How to make your Mac PowerBook free-software-fanatic friendly.

[reddragdiva]

You too can make your PowerBook safe to use in the presence of free software jihadists! You may wish to pass this on to free software public speakers who don't want to be lynched for the free software equivalent of being caught wearing a leather belt by vegans. (I'm thinking of real-life examples. Of course ideological soundness is much more important than mere politeness to someone giving you their time.)

We just successfully put Ubuntu 6.06 dual-booting onto redcountess's laptop and even the Airport Extreme wifi works. Basically: a. resize your OS X partition to make room for Ubuntu, and install Ubuntu; b. get the Airport Extreme wifi working.

Liz's laptop is a 12" PowerBook G4 1.33GHz running Tiger.

a. Slim your OS X partition. Follow http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=195414.

1. Slim your existing OS X partition right down — delete anything you don't need. Back it up in case you do accidentally kill it. Switch off journaling (per above page).
2. Boot into the Ubuntu live disk and use parted (per above page) to shrink its partition to about 5GB larger than is actually used. (We had a 60GB disk, 20GB of data and made it a 35GB share; 15GB headroom. Choose as suits you.)
3. Reboot and check OS X still works. Switch journaling back on. If you broke it, then good thing you did backups.
4. Run the Ubuntu installer again, giving Ubuntu the remaining space on the disk. Do a complete update using an Ethernet cable, because you certainly won't have wifi.

b. Get the wifi driver installed. (Why Ubuntu doesn't include this is beyond me. The driver may be beta, but there's NO OTHER WAY for this major platform. It is of course the BLOB!! problem. Bah.)

1. You need package bcm43xx-fwcutter — go to http://packages.debian.org/unstable/utils/, go to the project page and go to the PowerPC download.
2. Download the PowerPC deb . Liz says doing this in Firefox will start APT itself and install the deb.
3. Follow the procedure at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx to get it to go. That's a wiki page, so if you have hiccups please do edit the page per your personal experience.

Liz is most pleased how smoothly this went. Smoother than my Compaq W200 does on my Compaq Evo N410c, that's for sure ... I have to recompile every kernel minor-minor version.

Comments

[mjg59.livejournal.com]

Because the firmware is copyrighted material and we have no redistribution rights. And Broadcom don't answer our calls and tell us they're busy washing their hair and WHY DID THEY LEAVE US?

[reddragdiva]

Oh, the BLOB!! problem. Yeah. If this were a 15"or 17" it would of course have a PCMCIA slot and we'd have just whacked a card in.

[poggs.livejournal.com]

The only thing worse than a blob is a blob *plus* a supervisory daemon you can't recompile... such as on my ipw3945 wireless card in my laptop.

[reddragdiva]

Ew. May they be beaten about the balls by a rabid Theo.

[dan-lane.livejournal.com]

Follow this procedure, follow that procedure compile this compile that... I'd rather just dismiss the free-software-fanatics and their funny little ways, use OSX, the OS that Just Works, and get some work done to expand my capitalist empire just that little bit further.

Whatever floats your boat I guess.

[reddragdiva]

And anyway, Windows is standard.

[wintrmute.livejournal.com]

blah. the Broadcom driver has been in the mainstream kernel (2.6.17) for WEEKS now. Come on, get with the times :P

:)

[reddragdiva]

Next version! Edgy Eft! Fluffy Fuckwit! Arrogant Astronaut!

Is the binary blob firmware problem solved, or said blob at least under a free licence?

[wintrmute.livejournal.com]

Nope, you still need to extract it from the windows or macos drivers. But it's not exactly painful, is it? Takes about 30 seconds :P