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Stanton.Sculpture
Asked: 2012-06-07 20:25:14 +0800 CST

Trying to turn an old computer into a server. Where do I start?

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My old computer is a mac powerbook g4 that I am considering turning into an Ubuntu Server for my house of eight to share movies and music and whatever. I've never even thought about doing this kind of stuff before so I don't even know where to start. Can someone point me in the right direction?

My Concerns:

  • Most of my house mates have macs. Will there be compatibility issues?
  • Can I make it a wireless network?
  • My old powerbook g4 might not have the balls.
  • Money

Thanks!

home-server

2 Answers

  1. Ubuntu doesn't officially support PowerPC, but it still provides a version for it:

    https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPC

    According to their FAQ, PowerPC is a community-supported architecture of Ubuntu, and the downloads are available at selected mirrors.

    Read their FAQ for more info.

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  2. Best Answer

    Isn't that a PowerPC model? If so, not that many distros even support that CPU anymore. I tried it with an old Mac PowerPC once, and was disappointed in availability of distros to choose from. I was trying to get a GUI running, to, and that was really futile. Too many apps require intel cpus these days.

    If you're into using the commandline for everything, you can probably do it. There may still be a community-supported version of Ubuntu available, but nothing official. Yellow Dog Linux (YDL) is a good candidate, as they are a long-time supporter of PowerPCs.

    It's something that you probably shouldn't attempt unless you want to learn a lot about Linux, and are willing to spend a lot of time getting it to work. Just don't expect it to be anything like a standard Ubuntu installation.

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