Installing Ubuntu Linux on a Power Mac G4 Cube!

It's about time for some more Mac-focused content! Today we're going to try and install Ubuntu Linux 5.04 on my G4 Cube.
Ubuntu 5.04: old-releases.ubuntu.com/relea...
David's First Package: • Unboxing a HUGE Collec...
David's Second Package: • Unboxing the Windows L...
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#MichaelMJD #Ubuntu #Mac

[@Aeduo]

This has to be the smoothest OS install video with the least problems. Seemed to be basically no troubles at all, unless a lot was edited out.

[@DaVince21]

Then I'm glad there's finally a video on the channel that's representative to the common modern install experience (though it graphically looks nicer these days I suppose)! 🙂

[@berserker9689]

I just love watching Linux bring life back into old computers 2000s-era Apple aesthetic was peak

[@IvanKinkle]

It really was. Theirs something so iconic about 1990’s-2000’s Apple designs. The 2000’s - 2006? were so futuristic imo. The iMac was fantastic.

[@AyushTH]

Yes very true I love Apple's designs from back then but ever since the 2021 M1 max MacBook came out I kinda like the design because it takes the good stuff from that era and makes it better, the notch is kinda bad though.

[@dro3m]

@@AyushTH I don’t mind the notch since the menu bar takes up that space up there most of the time anyways

[@bootydaddy9934]

that version of ubuntu is ancient tho, its from 2005 i believe.

[@berserker9689]

@@bootydaddy9934 oh yeah i know, i wish more people installed modern linux on really old hardware but there’s only a few distros that still support 32 bit

[@NatetheAceOfficial]

ShipIt was so much fun. Always made sure to get my new release discs as soon as they were available. I even asked for a bunch of them to show off at a school tech fair in HS. They sent me about 20 discs, many GNOME discs, but a handful of Kubuntu discs as well as a big pack of stickers. It was so cool of them to support my excitement. I handed out a bunch that day, and even did install demos on my Dell Inspiron. The sound didn't work and the Wi-Fi was borked, but I was happy to show anyone willing to sit and talk about it.

[@lejoshmont2093]

Reminds me of one of my newer Mac books but I hear there are some fixes these days to semi rectify the issues.

[@defconzero]

These computers are so cool, really an evolution of Jobs' NEXTcube, even down to the unix-based OS with macOS X

[@amartufo]

As someone who's using the Linux from 2010 as a full Linux distro user, I'm amazed to see old Ubuntu Linux on older computers. Great video.

[@MichaelMJD]

Thank you!

[@amartufo]

@@MichaelMJD my pleasure Michael. I'm currently preparing my self for Linux LPIC-1, where I run my small KZbin channel, so if you wish you can check out, perhaps leave a sub, it would mean a lot . . . .

[@Eyetrauma]

IMO goes to show how the value of a thing can change over time even though the thing itself remains constant: you were talking about how you'd gotten that G5 tower for $2.50, just recently I had a *brutal* haggling session with a guy over a Windtunnel G4, a computer I can distinctly remember being considered e-waste not too long ago. I also remember people snapping up computers like the G4/G5 to use 'as a cheap Linux box,' much as you're doing in this video, when nowadays you'd be immensely better served by a simple SBC/Pi. Wild.

[@Reziac]

My G4 was someone's discard... complete and working, and worse, they'd paid $3,999.99 for it (receipt is on the HD) and NEVER USED IT. (To be fair, I haven't used it either... no love for MacOS... but couldn't let it go to the dump.)

[@KimPossibleShockwave]

@@Reziac Four thousand bucks for a PC they never used? Just... wow. Was the owner a Californian, or something? XD

[@KimPossibleShockwave]

The RPi basically revolutionized this sort of thing. It's amazing such a tiny PC is so versatile!

[@Reziac]

@@KimPossibleShockwave Actually, yes! Has all sorts of software on it, too...

[@KimPossibleShockwave]

@@Reziac Sounds par the course of Cali. smh Welp, nice find. :)

[@BilisNegra]

Quite surprisingly, there have been Power PC Ubuntu versions up to 16.04 in early 2019! Haven't tried to install any though, it's the kind of thing I'd like to do but never actually get to.

[@skywz]

IIRC you can will get it on the most up to date versions as a community edition

[@teknoman117]

I used to run Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on a G5 tower way back.

[@rhcp1253]

I ran Ubuntu (or Debian) on one of these as a headless torrent client as a kid, and the only thing that was more difficult and harder to get software for was my OG Xbox (which ran Xebian). The PowerPC architecture didn't have many updated repos to install and update packages, but I managed to get the Xbox to run a Subsonic server to stream music that the Power Mac G4 Cube had downloaded to my phone. It essentially worked like Google Play Music used to with a similar web interface, except it streamed lossless or encoded it down to whatever I wanted on the fly. Both were so much fun to get up and running, and I loved hearing the sound of the old hard drives on both of them start spinning and piping the music from the Cube to the Xbox and then finally to my phone/computer

[@lejoshmont2093]

That sounds like a fun project

[@trexmike222]

That's a really beautiful computer! Wish i had one.

[@thekornreeper]

Same

[@iodreamify]

Just wanted to say thanks for the Linux content. And it's awesome to hear you have lots of ideas!

[@moonrock41]

I think this version of Ubuntu was the first distro of Linux I ever installed and found it to be useful and intuitive. Later versions not so much.

[@kbhasi]

(1:58) IIRC it was called the alternate installer in Ubuntu, but it's currently called or used in the "mini" installer, while it's called or used in the "netinstall" text mode in Debian. (3:02) I forgot that older versions of Debian and Ubuntu (alternate installer) didn't automatically populate the hostname with "debian" or "ubuntu" respectively!

[@Speedy4you10]

Michael! Thank you for the videos you upload! Not only it's funny but it's enternaning and always very interesting stuff to look at!

[@gamer_i093]

true

[@dreammfyre]

I’d love to mod one of these into something modern. It’s still a pretty amazing look.

[@todor2270]

Somebody made the '' most powerful imac G4''. ITS not the cube but its a good video

[@Evolze]

That Arch Linux logo on the bottom right when he said Ubuntu was the best Linux distro. 😆 Excellent reference and video MJD!

[@yoman9446]

love to see linux content, would love it even more if you make more videos

[@milorad9301]

If you have tone ideas, please make more videos, it's definetely the best content on the internet. I'm currently have flares from IBS and your videos calms me more than anything and thank you for that.

[@AndreasDock]

i find your videos so realaxing... keep it up!

[@VincentParisien]

I always enjoy your retro videos. Thanks for sharing. I'm far from a seasoned Linux user but I was curious what would happen if you tried to "update" or "upgrade" that version of Ubuntu at the command line?

[@arir43]

I just thought of doing this (with Debian) like 2hrs ago on an iMac G4 I have in my basement and just now came across this video! I’m even more excited to try this now.

[@UltraPoyoColt]

These videos are awesome, and so are the computers. Great content.

[@MichaelMJD]

Thank you!

[@UltraPoyoColt]

@@MichaelMJD I really enjoy and love technology so that’s why I love your content!

[@bs_blackscout]

Whatever you do, it's always fun to watch.

[@cutieclysm]

great video Michael! awesome as always 💗🙂

[@MichaelMJD]

Thank you!

[@blainepalmerza]

Awesome video, Michael!

[@MarkHyde]

Awesome video - there are LTS releases that can run on that machine from more recent years but this is a great content idea anyway.

[@georgesenda1952]

I have a Mac Cube aquarium. I hope next year to finally buy a G4 Cube and it would look so cool to see the aquarium in operation & the Mac Cube running my older games.

[@NatetheAceOfficial]

An MJD Linux video? Yes, please!

[@UnrelentingAssault]

Sweet video dude. Hoary/FC2 is around the time I started using Linux -- and in retrospect, I'm pretty sure 13 year old me abused the Shipit system.

[@Coolerorb]

Love these videos 👍👍

[@Calajese]

Oh my lord, I read the description and figured it was a pretty recent version because kernel version 5.4 is still supported but then you read out the packaging and I finally realized how damn old this is.

[@lejoshmont2093]

Yea 5 as in 2005

[@Sugar95]

Love that old ncurses installer, still use whenever possible for both Debian and Ubuntu. So simple

[@frankzappa3834]

This is a duraga1 type video and I’m here for it

[@NoahClevinger]

Great day for some Michael MJD content!

[@Evansmustard]

oh man, that CD booklet gives me war flashbacks. When I was a kid I ordered an ubuntu disc and it arrived in the mail identical to yours. I was excited to try linux and I had installed it on our family pc. Our only pc. a full install. All our family Kodak Easyshare pictures and Windows XP overwritten. My mom cried.

[@KidKomic-oq6mx]

You....ARE...L-U-C-K-Y.....you....are....NOT.....D-E-A-D

[@DaVince21]

Playing the "wait" music while solving Tetravex made me chuckle!

[@itstheweirdguy]

Wow that is a sight to see! That's ancient Ubuntu!

[@aviumcaravan]

that Arch logo peeking in the corner, niiiice

[@johnathantheitguy]

Wow! That's awesome! I have been able to boot 6 operating systems on my Macbook 2010 model, so you should be able to triple boot no problem!

[@jdatlas4668]

Oh, I love Linux on PowerPC, and I love this particular Mac, so this’ll be great.

[@thekornreeper]

Always wanted one of these

[@dreammfyre]

I dunno if it’s intentional, but that song at 8:10 so late 90s/early 00s. That chill out stuff was all over music stores back then.

[@mehrdadshaeri7470]

0:45 that was an arch BTW also as always great video!

[@thatoneuser5066]

Maybe try making a KZbin poll with all the ideas you have and see which one gets the most votes. Or do you mind sharing the Google doc?

[@NathanChisholm041]

I remember seeing that CD on computer magazines back in the day!

[@tfruba]

Hi Michael! I've never used Linux on PPC, but I'm wondering - how far can you go with apt-get upgrade (and distro upgrade)?

[@lejoshmont2093]

I would imagine the official repos are no longer up. I guess you could theoretically take the Gentoo approach and compile everything yourself to update. You would probably land yourself in dependency hell pretty quick.

[@Mike90317]

(the signature MJD time lapse music) nice.

[@TheFatDemon]

"The signature MJD timelapse music" love it

[@smartnima]

Very very very good 👍, I love you Mr mjd

[@spok_real]

amazing video

[@libertyernie]

Several years back I was writing some extract/compress code that needed to work on a big endian processor (since I was adding it to a Wii homebrew app), and it was pretty darn convenient to compile and run a test app for that code on a G4.

[@electriccomics]

Even after seeing various retro-coverage videos of the G4 cube over the years I never even heard of or seen the power brick until now.

[@lejoshmont2093]

That desktop reminds me of when I first discovered Linux when I was a kid only a few short years after this release.

[@BilisNegra]

I'm in for watching a newly done video on the G5 towers and maybe some other stuff from years back. Well, basically anything pre-2017, which is when I started watching the channel.

[@MotownBatman]

I've Always Wanted one of These.. When I worked in Nashville a Apple Repo store had em but they weren't cheap in 2004 lol

[@AnimalFacts]

I wanted to see what would happen if you typed "Sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y"

[@gyztormizirath]

Me too. Or even upgrade Linux kernel and even ubuntu as a whole on it

[@stony4321]

Man I want to install ubuntu again. I remember installing that CD a long ass time ago. I always had issues with other distros, but ubuntu worked best on my computer at the time.

[@lenni-builder]

I have a iMac G5, but the graphics card is broken. The screen is full of vertical lines :( Any idea how to repair it?

[@damouze]

That 'alternate' installer is the installer I still use today, although I have now switched to what I think is a more sensible distribution than Ubuntu, namely Devuan. I had way too many issues with the graphical installer of ubuntu to ever want to use it again.

[@troyBORG]

I'd be curious if you opened up the terminal and tried to do an apt update if canacles servers are even still hosting the files for that old version

[@TommyCrosby]

Oh cool, that's the first Ubuntu version I ever tried and it was a bunch of those discs that were shipped to me.

[@perpetualcollapse]

Reminds me of when I installed Lubuntu on my iMac G5 PPC.

[@myst1cplays302]

This was a cool video

[@Nichiim]

Yoo this is sick

[@TomBudin]

the best era of free install cd's they are the best!!

[@Pupp3tCl0wn]

I had one of these discs! 10.04 Lucid Lynx if i remember correctly. It was shipped to me from Netherlands. It was my first Linux, first international shipped package that i received and my first legal OS

[@silversurfer420]

I wanna try this on my imac DV, would be a fun project

[@TheSampleSlayer]

Stuff Ubuntu turn your G4 into a next-gen Amiga by installing MorphOS! Now that's a video I'd love to see! I mean the engineering behind the majority of the G4 era machines from Apple are based on Commodore's dying legacy!

[@StoneUnturned]

Hi Micheal! :D I love your content! I have a very confusing old computer I need help with, do you think you can help me with it?

[@racoononinternet2132]

Dumb question, cab you install XP to it? How about 95/98? And what I'm really interested in...Longhorn

[@SunIsLost]

3:44 Nice timelapse music! Brought to you by MJD Productions!

[@zincChameleon]

I have Kubuntu Linux installed on a Power Mac G4 Silver, and all the software works, but is slow. Is this because Linux is running on a virtual machine, rather than making direct calls to the hardware?

[@ninethetwotailedfox]

This will be fun to watch XD

[@kami-sora]

“Gnome” i just love the way it’s said

[@Sanrasxz]

I would like to see a video of you trying to daily drive a PowerPC Mac on Linux (any Linux, as modern as you can get) and see how useable it is today for daily computing tasks. I think it would be an interesting experience.

[@Igarzigar]

What would happen if you would update this Ubuntu version? Is it even upgradeable?

[@jamesg4631]

I gave up trying to install Linux on my G4 cube. I just couldn't get anywhere further than the command line. Could I ask what GPU is in your cube?

[@kkolakowski]

I think this was my first (or one of the first) Ubuntu I used. I have very fond memory with it! It was easy to install, easy to use and I fell in love with GNOME 2.x back then. It was so straightforward, easy to use and fast environment. Also very aesthetically designed! Especially compared to various ugly skins that for some reason were very common back then. Thanks to that, Ubuntu 5.04 and 5.10 were my major OS for a while... For me it was a peak for Ubuntu - later switch to GNOME 3 and Unity broke it for me for some reason... And also: COMPIZ and wobbly windows 😉

[@ps5hasnogames55]

red hat ruins everything. ubuntu was forced to make unity because of red hat ruining gnome 3. and lets not get started on systemd, wayland, pipewire, flatpaks....

[@breadmoth6443]

I would be interested in seeing Yellow Dog Linux being attempted on the G4 cube.

[@beardeth69]

I've always been curious what happens if you try to update one of these really old distros. I understand it's way out of support, but if you run an apt upgrade will some packages still try to upgrade to the most recent version it can?

[@maynnemillares]

No, it will just throw errors. The repository servers for it were long discontinued.

[@lorenzoporciani]

Just asking: Have you tried to use debian? They dropped support for 32bit powerpc later on, if you want I can email to you the link since you have to really navigate the site hosting all the ISO to find it xD

[@mrcyborg9216]

I really enjoyed the Krazy Ken live stream

[@MichaelMJD]

Yeah it was fun!

[@SamuraisEpic]

wow. Michael does such a good job that he only has 9 dislikes. Pure Quality.

[@Nikolai508]

I have some of those Ubuntu CDs, it was quite cool. I guess these days you wouldn't need that when you can just grab a USB.

[@mdavid1955]

Cool!I remember the Cube...the school system I worked for had some. Are you able to install updates to a Linux system that dated?

[@masterkitty]

I'm not sure about 5.04 PPC but on 8.04 x86_64 you can with a bit of work. I wouldn't be surprised if it was possible with this version, too.

[@lejoshmont2093]

@@masterkitty wait you can still run updates for 8.04? I figured those repositories would be decommissioned by now.

[@masterkitty]

@@lejoshmont2093 the official repos that used to be for updating ubuntu 8.04 are down. you can add an archived repository though and that should get you access to the packages once again.

[@lejoshmont2093]

@@masterkitty ok that makes sense

[@DeirdreYoung1]

Watched this video on my Macbook Air 2013 running Manjaro XFCE :)

[@PiddeBas]

Would totally watch an OpenOffice retrospect

[@arrines4669]

It's not possible for the GNOME build date to be in D/M/Y, this disk was for version 5.04, meaning an April release.

[@lucius1976]

What about a modern distro? Is their any for PowerPC architecture? Would guess some does exist

[@CH32mix]

can you try to install compiz fusion on that g4 cube? curious to see if it supports it

[@marksmith9566]

Open Office 4.1.11 is the current version. Will it load?

[@drzeissler]

what gpu are you using in this g4-cube?

[@yarimanko]

i remember i got my first ubuntu disc at a blockbuster - wish i still had it

[@LuisTricoroFlores]

i remember ordering the ubuntu disc all the time, use it for a couple of weeks then switch back to windows

[@cameronschluchtner]

What happens if you update/upgrade/fist upgrade that as far as you can.

[@TravisBHartwell]

My first laptop was an Apple PowerBook Pismo with a G3 (I think?) in it. I ran PPC Debian on it. Was a great machine.

[@LordShaddar]

A retrospective video of OpenOffice would be great

[@dashingriggs]

Didn't expect somebody in my own city (va beach) to be donating on this channel...

[@poundpound]

4:15 look at the cube what are those stripe on the cube?

[@youtubetomp4supportchannel794]

Hey Michael I Love Your Videos PS.It's Me Jackson

[@yoranpro1]

Should i upgrade my Windows 10 pc to Linux? Since its 12 years old (and still better then my laptop eich is on win 11)