Help installing Fedora 8 on iMac G3

[Catherine Fitzgerald]

I have been trying for a week to install Linux on my old mac: iMac G3, 
500MHz, slot-loading CD, 20G HD. I am completely new to Linux and the 
only time I've ever used command prompts is on a PC, and a very long 
time ago, so if anyone is able to help me, please keep the instuctions 
as clear as possible. I appologise in advance for the long drawn-out 
detail below, but as I have no idea what the problem is I thought it 
better to give as much information as possible.

The problems I have had are:

1- Innitially tried to install Kubuntu 6.04 using a live image burnt 
onto a CD using InfraRecorder (on a Windows XP 2000 pc). The live CD 
would go to a black screen after the initial boot dialog and then run down.

2- As that didn't work, and I was not worried about removing the old OS, 
I tried installing Kubuntu, erasing the old partitions. It would 
install, then freeze on the login and not accept any of my keyboards for 
input (either the mac keyboard, a pc keyboard or either of my wireless 
keyboards) so it was not possible to log in.  After several attempts at 
reinstalling Kubuntu and getting the same problem I decided to try 
installing Fedora.

3- To avoid downloading a large amount I downloaded 
fedora-8-ppc-rescuecd.iso from one of the recommended mirrors and burnt 
it to CD (using InfraRecorder on the pc). Initially the install process 
worked, and it requested a web address to download the images from. I 
chose the monash uni web site (html server) as it is relatively close, 
and the install proceeded up until I hit the 'yes' button for the final 
install process.

4- After hovering on the 'preparing to install' screen for over an hour 
I got this message:

"The file a2ps-4.13b-69.fc8.ppc.rpm cannot be opened.  This is due to a 
missing file, a corrupt package or corrupt media. Please verify your 
installation source.

If you exit, your system will be left in an inconsistent state that will 
likely require reconfiguration."

with the option to reboot or retry. I hit retry and after another hour 
the same message came up again.

5- After rebooting the mac does not recongnise a bootable file (this was 
not a surprise). I put in the rescue cd, which boots without a problem, 
but requires me to know what to do (ie, use a command line and have a 
clue) to do anything.

6- I decided that it might work if I tried the live cd, so downloaded 
and burnt that. The live cd boots, goes through all the loading (mount 
dialogue? - with [ok] in green at the end of each line] then the 
computer goes to a black screen and the cd keeps buzzing away but doing 
nothing. I tried to restart the computer and typed in 'install' at the 
boot prompt, but get a message saying something along the lines of not 
recognised, or the iso can't be booted.

7- Which is where I am now. The HD has been reformatted (the old mac 
software does not recognise it - which is fine because I don't really 
want to go back to the old mac OS), but it has no installed OS that it 
can boot. Is this simply an issue of trying a different mirror to 
install the Fedora operating system, and if so, can you recommend one 
that has all the files intact? Or is the issue that when I burn the CDs 
it is being corrupted there? I can't download the DVD iso as the mac has 
no DVD player, and doing the install over the internet is not a problem 
for me if that is the only way I can do it.

Any advice would be most appreciated.