bootable OS for powerpc?

[azzyy]

a while ago i was given an iMac G5 for free because the hard drive had died in it and he didnt know what happened (the all in one version) and its been sitting in my shop ever since, well its a rainy day today and i dont have much to do so i thought id frig around with it and try to see what i could do with it , i barely ever deal with macs because damn i hate them so i dont know alot about them. i only have windows computers here and im definitely not buying a CD key for a computer that old and the CD Drive is broken anyway, what are my options if installing something on it? it boots up to that grey screen with the folder icon meaning no OS i have a hard drive here i found thats 10GB and has an apple logo on it so im assuming it has a really old OSX version on it and its IDE and the g5 is sata i was going to use macrium reflect to copy it onto a sata hdd but that seems like a lot of work since the old OSX versions are useless anyway. is there anything i can burn off onto a CD/USB and put in a normal desktop install on an HDD and slide it into the iMac? like a modified version of windows or linux something like that my gues is probably not but if anybody knew it would probably be you guys , also remember that the CD port is broke so whatever i put in has to be already installed on the HDD , i was really hoping to put XP or linux on it it would be pretty cool to sit on the side of my desk 

 

[jjbone1000]

Windows XP is possible though the only way to run it is through emulators which tend to run quite poorly. There are some PowerPC distributions of Linux out there if you can find them but these tend to be old. I know Ubuntu is still available but the last version was 14.04. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCDownloads#A14.04_Trusty_Tahr

If Ubuntu is too resource intensive you can try Lubuntu but that only goes up to 12.04 http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/releases/precise/release/

[steezemageeze]

Windows doesn't support PPC at all. Debian and a couple other distros have PowerPC versions that could work. You'd just install it on the HDD like normal on another computer (assuming the iMac doesn't support USB boot??) and then pop it in the computer, and it should, in theory, work.

[spwath]

I own 7 powerPC systems.

There are some linus distros that can work, I have tried some with little luck. Im just running mac OSX on them.

[PeaceWalker93]

Use OSX 10.4 or 10.5 if it supports it, also Ubuntu runs nice on those old machines

 

(You can install any of those from an USB with no problem)

[Fourthdwarf]

AFAIK, Debian is the only major distro still supporting PPC. But you will probably run into issues as PPC iMacs can't boot from USB.

 

Source: Am running Debian on a G4