I recently acquired a imac G5 with a broken screen from some kind person of the internet so decided to give it a new lease of life!
i got a new screen of ebay and installed the screen easily. (around 15 mins to install)
I wanted to install ubuntu as thats what i tend to use so looked for the latest ubuntu install, i discovered they have stop support for PPC macs but still have versions available using lubuntu, which is a cut down version which would be fine due to the age of the mac.. so i proceeded to the latest 14.0.4 install. The install wouldnt complete so i tried the version before which failed so i tried the video-ofonly in the option of the install which looked promising as the install worked! but after the install i couldnt get past the greater! so i tried various window managers to no prevail. Before giving up I remembered I had used debian on my macbook so i downloaded the latest debian dvd and blew it to a disk.
The install went flawlessly and i ended up with a slick gnome dektop which is very nice to use and look at. I installed a zone minder server and connected my cameras with no problems.
Now the machine runs fine nice and slick now the only problem is because of the processing power which its handling fine the fans are running fast to keep the machine cool. There is no way with moddding the case to fix this so i have a thermaltake mobile II on the way ill update this post later…