Minimum iBook spec for Ubuntu

I've been using Ubuntu on my PC for a few months now and am very happy.

I'm considering buying a cheap laptop and have noticed that the clamshell iBooks are around £150 on Ebay. Average spec seems to be 300 - 366 Mhz with 96 - 128 MB RAM.

Would you guys say that's decent enough to run Warty? The specs look fairly paltry to me, but I'm always told that PPC speeds are roughly equivalent to an Intel/AMD chip of twice those MHz.

I'd be using the machine for email, Firefox, OpenOffice Writer and Bluefish (HTML/CSS work).

Thanks for any advice you can offer :)

Those specs are quite poor, if you're considering running Linux. The G3 and G4 generation of chips are roughly comparable to the PIII at the same clock speed. I suggest running Linux on an iBook G3 500 and up for acceptable performance. £150 for an iBook clamshell is a little too much. You will be disappointed with the performance it gives.

I run ubuntu on a Powerbook g3 400 - 128mb ram. It will work for email, Firefox, OpenOffice Writer and Bluefish (HTML/CSS work). Dri may not work yet.

Those specs are quite poor, if you're considering running Linux. The G3 and G4 generation of chips are roughly comparable to the PIII at the same clock speed. I suggest running Linux on an iBook G3 500 and up for acceptable performance. £150 for an iBook clamshell is a little too much. You will be disappointed with the performance it gives.

Thanks for the info.

Roughly how much do you think I should spend on a 500 MHz G3 iBook?

Thanks for the info.

Roughly how much do you think I should spend on a 500 MHz G3 iBook? I got an iBook G3 800 MHz with 256 MB RAM for £330 off Ebay back in August 2004. I wouldn't pay more than £200 now for an iBook G3 500 MHz. A brand new iBook costs £619 if you have a student account. I personally don't go for stuff on EBay, especially Apple stuff as they tend to be way too expensive for what they are (fanatical buyers maybe?).

I run ubuntu on a Powerbook g3 400 - 128mb ram. It will work for email, Firefox, OpenOffice Writer and Bluefish (HTML/CSS work). Dri may not work yet.

What's Dri?

Is it speedy enough to use as a second machine?

I personally don't go for stuff on EBay, especially Apple stuff as they tend to be way too expensive for what they are (fanatical buyers maybe?).

I hate buying from Ebay, as I've had my fingers burned too many times. Any suggestions of where is a better place to get a second hand Apple laptop?

I'm not necessarily committed to buying an Apple laptop. I just saw that the old iBook's are relatively low cost and I assume that their specs are far more standardised than older x86 laptops, meaning that getting it working with Ubuntu would be far easier.

I'm running Ubuntu on a '99 Clamshell iBook with a 300MHz G3 and it's working just fine. (well, it would on a 300MHz x86 machine as well I guess)

I don't think it's that slow at all, I can run OpenOffice.org and everything just fine.

The RAM amount is crucial though. I used to have 96MB on it and it did work but things go very swappy and especially using OpenOffice.org is a major PITA. 128 might help a bit but in my experience that is still a little low for a GNOME desktop. I've currently got a 256MB DIMM installed on it and that's what makes all the difference. It's amazing that these machines shipped with 32MB when they were new and can still run the latest GNOME desktop very well.

In theory the system's supposed to be a dream when it comes to hardware support on Linux, power management and all but after installing ubuntu and switching to 2.6 with it there have been some glitches I've not been able to fix yet. The battery life's pretty good for a laptop this old, I guess many of the clamshells will have almost worn out batteries but I'm still getting around 4h at best from mine.

Even old Apple hardware does tend to be a bit expensive, I've noticed. I'm sure you'd get a similarly powered x86 laptop cheaper. I guess Apple users don't like to let go of their systems that easily. ;)

What's Dri?

Is it speedy enough to use as a second machine? DRI is the Direct Rendering Infrastructure, which basically allows 3D acceleration in Linux. DRI doesn't work on newer cards, but it should work find on the Clamshell iBook.

As for the speed, that's variable and it highly depends on what you're expecting in a machine. For my needs, OpenOffice is still slow even on the Powerbook 12" 1.33 GHz with 1.25 GB of RAM. It takes a long time to load, and I basically don't have the patience to wait for it. That's why I use Abiword, but that's another issue altogether.

For the work that I do, writing loads of simulation code in Java and C, I find my machine just 'bearable'. If you're doing light work and don't expect fast responses from your machine, YMMV. You might even be satisfied with the iBook G3 300 Mhz.

Apart from ebay, I don't know anywhere else to buy second hand macs. Sorry.

I've seen a G3 Powerbook in which the L2 cache isn't working. The seller tells me the only difference this makes is that you have to press the reboot button after you switch it on.

That shouldn't cause a prob with Ubuntu, should it? Also, does anyone know if it's easily fixed?

A G3 without an L2 cache is going to be unbearably slow. No idea if it is even fixable.