UbuntuLinux & Apple iBook

[stryder144]

Well, it took me a long while, a lot of googling, and a lot of false starts...I've finally got sound and dvd working on my iBook! You can't imagine how long 8 months feels! Now I have the ultimate (for me) travel companion. Once I wade through several more things (add some more games, enable dma for my dvd drive, etc) I'll be one happy camper!

w00t!

[Lovechild]

Remember to use your good friend Lovey's hint to add a bit of performance using dir_index for ext3:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=37806&

[Tyr_7BE]

Mind posting your experiences? I'm seriously considering picking up an iBook within a month or two and Ubuntu would probably be my distro of choice.

Is there anything you still don't have working (ie, suspend/hibernate is a big one)? How much work is involved in getting everything up to speed?

Oh and does no DMA on your DVD drive mean choppy playback?

[stryder144]

Will do, Lovey. Now, can anyone tell me where I am to put the following line: hdparm -d1 /dev/hdb so that my dvd drive will play smoothly when I reboot? I did a search of the site and found an entry that said to put it in rc.local. I don't have an rc.local. Where should I put that line? I'd really like to have it automagically be taken care of upon reboot instead of having to issue that command every single time I reboot.

Cheers

[stryder144]

[quote author=Tyr_7BE link=board=7;threadid=10614;start=0#msg95396 date=1123386364]
Mind posting your experiences? I'm seriously considering picking up an iBook within a month or two and Ubuntu would probably be my distro of choice.

Is there anything you still don't have working (ie, suspend/hibernate is a big one)? How much work is involved in getting everything up to speed?

Oh and does no DMA on your DVD drive mean choppy playback?
[/quote]

Here is what happens after you install Ubuntu:

1. No sound, your stuck in 800x600 resolution, no suspend and the DVD drive is CD only.
2. nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
-- scroll down until you find the following line:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Color LCD"
Option "DPMS"
-- insert HorizSync 28-49 and VertRefresh 43-72 between the Identifier and the Option lines. Your monitor will now be at the appropriate 1024x768 resolution (once you restart X, that is).
3. nano /etc/modules and insert the following:
-- i2c-core
i2c-keywest
i2c-dev
soundcore
dmasound_core
dmasound_pmac
-- comment out snd-powermac or just erase it
4. sudo apt-get install pmud and pmud-utils for suspend capabilities.
5. sudo apt-get ikeyd for appropriate Apple key mapping.
6. Make sure your sources.list looks like mine:
[tt]#deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 5.04 _Hoary Hedgehog_ - Release powerpc (20050407)]/ hoary main restricted


deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted

## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the
## distribution.
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-updates main restricted
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-updates main restricted

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'universe'
## repository.
## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu
## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to
## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in
## universe WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security
## team.
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary universe
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary universe

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-security main restricted

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-security universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-security universe

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary multiverse

# Contains libdvdcss2, mplayer, etc... for powerpc
deb http://honk.physik.uni-konstanz.de/~...ux-ppc/debian/ mplayer/
[/tt]

Yes, DVD playback without hdparm is choppy and somewhat out of sync, so it's useful to use.

I hope this is helpful. I really encourage you to pick up a nice iBook, you shouldn't be disappointed.

Cheers

[BurntAsh]

runnin ubuntu on my ibook right now, works pretty damn good out of the box with the exception of wifi and sleep (damn apple). with Tiger out now tho and the recent upgrades apple has done to ibook, even with ubuntu acting up im sure tiger is a nice OS, im still iffy with my OS X. very slick and compact and neat and awesome battery power and display. part of me wishes i went with a pc laptop instead just so i had more choice of distro's and better support.

[Tyr_7BE]

Stryder that's brilliant. Thanks so much!

[stryder144]

Okay, I haven't had a whole lot of time to mess with it, but, it seems that suspend doesn't work too well. I've had it boot me off (dropped me to a log in console) and then, the second time, it left the screen blank. Sooo...I'd say that suspend mode isn't too stable yet. I'm going to try to work on figuring out why later on.

I've got a new toy to play with now...a firewire/usb 2.0 external DVD burner (the LG GSA-5163D which burns to DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, dual layer DVD+R, DVD-RAM, CD-R & CD-RW). Now I need to figure out how to get it working (I haven't hooked it up yet as I have some housework to do first). I'll keep everyone posted.

Cheers

[Lovechild]

As for suspend, at the OLS2005 it was decided to merge Suspend2 into the kernel, this means that with 2.6.14 we should see suspension in a better state.

[gmoreno]

I am going to get a mac pretty soon. Stryder do you know if wolfenstien et works in Linux on your mac. Do you have graphics acceleration? Still no linux wifi support?

TIA