Install on G4867 notes (long)

[Gordon Neault]

I have sucessfully installed the YDL 2.2 Rome distro on my Quicksilver.
Some notes:
The installer is quirky with this machine. The only option that reliably 
worked is:
install-text22
This was a clean install, with free space created in OS9.
I had to revert to a bootloader-root-swap partition scheme in that order. 
Installing with other defined partitions more or less failed, although you 
might be able to get it to work later. The problem is that packages & 
files end up in the / partition anyway (for example /usr files don't go to 
the defined virtual partition).
Defining partitions on this shared drive with MacOS HFS+ early in the map 
were quirky, but could be done if I used the YDL 2.1 installer to define 
the partitions and then restarted with the 2.2 CD. I ended up simply 
creating free space in numbered partitions with MacOS so that the map 
would be consecutive. My practise in the past had been to define MacOS 
first and leave free space at the end for YDL.
For example:
Format 3 partitions in OS9
Free Space
OS9 HFS+
OS9 HFS (not for bootloader)
I would end up with the Mac partitions defined as hda10 & hda11 while YDL 
made hda9, hda 12 and hda13.
Instead I defined 5 partitions in OS9 with the first 3 as free space 
(unallocated). This retained the consecutive naming of YDL partitons, 
which I prefer to avoid confusion later, as in:
hda9 bootloader
hda10 /
hda11 swap
hda12 HFS+
hda13 HFS
There were a lot of hiccups, but trying again usually worked. If for some 
reason the YDL 22 installer balked at format or (more often) mountpoint I 
would reboot to confirm they were correct and if not I would reboot into 
OS9 and recreate the partitions. Attempts to fix a bad partition scheme or 
mount point in the YDL installer invariably failed if there was some 
problem the first time.
With a 2GB / 2GB /usr and 2GB /home installed, but files didn't go in the 
right place, so I changed to a 4GB / partition alone and never had a real 
problem with package install (Developer/Recommended or Home/Office). There 
were too consistent errors during package installation the notes for which 
I have lost, but basically they said something like:
/var/temp does not exist; in any case the install proceeded and reboot was 
fine.

The problem:
I can run the machine with nearly any video setting I want (screen size, 
refresh rate) and the command prompt is a fine white on black text with a 
correct penguin. Starting the X server is the problem; colors are reversed 
(ie white is black, black is dark blue, most everything else is a muddy 
shade of brown). Checking the color picker reveals most primary colors are 
there but 80% of them are some form of yellow/brown/orange. Many screens 
and particularly icons are unreadable. I have managed to find a neutral 
green desktop background color and more-or-less grey on black windows by 
playing with KDE themes and colors, so it is useable sometimes. I have 
tried most any video setting I can think of and this behavior is 
consistent.

Aside from that, it was essentially effortless. Without any configuration 
aside from install prompts, launching Mozilla took me to YDL's page (with 
black on white override in preferences, I can even read it, although all 
graphics are illegible brown on brownish-yellow) and everthing else seems 
to work (haven't tried much though). Haven't tried mail yet. Of course 
sound doesn't work (known problem) but I could care less, I wish the damn 
things would shut up anyway.