YDL 2.3 on "Wallstreet" PB-G3/233Mhz, 288Mb RAM, 18Gb HD

[Andrew Stout]

Hello helpful YDL folks,

In a nutshell:  I'm about to undertake to install YDL 2.3 on my aging 
computer, and I'd like advance warning of any issues I'm likely to 
encounter, so I can dodge them if possible, and know how to solve 
them otherwise.

My system:
PowerBook G3 "Wallstreet" 233MHz, 288Mb RAM, 18Gb hard drive (new, of 
course, last October) (that's the pre-USB, black keyboard, 
non-glowing model...)
I currently have the drive partitioned:
5Gb HFS+ with MacOS 9.1 and a few gigs of collected files, applications, etc.
5Gb split into various partitions for Linux *(see below)
8Gb HFS standard meant for common storage and passing between the two 
OSes and filesystems
8Gb SCSI external HD and 4x SCSI external CD-R

Me: (I give this info to indicate appropriate level of advice...)
I'm a passably intelligent pseudo-newbie.  I'm a longtime Mac user, 
but outgrowing it.  I'm a CS major (senior undergrad in the fall) 
with several years experience end-using various Linux/Unix systems, 
but fairly little experience administering my own Linux system.  So 
technical advice is fine, but fairly explicit instructions would be 
helpful.

This January I installed YDL 2.1, successfully to the point where I 
could boot up in KDE and compile HelloWorld.java, but ran out of time 
(before a semester abroad) before getting sound to work (needed a 
kernel recompile) or much in the way of configuration.  Also, wasn't 
at school, so didn't attempt any network stuff.

...My plan is to blow away the current YDL installation (I haven't 
put enough work into it to be worth keeping) and replace it with YDL 
2.3.  I'd rather not reformat the whole disk, but with a compelling 
reason I could zap the MacOS stuff and start over there, too.  (It's 
all backed up on CDs...)  I'm working from a downloaded and burned 
iso, and I have a T3 network connection at my disposal.

I'd like advance warning on any issues I'm likely to enounter, 
because I don't want this to be any more trouble than necessary, and 
because I'm on a timeline:  I'd like to have a fully functional, 
stable Linux system running in time for a conference at the end of 
the month.  For example:
has the YDL disk partitioner gotten any better?  It was crap with 
2.1, and I had to use the one that came with the (otherwise pretty 
worthless) LinuxPPC 2000 Q4 distro I made the mistake of paying for.
has the graphical installer gotten any better (by which I mean more 
compatible)?  In January I could only install text-only.
video settings?  This is always a pain...I have BootX settings that 
work for my current install, but I don't think it's accelerated.  I'd 
like to have decent graphics performance, as my thesis research is in 
computer vision...
kernel compatibility?
what other problems have people had on similar machines?  How did you fix them?
etc.?

Thanks in advance,

Andrew Stout