*nix on PowerPC mac

I hav an old powerPC PowerMacintosh 5500/225(lable on hte front) thats all i know about it because when i booted it up it gives me the folppy disk with a ? mark that flashes so often.
Im not a real big fan of mac os but i am of linux and i was wondering if there is a linux distro ou there for free that i can drop in the cd drive and boot from so i can install linux :) thanx


ps i downloaded yellowdog linux 2 (older software older computer) to try on it but it will not boot from the disk and i hav no idea y any ideas?

YDL 2 isn't that old. One of the things you'd need a small MacOS installation to do the Linux installation (I don't know why but that's what is required). You should be able to get OS 8 or 9 for a fairly cheap (like $10) if you look around.

thanx and i would just like to know is there a linux distro i can install on my 33 mhz laptop it has a 210 hdd and floppy only i manily use this laptop for dos and win 3.1 but i would like to put linux on here if at all possiable even if its only command line

AFAIK, all the linux distros will require the same. You could try command + C which I believe should have it boot from CD. I believe that FreeBSD and SUSE also offer PowerPC versions.

control c doenst work either but il get it running eventualy i hav all summer but something i did notice is that the hdd is ide eventho mac uses scsi as its main drive bus but since it is ide would i be able to drop it into my dualboot win98se/redhat linux and lowlevel format it then but a mac verson of linux on it so it will at least boot to something then drop it back into the mac and go from there? if not it doesnt matter

http://www.mac.linux-m68k.org/ <--Linux for real old macs. :D

http://www.mklinux.org/ <-- Linux for PowerPC Macs. :D (You should find a distro and documentation here)

As for your IDE drive, you'd probably need to pre-format it before dropping it in since there is no OS on the Mac and Mac doesn't come with low-level format utils (AFAIK).