Hello! I just tried installing Mandrake 8.2b1 on my PowerBook G3 Wallstreet (OldWorld), and I've run into some problems that you might like to know about.
First, the installer applescript doesn't work because the Finder doesn't find the "Mandrake Linux Install" folder (which by the way is called "Mandrake Linux 8.2 Install", but fixing that doesn't help). This can be cured by replacing 'folder "Mandrake Linux Install"' by 'insertion location' (2 times). This is not the most elegant solution, because "insertion location" is simply the active window which may or may not be the desired folder, but I don't know any way of getting the folder that contains the script file at the moment. I run the applescript, choose "Install/Rescue" - "Install" - "2.4" - "Graphical" - "atyfb". When BootX starts, I notice that the "More kernel arguments" line contains "ramdisk_size=32000", although you recommend 36000. I change this and go on. Linux starts booting, but stops with "Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 03.09", " <0>Rebooting in 180 seconds.." I examine BootX's settings a little more and discover that it has no ramdisk set. I add "all.gz" from the "Linux Kernels" folder in the "Options" dialog and try again. X starts and seems to work OK, apart from the familiar flickering that surprisingly disappears after changing to one of the text consoles and back. In the "Choose your language" dialog, I click "Advanced" because I want to install additional files for swiss german. This makes the dialog fill the whole screen height, and there is no scrollbar for the "other languages" checkboxes, so that my desired swiss german is somewhere unreachable way off the screen. The lowest I can see is "Euskara (Basque)", so I have to count the offset from this to "German|Switzerland" in the list above and use the arrow keys to blindly reach it. I choose Expert Install, choose a "Swiss (German layout)" keyboard layout, partition my hard drive and install the default set of packages. When it comes to X Configuration, I choose XFree 4.2.0, confirm the display settings iMac/PowerBook, 1024x768, 32bit, and choose to start X automatically. Back in MacOS, I tell BootX to use kernel "vmlinuz-2.4.17-17mdk" that I copied from the CD into "Linux Kernels". I'm not sure about what to do with "initrd-2.4.17-17mdk.img", because if I select it as RAM disk in BootX, I can't set the root device because that field is then used for ramdisk size. So I leave it away, enter my root device and delete everything except "video=atyfb:vmode:17" from "More kernel arguments". Linux seems to boot OK, apart from complaining about some "Unresoved symbols" in "Finding module dependencies" and at "Starting pcmcia": "cardmgr[614]: config error, file './config.opts' line 8: no function bindings". I log in and choose to run Gnome. In the First Time Wizard I click "Cancel", which starts KDE instead of Gnome. While starting, KDE displays an error message "Error while initializing sound driver: device /dev/dsp can't be opened (Device or resource busy)". I log out of KDE and try to log into Gnome, but this bounces me back to the login window after some screen flashes and colored vertical stripes. The same thing when I try Sawfish. I notice that I can't change consoles with cmd-ctrl-Fx. Repeating this with a console window open in KDE shows that keys F1 to F4 produce numbers 0 to 3, F5 to F10 produce "~", F11 and F12 produce mouse clicks (as configured). When booting the second time and logging into KDE (Gnome still doesn't work), it displays that message about the sound driver again, but plays its welcome sound nevertheless. That's all for the moment - hope you can make any sense of it. -Christian
