Today I decided to install Linux on my 500Mhz iMac G3 with 256 MB RAM. Although this mac is quite old, it can still be employed for internet surfing or as a local web/file server. Its design is terrific and the machine is compact, silent and easy to move.

I am oriented on debian-based distros, so I chose to install Xubuntu (7.04), a light linux distribution (Ubuntu-flavoured), which features Xfce desktop environment instead of Gnome or KDE (you can download Xubuntu freely from the official website: I downloaded the Alternate Install CD, which is easy to install as the Live CD version, but requires less ram).

The installation went smoothly and the only problem I encountered was the freezing of X server at startup; I googled for some information and found several posts which explained how to solve the issue changing various parameters such as monitor horizontal and vertical sync in xorg.conf, however I wasn’t able to start correctly the X server and have the graphical interface working (everything seemed extremely slow and Xfce was frozen) .

Eventually I found a solution and decided to post it here as Mac configurations are quite standard and someone else with this machine could run into the same problem:

• If X or Xfce freeze (or crash) on the first restart after installation you’ll be able to access the terminal through the shortcut ctrl+alt+F1 (don’t wait too much time to access the terminal as the mac could freeze completely and you’ll have to restart it)
• login into the system typing your user and password, then type:
  sudo su
  and repeat your password in order to obtain root access
• now open xorg.conf with nano, a simple text editor:
  nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
• go to the section “Module” inside xorg.conf file and place a comment adding the # symbol before the line Load “dri”:
  # Load "dri"
• Save the xorg.conf file with the shortcut ctrl+o and press Enter
• Reboot the system typing
  reboot
  and everything magically will work

Disabling DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure) couldn’t be a very elegant solution, however, if you don’t plan to use 3D games or OpenGL applications (don’t think this iMac model would run them adequately anyway), this solution makes your old iMac G3 work like a charm and you’ll be able to perform home and office tasks such as surfing the internet, playing music or writing a document with your new brand, free operating system.

Hello, I’m Alberto and yellowjug.com is my personal website, on-line since 2003.

At first I created these pages to host my original true type font. Eventually I added some simple animations and pictures I made, and set up a free e-cards service: tens of thousands of people sent e-cards thought it.
Creating an e-card, yet simple as mine, requires a lot of time and now I’m quite busy, therefore I think I’ll ask some freelance designers friends of mine to animate new e-cards to send for free through this service, as I developed a quite powerful PHP engine which can easily include and categorize new animations or pictures as electronic cards (I’m going to write an article on it, including code examples…).

On may 2007 YellowJug.com has migrated to a new server. I decided to restyle both the internal code and part of the website design.
I’m converting this website into a “container” for my ideas; for this reason I added a projects section where I’ll put some works, scripts ands misc stuff I’m working on. Moreover I converted the homepage into a “blog” section where I’ll be able to write articles and thoughts about subjects I’m interested in.