• Diff for "PowerPC/FAQ"

This is the FAQ for the PowerPC port.

How do I right and middle click?

As Macs have one-button mice and trackpads, Debian PowerPC addresses this by installing mouseemu, a daemon that emulates middle and right clicking to the keyboard. By default, mouseemu maps middle and right click to F10 and F11, respectively (On Powerbook keyboards it can be F11 and F12). These defaults can be changed by editing /etc/defaults/mouseemu.

Note: you can find your Mac's keycodes with the showkey command, but it must be run in a console (ctrl + alt + F1).

Will my hotkeys work?

Yes. Pbbuttonsd, a daemon that governs hotkeys on laptops, is installed by default. Depending on your model, your hotkeys will either work alone or in conjunction with the fn key. Pbbuttonsd also governs many other laptop functions, including energy saving. You may edit /etc/pbbuttonsd.conf to change the default settings.

As with mouseemu, you can find your keyboard's keycodes with the showkey command in a console.

wireless is not working

Apple G4 iBooks and ?PowerBooks come with Broadcom chips. You will need to determine the model before you install the proper driver. Run the command lscpi |grep Wireless to find out.

You will also need the contrib and non-free repositories in your sources.list file. If you have the BCM4318 chip, for example, you would install the following package,

apt-get install firmware-b43-installer

For more help, see bcm43xx

How to get Graphics working: ATI/Radeon

Since Jessie KMS is on by default, now these parameters are needed at boot to get accelerated graphics working,

Linux radeon.modeset=1 video=offb:off video=radeonfb:off radeon.agpmode=-1

Once you login add these to the yaboot.conf file and update using the command ybin -v as root. See example

image=/boot/vmlinux

• label=Linux
  read-only
  initrd=/boot/initrd.img
  append="quiet splash radeon.modeset=1 video=radeonfb:off video=offb:off video=1024x768-32 radeon.agpmode=-1"

Radeon 9000 graphics cards, however, freezes with accelerated graphics enabled. This requires turning off acceleration when KMS is enabled. This is done by enable this option in xorg.conf

Option "?NoAccel" "True"

For more help on Radeon graphics see Dan DeVoto's blog

Why doesn't sound work?

If sound isn't working out of the box, it may be muted by default. Open a volume utility like alsamixer and unmute the Master Volume as well as any speakers or headphones. Then turn up the Master Volume, and also the PCM level (to be kept at or below 75% to avoid distortion).

If you still don't have sound, you may need to add snd-aoa-i2sbus to /etc/modules.

A handful of Mac models (seems to be mostly G3 & G4 iBooks) have sound disabled due to a bug in the 3.16 kernel. A patch that fixes this has been submitted to the kernel development team and will likely show up in a 4.xx kernel. As a temporary workaround, users experiencing this bug can downgrade to the 3.2.0-4 kernel found in oldstable.

Why is my Mac OS 9 partition unbootable?

If you're dual-booting Mac OS 9, you may notice it can no longer boot after installing Debian. This is due to a bug in debian-installer, which can be fixed with Drive Setup on your OS 9 install CD.

Specifically, boot from your OS 9 CD, run Drive Setup, highlight your hard drive in the main window, and finally choose "Update Driver" from the Functions menu. Your OS 9 partition will now be bootable.

What's this Yaboot thing?

Yaboot is a PowerPC bootloader which determines the system you boot into. If you dual or tri-boot, the settings in /etc/yaboot.conf determine which system is the default, which keys let you choose which system, etc.

Some circumstances, such as setting the startup disk while in OS X or Mac OS 9, can cause Yaboot to "disappear." Resetting the PRAM (starting your Mac while pressing Command + Option + p + r until a second chime sounds) usually restores it. If not, starting up while pressing the Option key will take you to a graphical chooser where you can click on the penguin and boot into Linux. From there, run sudo ybin -v to reinitialize Yaboot.

Are there special disk tools for PowerPC Macs?

Yes. Most Linux users are familiar with fdisk, a command line utility for managing disk partitions. The Mac equivalent is mac-fdisk.

If you plan on mounting hfsplus disk partitions or external drives, you may also install hfsprogs and hfsutils, which include several command line utilities for managing and repairing hfsplus partitions.

Are there any Webkit browsers like Safari?

?QupZilla and Midori are two web browsers that run on the Webkit engine. Users of these browsers must be aware, though, that they are not updated regularly with security updates. For PowerPC users, only Iceweasel receives regular security updates (Chromium does as well, but it's not available for PowerPC).