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Comment by wslh | Hacker News Reader

There are other operating systems supported for the Mac Mini G4. For example, NetBSD and Linux.

NetBSD yes, but 32-bit Linux distros are getting rare. Adélie Linux is one of the few that has current releases of software.

https://www.adelielinux.org/download/

A few months ago I happened to install Debian/unstable on a G4 mini. ppc32 is no longer a supported architecture -- purely "what you get is what you get".

Still, the process was mostly painless. Everything I needed worked out of the box.

This is the exact same transition process 68k went through for most platforms it was on. Just left it in the build process and as packages were unable to be built for the arch they just delisted them from the builder until core packages no longer functioned; at which point total support was removed:

https://people.debian.org/~cts/debian-m68k/etch/

Gentoo is there for you!

I have an iMac G4 800Mhz and I could never get linux to install as the boot screen (that loads the installer) would always be solid white with light pink text. I imagine it had to do with the nvidia GPU but never bothered to debug. MacOS X and 9.2 worked fine.

Why, though? If you just wanted a small form factor computer to run Linux on, there's no lack of modern hardware that'll do a much better job of that. Running old versions of Mac OS is what makes this hardware interesting.

Not everyone wants to participate in the x86 monoculture and its myriad bugs. A PowerPC machine has many benefits, particularly if someone wants to test that x86 assumptions aren't in their code or infrastructure tools.

Like running NetBSD on the Nintendo Wii, it also has a bit more personality ;)

There is also MorphOS.

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