I've an ibook 500. I've been attempting to install mandriva linux 2005 SE (formerly "Mandrake") over the last two days. Why? Apple's icandy is slowing me down too much, making such a machine dated before its time. I thought I'd try linux. again.

Thing is, I can't format a bootstrap partition. I keep getting an error saying that machine won't boot without bootstrap, even though the drakex wizard has the ability to auto-format. So, I custom-format and partition. Same problem.

The ibook-- and this must be the case for most portables-- has about eight or so driver partitions, i.e. hda1 through hda8. Mandriva docs say to put bootstrap at hda6, which is an apple fw driver. drakex won't even let me re-format it, not that it would even be a good idea if I did so. It simply does not erase under any install CD (osx.4, mandriva, etc.)

I can get all installed except bootloader, obviously, since bootstrap partition can't be formatted. There does not seem to be any other incident of this on the net. I googled me heart out.

thanks.

hda6 is not the correct place for the bootloader in your case, I think their docs are just fairly generic. You'll have to make a bootstrap partition specifically for it, and there's a special type you have to do in pdisk, or mac-fdisk, or whatever it is they include in their utility, called apple_bootstrap .. it's usually only a couple of megs .. once it's there the installer might be a bit happier.

Alternately I've had very good results lately with running Fedora Core 4 on PPC machines, it mostly "just works". There's also Yellow Dog Linux (which is a bit older but mostly works and there is a new version to be released really soon - 4.1 is in beta testing). I've never had a lot of luck with Mandriva PPC installations, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.

I did just as you described....too many times. mandriva just plain doesn't work. oh well. why fix something that isn't really broken? I'll just buy some ram or a new hard drive. or both.

why not try fedora core ted? I run it on a couple machines here and it "just works" ... they also keep very up to date with stuff. Running it on a iMac G3 333 and it's very functional and much snappier than OSX is.

Also to note, if you're going to run just linux on the machine then you can delete _all_ those apple partitions and start fresh, but one word of warning ... after you do that it's a pain in the behind to go back to running OS9 on the machine. For going back to OSX it's pretty simple, just reformat the drive from the Disk Utility app (or from installer).

i may just try feora. thanks for the suggestion:)

Isnt there a Linux Distro called yellowdog or something like that that works on macs?

yep, I mentioned it above. http://www.yellowdoglinux.com

I'm actually currently beta testing stuff for them for their 4.1 release, which should arrive fairly shortly ;)