Yellow Dog Linux on a PowerBook G4 for a day
I have been running Mac OS X on my Apple PowerBook G4 since I bought it. However, after upgrading from Tiger (10.4) to Leopard (10.5) I was slightly disappointed at the performance. So, time for trying something else…
I remembered a Linux distribution that can run on PowerPC hardware and already exists for several years: Yellow Dog Linux (YDL) by Terra Soft. The most recent version is 6.0 which came out in the first quarter of this year. Downloading and burning the install image to DVD is as simple as always. Just be sure to download it from a local mirror. In The Netherlands, ftp.nluug.nl is very fast.
I decided to NOT install it dual boot with Mac OSX, since I wanted to reinstall a clean system anyway if I would not like YDL. Installing is a pretty simple task, especially if you have installed some Linux distro before. Put the DVD in the PowerBook and reboot it while holding the C key, so it will boot from DVD
I installed Yellow Dog Linux with all options set to default. That would have to do for my first impressions. After a certain amount of coffee and coke, the OS installation was done and I was ready to boot into YDL.
The interface is very neat and clean, even more when using the default Enlightenment window manager. My wired internet was working and things seemed pretty quick. However, most of the time I use my PowerBook unwired, so I needed the Airport Extreme wireless interface to work. But where did it go?
After some searching, I found out there is a good Howto for getting the Airport Extreme working. If you don’t have the Mac OSX drivers at hand - like me - you can always download the needed Broadcom drivers. This YDL mailinglist message was a good reference for me. So I got the wifi card working! The command ‘iwlist wlan0 scanning’ gave me the wanted results.
I have spent a few hours trying to solve the problem in connecting the Airport Extreme to my access point (AP). The problem probably lies in the fact that I use WPA-PSK/TKIP for encryption. Google was my friend for a while. I have been experimenting with the wpa_supplicant daemon, settings in ifcfg_wlan0 and various things with the iwconfig command. Nothing seemed to work. Searching the web learned me that I was not the only one not getting this to work. As a matter of fact, I have not seen a single comment from someone who was succesful in using WPA encryption with Yellow Dog Linux. Does anyone have any suggestions or tips?
For now, I have put Yellow Dog Linux on a sidetrack and began reinstalling OSX onto my PowerBook…
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