This is the second of two articles about Linux that used to reside on the main part of the site – it’s a somewhat more whimsical look at why someone might install this operating system on an old Apple.
It’s 1999. In a Manhattan apartment, a writer sits in front of a laptop computer, focused intently on producing an article. The computer is a sleek, chic piece of industrial design, the quintessence of hip electronics in the pre-iPod era. Its sexy black case sports a bright white Apple logo.
If you think this is an opening sequence for Sex and the City, guess again. The writer is me, not Carrie Bradshaw, the apartment is in the decidedly unfashionable neighborhood of Washington Heights, not the swanky Upper East Side, and the article is a feature for Nature Biotechnology, not a proto-blog about relationships. The wardrobe, sets, and dialogue are also several steps down from the HBO series. The computer, however, is the same: an Apple Powerbook G3. The folks in Cupertino dubbed it the “Wallstreet” model.
In the ensuing years, even with ever-newer Apple-branded equipment gracing my desk, I haven’t thrown out my old Wallstreet Powerbook. The rechargeable battery died, so I replaced it. The electrical adapter was recalled, so I replaced it, too. The memory became inadequate, so I upgraded it, and a new hard drive followed soon after that.
With all of the hardware tweaked as far as it could go, the machine finally hit a wall in 2003: Apple’s OS 10.3 “Panther” operating system would not work on it. It was stuck with the previous release, the somewhat buggy (by Apple standards) OS 10.2, also known as “Jaguar.”
After lending the computer to my father-in-law for awhile, I got it back this Easter, and wanted to clean out his old files. I “zeroed” the hard drive, then inserted the OS 10.2 disk to reinstall the system. The screen went haywire.
This is a known bug. The Wallstreet is barely able to run Jaguar, and one of the challenges is in the video system. The unlucky user gets either a completely dark screen, or an unreadable digital hash pattern. Like a cat released from its carrying case, Jaguar was not going back into this machine. The previous operating system, OS 9, is essentially useless these days, so without Jaguar, my Wallstreet was completely obsolete.
Unsurprisingly, many people have consigned their Wallstreets to the recycling bin already. Current eBay prices for this machine are under $200, a tenth of what I paid for mine in 1997.
But I’m cheap, and I’m sentimental. This is a perfectly good computer that cost me a lot of money to buy, and it was my first laptop when I started out as a science journalist. The G3 Series Powerbooks are among the best things Apple has ever designed, and I adore mine. My newer computers just aren’t quite the same.
I turned to the last refuge for aging computers: Linux. Linux is a sophisticated, UNIX-based operating system developed by a community of volunteers. While Apple and Microsoft are happy to leave old hardware behind, generating constant demand for upgrades, the Linux community’s motives are closer to those of a religious sect. Giving away their product to increase the ranks of the converted, they care deeply about making it work on a wide range of hardware. When Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have forsaken you, Linux awaits with open arms.
Every community has its limits, though, and my Wallstreet carries the Linux equivalent of Original Sin. It is an OldWorld Mac.
The OldWorld Macintoshes were built for the classic Mac operating systems, up through OS 9. The “NewWorld” architecture is what you need to run UNIX operating systems properly. My Wallstreet was one of the last OldWorld models Apple built. That’s why Jaguar is unreliable on it, and later Apple operating systems don’t work at all: they’re all based on UNIX. Linux is also UNIX, and it encounters similar problems on OldWorld Macs. Even Linux evangelists concede that not everyone can be saved.
At least, that’s what they say at the front door. Come around the side of the Church of Linux, though, learn the secret language of the command line, and start slipping cryptic new phrases into the search engines. If you can pass for an initiate, you can find the UNIX equivalent of an exorcism: installation protocols for OldWorld Macs. There are no guarantees they will work, but they do exist.
I tried several of these methods, all without success. It was excruciating. I became practiced in dodging the morbid pranks of BootX, tracked my root partition like an elusive quarry, and nearly gave up hope. Then I found Ubuntu.
Ubuntu is a project to make Linux more user-friendly, especially at the installation stage. Like all of the other Linux distributions, Ubuntu does not officially support OldWorld Macs. But searching the Ubuntu site, I quickly found a detailed, thorough set of “unofficial” instructions for OldWorld Mac installation. It was slightly different from the methods I had used before. One stormy Saturday afternoon, alone in the house, I began the new procedure.
The experience of my earlier failures helped me through the tough parts, and it took about three hours to reach the moment of truth: starting my Wallstreet in Ubuntu Linux for the first time. The whirring, clacking, and humming of the hard drive were barely audible as the rain lashed the windows. After a minute, I saw the secret language of the Linux boot sequence start to scroll past on the screen.
Then the lovely 14-inch LCD went blank. I waited. It stayed blank.
“The power of Tux compels you,” I chanted. No response.
Shrugging, I went into the kitchen for a drink of water, letting the disappointment settle in slowly. My Wallstreet was clearly destined for the purgatory of OS 9, maybe even damnation to eBay.
But when I came back into the office, there was the Ubuntu login screen. The blackout was just a momentary pause during the boot sequence, and in fact all was well. I logged in with the user name I’d created during the installation, and saw a modern, UNIX-powered graphical interface, in all its glory. Current versions of Firefox and Open Office were slow on this old machine, but they worked.
My old friend is saved. Praise Ubuntu.
