Ubuntu MATE 14.04.1 LTS was released a few weeks ago and it became an instant success within the Linux community. Now, it looks like a developer is looking to make the new operating system work on older PowerPC-powered machines.

The PowerPC architecture was used in a number of devices in the last 20 years, but Apple is best known for integrating it for many years into the Macs. Now the company is no longer using PowerPC and they have switched to Intel for a few years, but that doesn't mean that there aren't a lot of users out there with older machines that would love to be able to run something like Ubuntu MATE.

In fact, Canonical dropped the Ubuntu support for PowerPCs a long time ago, although other official flavors, like Lubuntu for example, haven't given up on the idea. There are a number of technical issues to be considered and it's getting increasingly difficult to maintain the support, but as long as there are users and developers that want it, a solution will always be available.

Ubuntu MATE 14.04.1 LTS with PowerPC support is still being tested

The Linux community has always shown that is capable of providing surprises. For example, someone decided to work on this particular Ubuntu MATE support issue for PowerPC computers. He was invited to join the Ubuntu MATE team and provide official support for this architecture.

"A PowerPC edition of Ubuntu Mate is ready for testing! Those familiar with PowerPC will know that yaboot is the default bootloader, and that remains so here, but I've also added grub to make booting directly from an iso file easier. There is no need to burn a DVD!" wrote Adam Smith on Google+.

The support for PowerPC was immediately noticed by the leader of the Ubuntu MATE project, Martin Wimpress. "I'll be in touch to find out what changes I need to make to support PowerPC. If you can push your changes to my scripts to a repository, or make a tarball of them, that would be very helpful and I can merge the diffs," said Wimpress.

So, if you have any old Macs at home, boot them up and help the developers by running Ubuntu MATE 14.04 LTS and by providing much-needed feedback. Any problems that you find should be reported to the team. You can download the Ubuntu MATE 14.04.1 LTS for PowerPC edition from Softpedia and give it a spin, if you have the proper hardware.