Best iMacG5 PowerPC Linux multimedia experience - even Q3A port is problematic.

[ruthan]

Hello,
i just want to test PowerPC experience so i bought old Imac G5 (1.8 Ghz, 2 GB RAM, Nvidia Geforce 5200, HDD 160 GB - i would change it for SSD) for retro gaming and experience. Primary i checked MacOS and Mac Classic gaming, but i also wanted to test Linux experience.

I have tried Lubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu Mate 16.04 and Lubuntu 14.04. I was disapointed that at least Lubuntu 14.04 wasnt still able to resize HFS partition during installation.
Lubuntu 14.04 was a bit buggy, Ubuntu mate was too slow, so i have used Lubuntu 16.04 as best option.

Machine is old, so its slow, but not to slow to make me totally angry, at least not for normal experience - but for example Ubuntu software center (not Lubuntu) completly consumes 100% after start and GUI is broken full of glitches and not responsive.

But for me primary is gaming, i just wanted to play Quake 3 arena through IOquake, its running, but experience is not good - by default was instaled Nouveau driver and it
is slow and broken (in 32 bit), but for 640x480 and low details its possible to use it for playing - 30-40FPS, but there is problem with sound - its broken and lagged and in Quake terminal is some AL sound warning - i googled is related probably to openAL sound driver.

Its is best possible PowerPC Linux experience or there is some significant possibility to improve it?

[grok]

Wow. I wanted to try Quake 3 and didn't get it to run on x86/x86-64, though I don't think I tried to wrestle much with ioquake3 or the data extraction tools or whatever. I tried Wine and had input problems. So.. you got farther than I did LOL.
Perhaps Nouveau on PowerPC G5 is very uncommon and has "performance bugs", as well as the FX5200 not attracting much attention anymore. I think it's good that things work.

For the OpenAL warning I wonder if Quake 3 or its ioQuake port has some kind of option like increasing a sound buffer's size. So as to increase some relatively unimportant latency but get things stable. Or try to disable or get rid of Pulseaudio (if you're adventurous or have time you could try to set up OSSv4 instead of ALSA, as well). Oh, and the CPU is single core? though not a bad one. I assume some newer software doesn't care much being CPU hungry, because the user "always" have another core or at least hardware thread.

Perhaps just stick to NES and SNES emulators if you don't want a huge waste of time or to get mad. It would be a funny place to run dosbox too (run PC games on a non-PC) though that's another CPU hog with sound issues when overloaded.

I had the pleasure of trying Ubuntu 10.04 on an iMac G5 (original OS was not working or locked to the original owner's login and password, so we just wiped everything. We even had trouble figuring out how to turn the computer on)
Back then this couldn't use youtube, since there's no Adobe Flash for PPC Linux. So it was just a browsing and VLC machine. Nowadays with html5 perhaps you can watch 360p video in browsers.

The GUI was Gnome 2, which is now Mate. It was quick, because that's what GHz computers are for right? . Perhaps Ubuntu Mate with compositor turned off (if any by default), pulseaudio removed (well, not if you want sound in firefox 52 without hoops) and synaptic or apt-get for software package tasks would work well.

[schwarzygesetzlos]

Is this an AGP iMac G5 or an PCIe one? The Nvidia Geforce 6600 (PCIe) runs well on my PowerMac G5 11,2, no crashes with nouveau so far. But never tried Quake 3, only Extreme Tux Racer.

[ruthan]

AGP, there are specs - August 2004, bigger with 20" screen:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMac_G5

PowerMac is much stronger. I would if GPU of iMac is ugpradable and how much work it would take, there stronger AGP cards..

Which distro use are using and what for backups, because i had to remove whole dist and make image on PC with R-Drive image nad Apple partition scheme support is not ideal and i still not know good image backuping soft on Linux and dont say Filezzila its not working with Apple partition scheme at all..

I had also problem resize partitions on that disc, because of that partition scheme - and in build Mac partitioner cant resize without data lost..

[ruthan]

Wow. I wanted to try Quake 3 and didn't get it to run on x86/x86-64, though I don't think I tried to wrestle much with ioquake3 or the data extraction tools or whatever. I tried Wine and had input problems. So.. you got farther than I did LOL.

Its running even on OrangePI PC, when you trying enough..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUqClKB_UEM

On x86 its easy, just install it on Steam in Windows - Wine and copy all *.pak from baseq3 as bonus you could use also *.cfg what where are saves and character details.. Its just copy paste to 1 folder nothing awfull.

Yeah CPU is single core? Where i can disscus poor Mesa speed?

Its too slow for youtube, i dont remember details, but is not boot experience and i dont mind 360p. Im not sure if youtube is running on linux at all, its months.

[ruthan]

Use Debian testing Xfce, it runs fast in lower end devices.
https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

Did you ever tester PowerPC version, or you just guessing?

Debian i even dont know which iso to download i never liked their non clean download webpage and installers..