, but usually with no success, so it's relatively "simple" paths:

A) Have an specific "period correct" kernel/XORG with graphics acceleration, but "more limited/ancient" packages

B) Have the most "cutting edge" kernel/XORG/everything but having to deal with the quirkiness/incompatibilities and most likely no graphics acceleration. But having access of modern software (that can require other features like AltiVec for PPC like it was with SSE fowards to X86)

I don't have any G3 systems, but I would love some iMac G3, iBook G3 (that was a beautiful design period of Apple)

In your video when you was showing the VLC playback capabilities, I don't remember you talking what was the resolution of the videos, because that (to me) it's an important point.

When discussing the YouTube playback capabilities, that's my personal approach to this subject: In every machine that I have (PPC or X86 even the more modern ones) I don't like to "use my browser like a video player", because I don't like this philosophy, it's really inefficient and needs much more resources (at least 30% or more on PPC) to execute the same task that an specialized program requires.

So in my Void (either 32 or 64 PPC) I use pipe-viewer because I can directly play the videos on the appropriate player of choice, but it has some "limitations" compared to the X86 counterparts (at least in mpv):

1) Since I discovered SponsorBlock it changed my experience of viewing videos, because "I can cut the crap" and makes much more enjoyable. But since mpv on Void (I don't know if in other distros) can't solve the URL I can't play directly and as an consequence can't use SponsorBlock, making an "less than ideal" experience.

2) I use on my Firefox an extension called Open With that enables to configure clickable softwares (it it's design to open links in other browsers, but I use to mpv and YT-DLP) and I didn't have the time to search an alternative to the limitations of the older extensions that the browsers available needs to function.

Good luck with your project.
Click to expand...

Thank you for all the suggestion @dextructor!

Yep I agree. I have choosen the path A of yours, since having a performant system was a must for me.
Plus we have the last released ArcticFox and the "modernish" Vlc 2.x running on it, so I am quite satisfied on the "recent apps" side as well.

I will have a look at the links you shared on the youtube part, I will see what works best. 👍

On the video side.. it really depends on the codec:
- MPEG ones of course you can easily play everything (at least up to what fits the XGA screen).
- Modern-codec compressed ones it varies: on the MacOSX I was able to play 360p, on the linux side I think I need to use something better than VLC as suggested above.

Mandalorian trailer I showcased is half-way, in the middle between 360p and 240p.
BTW on the video side even a 240p video looks quite nice on the iMac CRT 😉.
 
I'm waiting for the best browser.. I'm excited about it.. because well.. I wanna use discord just for fun :)
 
fra9000 said:
Hi,

Just wanted to share the status of the project I have worked on for some months on trying to get the best possible Linux experience on the iMac G3. I was going to detailed it here in text, but then it was too long so I recorded a video instead! :)


Video contents:
  • Hardware specs
  • Project intro
  • OS experience and apps overview
  • Watching videos
  • Browsing the web with ArcticFox
  • Playing 2D games
Few history notes on it.
This is the continuation and direct consequence of the attempts I performed some years ago trying to get @wicknix Ubuntu respins to work on the iMac G3. I posted on that thread my findings in order to boot and install it.

I then also realized the experience was very poor on the 700MHz G3 CXE processor so I kept on modifying the distro in..many, many different way :). Eventually I managed to enable graphic acceleration on the ATi Rage 128 Pro running on 1024x768 24bit resolution.

I have also tried in parallel to install several other distros (Adelie, Void, BSD Unix, Fienix, Mint and so on), but overall I didn't get better results.

The project is still ongoing and you can check the status in the video.
Depending on available free time I will try to go on with that.

Cheers
Click to expand...
Hi!

if i can ask, you can give me your sources.list? i didn't find anything in about this, for kindly :)
 
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Yumiko Noua said:
Hi!

if i can ask, you can give me your sources.list? i didn't find anything in about this, for kindly :)
Click to expand...

There’s acceleration in OpenBSD on my Slot loader thanks to Sean of [mention]ActionRetro [/mention] although I’m not running it right now.
 
fra9000 said:
Hi,

Just wanted to share the status of the project I have worked on for some months on trying to get the best possible Linux experience on the iMac G3. I was going to detailed it here in text, but then it was too long so I recorded a video instead! :)


Video contents:
  • Hardware specs
  • Project intro
  • OS experience and apps overview
  • Watching videos
  • Browsing the web with ArcticFox
  • Playing 2D games
Few history notes on it.
This is the continuation and direct consequence of the attempts I performed some years ago trying to get @wicknix Ubuntu respins to work on the iMac G3. I posted on that thread my findings in order to boot and install it.

I then also realized the experience was very poor on the 700MHz G3 CXE processor so I kept on modifying the distro in..many, many different way :). Eventually I managed to enable graphic acceleration on the ATi Rage 128 Pro running on 1024x768 24bit resolution.

I have also tried in parallel to install several other distros (Adelie, Void, BSD Unix, Fienix, Mint and so on), but overall I didn't get better results.

The project is still ongoing and you can check the status in the video.
Depending on available free time I will try to go on with that.

Cheers
Click to expand...
Hi fra9000,
Is your distro available for download? I would love to get my iMac g3 going on this?
What are the best steps to take to install the way you have? Many thanks,
Spook
 
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