When it doubt, throw NetBSD at it:
http://netbsd.org/ports/#ports-intro
And if you think you have obscure hardware, try this on for size:
I would say it´s not a bad idea. I have been using it for some years, on servers, but also on my main desktop. You can install third party software, like KDE and Gnome, via pkgsrc. Pkgsrc compiles all your packages for you, which may be daunting for KDE and Gnome. You can use binary packages for these situations, using pkgin. It is under pkgtools/pkgin in your pkgsrc directory. Also, have a look at the NetBSD guide. Have fun!
> How much did the BSD ecosystem profit from that?
They don't do it for profit (contribution are welcomed but not mandatory)
Look at this sentence from the NetBSD website :
> The people working on the NetBSD Project want to provide a high-quality system that anyone can use for whatever they want. We are not in it for the money (we are volunteers!), so we have no desire to keep people from distributing our work. However, neither do we want to place our work into the public domain, and thereby give up our claim to even having our names on the software we wrote!
The way I see it, they are proud that companies are using their software.
Of course the licensing may be one of the biggest reason to use a BSD codebase, and the various *BSD are proudly supporting their licensing method.
Well good question. https://archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/netbsd_not_just_for_toasters/
Fosdem talk about NetBSD plus pkgsrc which is actively being used by NASA :)
Some intro to NetBSD http://netbsd.org/gallery/presentations/nia/campplusplus2020/slides.html
I mean NetBSD is simple, powerful and stable. NetBSD is still releasing. Latest version is 9.1. Check it at http://netbsd.org this isn't my daily driver, because on NetBSD Minecraft is unrunable (YET).
Which is the super secure one, isnt it openbsd or freebsd?
It's OpenBSD, albeit there's a very interesting FreeBSD's soft fork, which I also donated to recently, called HardenedBSD, which implements equivalent mitigations to OpenBSD; HBSD's codebase is still FreeBSD's, and costantly synced with it, so it still stays not as stripped down and polished as OpenBSD.
As you may have noticed, I'm biased towards the third major player here, which is NetBSD, which is my favourite operating system, alongside Tribblix. Naturally I can't help but always recommending NetBSD; warning: tends to have a steep learning curve, hardest to set up for desktop, albeit I'm on the process of writing a series of tutorials on NetBSD desktoo usage, which you can find split amid archive.unitedbsd.com and www.unitedbsd.com
> And is there something similar to man pages? So I could get elaborated syntax and help on demand?
BSDs are famous for their man pages, because they actually have the best man pages (all the more as they're written in mdoc!). They often represent all the extent of documentation you need
> nice to see grep! <3 idk, maybe one day I might check it out again...now that I think about it, a lot of these seem derived directly from unix, maybe the learning curve isnt as bad as I thought back then!
Is that a joke? I hopevso, otherwise You MUST have a long Wikipedia read on Unix and BSD history tonight
From Windows you should be using the Universal USB Installer.
I don't think I was ever successful getting Ubuntu on a G4 Mac (tried about a year ago)... PowerPC support in Linux seems to be dying off fast. Kind of a shame, it was a good architecture.
If you really need something robust & secure on this machine you could try NetBSD, which is designed for extra-broad hardware compatibility. If it comes down to it, you may be able to install the base from a floppy and download all the other components afterward (including X and a window manager if you want a GUI). That's gonna be more work than just booting a Linux ISO from USB though.