I tried the Ubuntu Live CD on my iBook, and it seems that suspend works very much better than on Fedora (where it doesn’t work at all). Unfortunatly, the Ubuntu kernel doesn’t seem to include the bcm43xx driver I need to make the wireless work. It also doesn’t include GNOME 2.14 (no, I’m not going to use a beta release).
So, does anyone know of a current distribution for ppc, that has suspend working, and includes the broadcom 43xx driver? I don’t want to have to compile anything myself, because I need my laptop to “just work”, and it’s compiling speed is just far too slow!
Idem,
please anyone, give us a hand.
Compiling the bcm43xx won’t take that much time… Even on your iBook… I agree that Gnome 2.14 is another story. This won’t propably please you cause it’s not a ‘just work’ solution but I’m smoothly running Gentoo with Gnome 2.14, bcm43xx driver and suspend2 on my powerbook (no suspend to ram thanks to nvidia)
Have you tried module-assistant on Ubuntu. It’s a nice curses tool which will automatically fetch source, compile and create kernel packages for a lot of 3rd-party modules. Dunno for Mac version, but on x86, you can find bcm43xx driver…
try dapper beta 2. if you want to play safe use the older text installer (the new installer was ocasionally eating partition tables last week), or just upgrade from breezy. (instructions at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/dapperbeta), i am using dapper now on a powerbook g4
dapper would have been released already if they did not want to put in the extra 6 weeks of polish needed so make it still supportable in 5 years time.
if you manage to find any bugs, then you ought to get them reported now so they can be fixed in the final release.
I agree with ssam, you should try dapper beta 2. It’s pretty much done, except for any major bugs that might come up, artwork, and translations. It’s working great on my G4 mini.
I have just installed Fedora Core 5 on my iBook G4, the bcm43xx is included in extras repository.
You’ll need to update the kernel and NetworkManager.
Then, you just have to get the latest Mac OS X firmware, to install it through bcm43xx-fwcutter.
Load the kernel module bcm43xx with modprobe * , then you configure it through system-config-network. Then launch NetworkManager and you’ll be able to connect any WEP with SSID enabled network.
Suspends work fine on FC5 maybe because I have installed apmud daemon.
* To load at startup the bcm43xx firmware, just edit
/etc/sysconfig/modules/udev-stw.modules
#!/bin/sh
#for i in nvram floppy parport_pc parport lp;do
for i in nvram lp snd-powermac bcm43xx;do
modprobe $i >/dev/null 2>&1
done
I don’t own a PPC, but SUSE 10.1 will be out soon and does have a PPC port. Might be worth trying out. Sorry I’m not sure if your wireless driver is included or how well anything will work.
http://en.opensuse.org/Development_Version#PPC
I have been running dapper since right after the breezy release cycle. The broadcom chipset in ibooks work very well under dapper and the beta is very stable.
If you want gnome 2.14 AND working suspend, maybe you should try out a “beta release”.
Install dapper, add a repo to /etc/apt/sources.list, install the firmware and you have working wireless!
http://ubuntu.cafuego.net/dists/dapper-cafuego/bcm43xx/
or if you prefer the manual method:
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=142727
I’ve been using debian, with stock kernels, and “module-assistant a-i bcm43xx”
suspend works correctly for me since quite a while on an iBook G4. (I’m using pbbuttonsd)
I like the “generic” Debian instead of Ubuntu, which I’m more familiar with (and also because I like sid’s wide selection)
If you don’t want to compile stuff, just install Debian, use the stock kernel, and install the pre-built bcm43xx modules for that kernel.
dapper beta is fine. Sure you get minor (bugfix) updates every day, but it’s not going to break on you. You can also get any of your specific problems fixed by reporting bugs.