A while back, a friend of mine gave me an iBook (PowerPC 3G-600Mhz, 256MB RAM, 20GB hard drive).  It was in good working condition, running OSX 10.1.

I love technology in all of its forms, so having this as another toy to play with was fun. But I can never leave well enough alone. Since I am a glutton for punishment always up for a challenge, I set out to improve this laptop as much as I could. My goal: to actually make it more useful.

My first order of business was a memory upgrade. The one available memory slot would only accept up to a 512mb so-dimm, so I snagged one from E-bay and installed it.  Next, I attempted an OS upgrade. My research showed that anything above OSX 10.2 was too much for the hardware.  Again, E-bay provided me with a 10.2 install and I upgraded successfully.

What I ended up with at this point, was not really what I was hoping for.  My intention was to have something that would handle light web-surfing and maybe some writing.  Unfortunately, there was not a sufficiently advanced web browser that would run on OSX 10.2. For a moment, I was ready to accept defeat.

There is an unwritten rule that pertains to most all computing devices: If it has a microprocessor, there is a good chance that there is a Linux distribution that will run on it. Some further research pointed me in the direction of the Xubuntu Linux distribution, a derivative of Ubuntu, which had a port for PowerPC processors.  Xubuntu was suggested because the user interface uses less system resources than a standard Ubuntu install.

I was able to download version 9.04 of the Xubuntu distribution for PowerPC processors, which installed flawlessly on my iBook 3G, no configuration file hacking required.  Video display, wireless networking and sound worked with no additional tweaking.  Now I have an up-to-date operating system with the latest version of Firefox, and a ton of productivity applications to boot.  Xubuntu is not terribly resource-hungry either, which makes for a snappier interface than even OSX 10.1 or 10.2 in my experience.

If you’re looking to resurrect some older hardware, but want the modern features of the latest OS, Xubuntu (or many of the other flavors of Linux) may be what you are looking for. Fair warning: if you’ve never attempted a Linux install (or any other OS install for that matter), the effort involved may be more than you bargained for.  On an iBook 3G with similar specifications (or most any other PowerPC based Mac), a novice should be able to follow the prompts and have a successful install. For other hardware, it could get much more complicated, especially getting video, sound and networking operating as it should.  Your mileage may vary, Google is your friend.

Good Luck!