[conspire] Installing Ubuntu on PPC/FW Drive

[Rick Moen]

Quoting John Andrews (jla1200 at netzero.net):

> I tried to install the live cd Dapper Drake on a G3 imac.

For a lot of reasons, you're much better off using the Alternate Disk, 
especially on old machines without a lot of RAM.  _Think_ about it.  On
the Desktop Disk, you're firing up all of GNOME, and then on top of
that, while GNOME is grabbing _its_ RAM, you're trying to run a
graphical installer, too.  

Also, the new-ish graphical installer on Desktop Disk is just not as
well debugged as is the tried-and-true one on Alternate Disk (which is a
very slightly modified version of Debian d-i, the ncurses-based
installer on Official Debian "sarge" and later).

> I could  only get it to start in the text mode. I tried startx and got
> some  error messages.(a long list). 

It's unlikely we'd be able to help you, without your quoting verbatim at
least the first few of those.

> I really don't know to configure X11.

It's not that difficult, especially nowadays.  Just do 
"sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg".  (This assumes package
xserver-xorg is installed.  If it isn't, install it.)

> 	1. How do I get that error info out of the live terminal?  
> startx>video.txt? Then copy it to a usbstick.

"startx > /tmp/errorlog 2>&1"  (so as to capture stderr)

But, honestly, I can pretty much guarantee that most of that "error"
output is, relatively speaking, drivel, and doesn't need to be
transcribed.  What you need is probably all of five word, or so.

> 	2. Could I start the installation from text mode?

Alternate Disk.  ;->