Ubuntu Linux
The Ubuntu live cd runs fine on my iBook and lets me demonstrate an alternative operating system
Using the Ubuntu Linux 5.04 release on a live CD on my iBook (the old Windows laptop won’t boot from CD-ROM) results in a slow enough boot up to show how a linux boot works. The ‘live’ CD does not touch the iBook hard drive, so a ramdisk is set up, and then Linux is installed in the ramdisk.
- Gnome desktop
- Logical menus with easy access to OpenOffice
- Live CD does not detect iBook modem and won’t access the hard drive
- USB pen drive works fine
- OpenOffice 1.1.3 (last version)
- Firefox 1.0.2 (last version)
- Evolution looks quite a nice e-mail package with integrated calendar and todos
If you had an old G3 iMac or Intel box (and plenty of RAM) then a single CD Ubuntu install might be all you need.
The Mac OS X Disk Utility won’t burn Ubuntu iso images for some strange reason – I found MissingMediaBurner (a graphical front end to the command line cdrecord utility) worked fine.
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bodmas.org, 18 May 2005