The Mac mini is an ideal low-cost, high-performance PowerPC development platform for numerous applications. Learn how to install and configure Linux on the mini. Future articles will add the software required to make it into a stand-alone multimedia appliance.
Load Linux on the Mac mini
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
If I only could get a decent modeline for supporting the TV-out (NTSC/PAL), using the DVI->NTSC/PAL converter. Conventional modelines do not seem to work…..
Why do that when it already runs a perfectly good Unix.
“Why Linux?
This series uses the Linux operating system for a couple of reasons. The foremost reason is that it is a design goal for this project to be entirely open source. This goal cannot be fulfilled on top of Mac OS. The other primary reasons for selecting Linux are that it is modularly configurable to a relatively fine granularity, and it offers excellent API-level compatibility amongst different platforms that are popular for high-end (32-bit and larger) embedded cores: PPC, ARM, x86, and MIPS.
I experimented with a few distributions of Linux for PowerPC platforms. Debian (available in Resources) weighs in at a svelte nine gigabyte download, or fourteen CD images, although you don’t actually need all of those disks. I eventually chose Yellow Dog Linux 4.0.1 because the standard disk set is a smaller download (four CD images), and, more importantly, this distribution resembles Fedora very closely. I happen to have spent most of my Linux life working with Red Hat-based products, so this was a comfort choice for me. I had no compelling technical reason to choose Yellow Dog, and if you’re more comfortable with another distribution, feel free to use it as you follow along with this series. The application you’ll build in this series will run happily on practically any distribution.”
Maybe because you want to use it as a development and testing platform, when you multiboot you can use it for OSX, linux (PPC) and most (if not all) x86 OS-es by emulation.
multimedia appliance? with linux? come on, tiger is already way ahead of linux…….
– Because I find linux kernel features / performance / driver set better
– Because it is easier/possible to install my favourite app(s) on Linux
– Because I like Linux pre-intsalled set of apps better then Mac’s
– Because I might want to build Open Mosix cluster of Minis
– Because I want to test my app works on linux as well
– Because I find Linux better supported on the web
– Because I need Samba, which is broken on Tiger
– Because I don’t like idea of closed source/propriatery systems
– Because I want to preserve same Look and Feel that I have on my Laptop
I thought the article was funny but not for the mac fanboy response of “why erase OS X and put linux on it?!” I thought it was funny cause the author thinks you need to download and burn 14 disk images to install debian. Apparently the guy has never heard of a net install. Anyhow if anyone wants to put linux on a mac I would recommend Ubuntu. Now if only there was an open source airport driver…
“The Mac mini is an ideal low-cost, high-performance PowerPC development platform for numerous applications.”
It’s funny to see that when a kind of people speaks about mac mini + OSX, it’s an anemic hardware, but with mac mini + linux, it’s a “high-performance PowerPC” …
-Because I like GNOME
-Because Linux runs well on PPC
-Because we run a Linux laboratory
-Because customizing OS X is a bitch
-Because I like to piss off OS X purists
-Because I can
“Now if only there was an open source airport driver…”
So asks broadcom for it.
I can just quote theo de raadt about that:
“Send a message that open support for hardware matters. A vendor in Redmond largely continues their practices because they get the chipset documentation years before everyone else does. What really upsets us the most is that some Linux vendors are signing Non-Disclosure Agreements with vendors, or contracts that let them distribute firmwares. Meanwhile both Linux and FSF head developers are not asking their communities to help us in our efforts to free development information for all, but are even going further and telling their development communities to not work with us at pressuring vendors. It is ridiculous. ”
Stop complaining about bad support of airport if you do nothing …
I thought the article is well-written, and people will actually do that. I wouldn’t and I have no need for it, but that doesn’t make this a bad initiative.
I do wonder about what features you’re going to break for lack of decent drivers. FireWire, Bluetooth, the fan motor to name but a few.
If you can, why not indeed.
It’ actually good to see that the reviled puny performer I have seen the MacMini be called by some isn’t such a bad combination after all. When it comes down to it, it’s plenty workable.
@Linear
If Samba is broken on Mac OS, why not fix it?
On installing other OSs on a Mac… I had a bad dream once (really) that I booted my Mac and up came the Windows desktop… not good. Not good at all.
Good thing is: when the tester tires of Linux, they can always erase the hard disk and install Mac OS X and get some work done.
And the total lack of a need to find voodoo priests dancing to juju to get a driver to make whatever-wasn’t-working-under-Linux work, will be a bittersweet wake up too. No need to fiddle with the ini settings, just install and run.
Just sweet.
Last time I looked you had to recompile the Linux kernel to include support – should read as: Last time I looked you had to recompile the kernel to add support for almost any type of hardware.
Ever heard of modules?
modprobe whatever-ppc-dev does the trick…
RTFA! It has a lot to do with using the Mac Mini as a substitute for more expensive evaluation boards where you pay big bucks for an unpopulated motherboard and have to pay yet more to populate the thing – no case, no shiny Apple design, no optical drive. (Do I have to repeat the entire article?) Plus if you’re thinking of designing your own “consumer electronics” gadget, you’re not likely to be merely reselling Mac Minis, no matter how lovely you think the user interface is – I’m sure even Steve Jobs wouldn’t be up for using Mac OS X on his television.
Personally, I find it more alarming that between the retail giants and the consumer electronics licensing cartels, 12-hours-a-day-minimum Chinese workers only get a whiff of less than half the retail cost of their output, just so that the average American consumer can slap a few notes down on an impulse purchase and then junk the DVD player in question a few months later when something more shiny catches their eye.
so that I could properly test web-apps under Safari and Internet Explorer 5.0 under Mac OS.
A more expensive solution than struggling with PearPC no doubt.
http://pearpc.sourceforge.net
But Apple as a company is not playing nice with Linux.
Even Solaris and IBM which are no doubt competitors are way more amicable allies.
Hence I don’t feel at all inclined giving my money to Apple; be it software or hardware unless they change an otherwise double-faced attitude.
I don’t despise the operating system or their users, it is a great solid technology with (I’ve been told) brilliant features. Never tested it yet though.
I just despite Apple’s greedy chairmen playing vile politics (generating disgust even among their own user base).
I got the Live CD yesterday and booted it up on my iBook. I found it really nice. The fonts weren’t that nice but other than that I found that it could easily replace my OS X installation. Sure, it’s not as nice as Mac OS X and the optimal choice for running Ubuntu would surely be on known to work x86 hardware but that said, Ubuntu was really nice.
I especially liked the Nautilus spatial set up (the GNOME spatial, not the Ubuntu default spatial), way nicer than Finder
Also, I found the Live CD to be snappier than Panther. It took longer to boot but apps started up faster than in Mac OS X. I can only imagine just how zippy Ubuntu would be on my iBook if it were installed onto it.
I completely understand why people would install Linux on their Macs. Having said that, I think I’ll stick with my shiny Panther (looks nicer, power management, Airport Express supported).
Apt. Fink is still not up to par and apt is the greatest software installation method for any os out there. After using debian for several years I have a hard time going to an operating system that requires me to search the net for apps myself.
Not to mention that I freakin’ hate apple’s method of distributing development tools.
Also, I very much dislike Aqua. I prefer GNOME where I can simply click the user prefs and adjust things like sloppy focus. Perhaps I’m spoiled, but I like an interface that I can tweak to my liking, I always feel like I’m fighting Aqua when using it.
Just read it.
Even IBM will allow a page on a competing product running a competing OS. That is what I mean by amicability. Apple’s real ally is Microsoft.
As soon as my airport card works perfectly in Linux.
I am *so* fed up with Linux distros who think they have it all but can’t get one of the principle parts of the mac experience – simple wireless networking – to operate at all. I don’t care what the reasons for the failure are,nor do I care how they fix it (maybe emulating the Mac OSX driver interface and installing apple’s driver will work, in the same way that NDiswrapper works with Centrino wireless on Linux x86)
Just sort it out. You’d think nobody had ever reverse engineered closed hardware before to hear the way the PPC distro makers tell it.
The truth is that none of the big PPC distros finds the market to be worth enough to put the effort and funds into fixing it.. this casual contempt for users requirements will result in my casual apathy toward PPC linux.
Hear of modules? Sure. I’ve heard of countless modular systems and worked with many just the same. Yet how much of this superior collection of drivers is available as modules under Linux. This is an honest question. Are modular kernel extensions compatible with most or even some distros rather than vendor specific? Again – an honest question.
***
As both. Shocking, isn’t it?
Quite, actually. The last time I looked at the development side of Gnome most were opting to develop with QT or Java. I’ll have to take another look and see how far it has come.
Are you really going to argue that OS X is a flexible and customizable as Linux is? Haha…that’s bordering on hilarity.
Depends on your meaning of customization as I noted above. If you want to talk about the Kernel I’d gladly argue that point. When you look at software development OS X supports most of the existing architectures supported under Linux in addition to having first class support for J2SE, and a few things that can’t be found on Linux such as Cocoa, Carbon, etc.
When it comes to adding custom functionality Objective-C can be easily learned in the span of a week. Can’t rightly say that for C++ or even C. So from the perspective of building custom functionality in terms of userland applictions OS X’s XCode+Objective-C+Cocoa beats the pants off of anything I’ve seen under Linux. Yes I know about GnuStep and I can’t say I know a single person who has managed to get it working without significant issues. Of course the same can be said for a lot of development platforms on both sides of the fence. *cough* Carbon and the pascalish notions found throughout *cough*
“I am *so* fed up with Linux distros who think they have it all but can’t get one of the principle parts of the mac experience – simple wireless networking – to operate at all. I don’t care what the reasons for the failure are,nor do I care how they fix it (maybe emulating the Mac OSX driver interface and installing apple’s driver will work, in the same way that NDiswrapper works with Centrino wireless on Linux x86)
Just sort it out. You’d think nobody had ever reverse engineered closed hardware before to hear the way the PPC distro makers tell it.”
So it’s the ppc linux dev’s fault that Apple uses closed hardware when they could just as easily use a widely known chipset? Give me a break. I think you underestimate the difficulty of reverse engineering a 802.11 card.
So it’s the ppc linux dev’s fault that Apple uses closed hardware when they could just as easily use a widely known chipset? Give me a break. I think you underestimate the difficulty of reverse engineering a 802.11 card.
Obviously – if I assume you aren’t trolling – it is not the PPC devs fault that Apple used that chipset, however their failure to reverse engineer it successfully or find some way of accessing it through emulation is their responsibility alone.
Not to mention that I freakin’ hate apple’s method of distributing development tools.
Downloading is an issue? If you really hate that you can get them with most retail boxes of Mac OS X.
Sure, it’s not very usefull for many people to load linux on a mac mini but if it can be done it will be done. Personally I find it very cool that Linux runs on things like the mac mini, the xbox, …
You are so uninformed that I don’t even know where to begin correcting you — you’re entitled to an opinion but you shouldn’t expect anyone to take you seriously when you spew this drivel.
“Yet how much of this superior collection of drivers is available as modules under Linux. This is an honest question. Are modular kernel extensions compatible with most or even some distros rather than vendor specific? Again – an honest question.”
Basically any device driver can be compiled as a module. Tons of other things also, like the dozen+ of supported filesystems, tcp/ip packet filtering options, kernel based encryption algos, usb, yadda yadda. You should take a look at a linux kernel configuration some time to see just how modular the kernel really is.
“Quite, actually. The last time I looked at the development side of Gnome most were opting to develop with QT or Java. I’ll have to take another look and see how far it has come.”
I have no idea what you’re talking about here. Yes some people use QT, some use GNOME/GTK; GNOME/GTK is by no means unsuccessful or not catching on. Just take a look on sf.net or freshmeat some time to get an idea of how successful the gnome/gtk platform is. Or simply look at what the most popular distros use as a default desktop environment.
“Depends on your meaning of customization as I noted above. If you want to talk about the Kernel I’d gladly argue that point. When you look at software development OS X supports most of the existing architectures supported under Linux in addition to having first class support for J2SE, and a few things that can’t be found on Linux such as Cocoa, Carbon, etc.
When it comes to adding custom functionality Objective-C can be easily learned in the span of a week. Can’t rightly say that for C++ or even C. So from the perspective of building custom functionality in terms of userland applictions OS X’s XCode+Objective-C+Cocoa beats the pants off of anything I’ve seen under Linux. Yes I know about GnuStep and I can’t say I know a single person who has managed to get it working without significant issues. Of course the same can be said for a lot of development platforms on both sides of the fence. *cough* Carbon and the pascalish notions found throughout *cough*””
Saying that linux app development == c/c++ displays, again, your incredible ignorance. Yes, many apps are written in c/c++, but bindings for all the popular gui toolkits are also available in languages like ruby, python, etc which, though I have some respect for obj-c, beat the pants off of obj-c. Not a hell of a lot of people still write userland apps in c, you’re mischaractarizing linux development.
“Not to mention that I freakin’ hate apple’s method of distributing development tools.
Downloading is an issue? If you really hate that you can get them with most retail boxes of Mac OS X.”
Yes, needing to go to apple’s site to download development tools sucks compared to doing an apt-get install g++ make …
Not to mention that I can update my tools daily with one command rather than needing to go through apple’s devel site (which I would need to register with) and check for updates.
There’s also the fact that there are things which aren’t in the apple devel package (and things that ARE in that monstrosity that i don’t necessarily want) — I’d rather use apt and pick and choose what I want, and have the ability to update my tools daily.
> It isn’t a matter of belief. It is a categorical fact.
> GNOME is a desktop environment and development platform.
> With regards to its success, it is one of the two
> largest desktop environments on Unix-like operating
> systems.
I know what GNOME is, spent a couple of years there. GNOME from architecture is a big construction lot and can in no ways be compared to Mac OS X. They are two totally different dimensions.
Anonymous Depends on your meaning of customization as I noted above. If you want to talk about the Kernel I’d gladly argue that point. When you look at software development OS X supports most of the existing architectures supported under Linux in addition to having first class support for J2SE, and a few things that can’t be found on Linux such as Cocoa, Carbon, etc.
Customizability from a system administrators point of view. You can build Linux to run as a multimedia workstation, desktop platform, server platform, clustered platform; to run on old hardware, your xbox, your PDA, etc. You can build the whole operating system up from nothing to suit your particular task, case in point Google. This kind of flexibility or customizability is just unheard of on OS X, or just outright unrealistic. Apple, by and large, determines what you can or can’t do with their OS.
Anonymous When it comes to adding custom functionality Objective-C can be easily learned in the span of a week. Can’t rightly say that for C++ or even C.
Hold up! You can learn Objective-C in one week, but you can’t learn C in the same time period? Isn’t Objective-C a superset of C? In my experience, in takes weeks, months or even years to become proficient in programming languages/frameworks. Anyone who tells you can learn framework X in 21 days, just wants to sell you a book. It’s all lies, hype and mindless zealotry. It takes a lot of hardwork, study and experience to become proficient in any framework, on any OS.
Anonymous So from the perspective of building custom functionality in terms of userland applictions OS X’s XCode+Objective-C+Cocoa beats the pants off of anything I’ve seen under Linux.
You lost me here. You are comparing apples to oranges. Perhaps XCode+Objective-C+Cocoa is great of OS X development, but how does that make it great for Linux development? What is the criteria for measuring the pant beating?
Anonymous es I know about GnuStep and I can’t say I know a single person who has managed to get it working without significant issues.
That’s right, because no one in their right mind will use it for any serious development. Especially given the robust, well tested, popular, portable alternatives, such as GTK+ and Qt.
Anonymous (IP: —.cg.shawcable.net),
Because I doubt the validity of a concept you enjoy I should just go away? Because we don’t share a common point of view I should just disappear? How Hitlerian of you.
duder (IP: —.dsl.milwwi.ameritech.net)
That’s quite interesting regarding what can be done in the Linux kernel as far as modularity but here is another question – how often are device drivers compiled as such and made available in a manner suitable for the average end-user?
The comment about QT was in regards to the popularity of Gnome for development the last time I was at all interested in Linux dev. I never suggested GTK wasn’t successful or unpopular.
In regards to development I didn’t say C/C++ was the only means of developing on Linux, did I? In fact I even made mention of a nice set of frameworks that use Objective-C on Linux. I’ve worked with Python, Ruby, Perl, etc, etc ad nauseum and I am aware of their cross-platform capability (read as: they run on Linux). I am also aware of the difficulties involved in writing good GUI software with at least a few of those languages mentioned.
Regarding development tool distribution I hardly think typing in a URL, clicking two or three links, and running an installer is any less or more difficult than grabbing a package through apt.
Anonymous (IP: 194.201.4.—),
I prefer the Macintosh but will use any tool that does the job. I’m far from a zealot. If you want to discuss zealotry how about the comments above about pissing off fans of a certain computer company as a matter of intent. Talk about your fanboys
I have run Linux and I don’t defend Apple blindly. In fact they have pissed me off quite a few times and I’ve sounded off in various means about it.
As for activation codes – Apple’s operating systems never required them to my knowledge. I don’t think Linux was around in 1984.
PCs with Windows were cheaper than Macs with OS X well before Linux came into the picture and I think Apple just finally wanted to juice the market for all it was worth to the best of its ability. Why ignore such a large market segment? It never made sense to begin with. The presence of Linux may have had some small influence but I’d be hard pressed to believe it was a driving force. PC hardware was cheap long before Linux came around.
I do rejoice in the potential. Hell I’m using that potential right now through several open source technologies and I’m very thankful for the contributions open source, in general, has made to computing. A better question is why do you assume I do not?
I have the choice of a two button mouse. I had to buy it but the choice was there. It has been for some time now. For the record I have a Logitech MX700 mouse with more buttons than I need – works great on my Mac. If I want a print server or firewall I can easily install Darwin though it’s hardware needs may be somewhat higher than your average linux distro. A better finder? Heh – I could make one if I really had problems with the existing tools. I don’t really understand the complaints about Finder – of course this probably makes me an Apple fanboy in your eyes. There are options such as Pathfinder or even rolling our own.
My original discontent was with the concept of intentionally pissing people off. That’s lame no matter how you cut it.
I think the question should be “why Yellow Dog Linux?”. Seriously, is there any reason why almost always when I see such article it’s centered around YDL?
Perhaps because YDL is a time tested PPC distro. I remember when it came around your choices were mostly limited to the defunct LPPC and MkLinux environments. Familiarity may breed contempt but that isn’t all it is host to. =]
PCs with Windows were cheaper than Macs with OS X
should read as
PCs with Windows were cheaper than Macs (this was true well before OS X OR Linux came into existence).
For anybody who thinks I’m a bloody Apple fanboy I very much liked the concept of installing Linux on m’ iPod. Haven’t done it yet but I intend to. Maybe that’ll help bring me up to date on Linux dev. heh.
By the way, looks like Apple is selling Mac Mini with Tiger already.
Does anyone have tried it? Does it run decently? What about the video card, does it cope well with the new features?
I may have come off as if I dislike Apple; I don’t. In fact I recommend macs to my friends and family because, for 95% of the things the average person uses a computer for, they are superior in my opinion.
So what irks me isn’t that I believe Apple makes crappy computers or a crappy os, I think they do a pretty damn good job. What irks me is the legion of Apple fanboys who (as the comments on this article, and every single other article talking about installing another OS on a mac) scream bloody murder as soon as someone suggests that it may just be possible that some people would prefer another OS to their holy grail for some purposes. These are the same people who congregate at apple rumor sites and post 200 comments to a story when steve jobs farts.
Seriously people, apple is just another company that makes a product that people like; people are free to use this product as they want, and just because you believe that their OS is the end game of software technology doesn’t mean that everyone else does. You don’t need to feel offended and flip out on anyone who finds another OS more productive for a certain use.
Get over yourselves. Get over your god-awful holier than thou attitude. Understand that what is right for you is not right for everyone.
duder (IP: —.dsl.milwwi.ameritech.net),
Zealotry is a bad thing on ALL sides. You’ll notice above it what is apparently a Linux user talking about pissing off other people. How is that sort of behavior any better than Apple/Mac fanboyism?
Anonymous: You can’t compare GNOME and MacOS X technologywise. They are far too different. While there are people with brains working on MacOS X, there otoh are people without brains working on GNOME. As we see the mess that GNOME is. So please all you crawl back in your dark caves before mentioning GNOME in the same sentence as MacOS X. GNOME is nothing compared to MacOS X.
Well, I disagree, I find GNOME can do anything OS X does and even does it better for my tasks. I also think the people working on GNOME are very talented and capable. GNOME is a beautiful consistent environment, on par with OS X.
duder (IP: —.dsl.milwwi.ameritech.net),
Fair enough I suppose. Fanboys of all sorts become annoying but I know many that would be called Apple zealots who are in fact interested in running other operating systems on their macs – just because they can. I installed LPPC years ago on my PowerComputing clone. Heh.
As for KDE and Gnome – Just one more holy war and I’ve had my share of those.
Even when someone seems to have their eyes closed it doesn’t necessarily mean they do. I’m living proof of that. Sometimes it’s fun to attack the radical – not cool but still fun so it’ll happen. Maybe now I’ll learn to keep my mouth shut and not invoke such wrath. Heh.
Thanks for the infos btw.
I don’t see any inconsistencies. I could post screenshots of OS X applications using different toolbars and menu structures. Does that make OS X inconsistent?
Anonymous (IP: —.dip.t-dialin.net),
Relax, man. Don’t let the zealots on either side get you so bent up. It’s what makes trolls tick. You stated an opinion, as did I, and we pissed some people off. I’m not sure of your history here but you need to take it easy if you are going to do anything other than grind metal and spin wheels. I agree that Gnome is or hasn’t been clear on its goals at times but they are trying I think and WTF it’s all better than the dark side.
Fair warning: Anyone calls me an Apple fanboy for disliking MS (product and company) will get jacked. =]
By . (IP: —.lan.resnet.iup.edu),
Apple does specify a standard menu layout and toolbar mechanism even if some people, Apple included, don’t implement it properly. Some say Safari’s toolbar isn’t genuine for the fact that it didn’t allow customization but that is a developer choice in many arenas. That being said this is so far off topic that it’s become a cruel insult to the article and I’d like to offer my apologies to the author =]
dr.gonzo,
I feel the anti-gnome fella has added somewhat to the discussion – at least as much as the rest of us. You should probably mod us all down if you do mod him down. =/
ralph (IP: —.adsl.hansenet.de),
Errr – not the best way to convince someone to change their behavior, mate.
i have an ibookG4 1.33 512 ram, and an athlon900 512 ram running ubuntu.. Personally i like both OS very much. But in day to day use, it seemed to me that the athlon running ubuntu was a faster, or more responsive machine. I downloaded the ubuntu 5.04 ppc live cd and tried my first linux on ppc experience two days ago. Aside from the rediculously long boot time(looking for network when it wasnt hooked up)i have to say.. the live cd was very very responsive. In fact I was really surprised, considering it wasnt on the hard drive. Aside from the fact that there is no airport extreme support (grrrrr) and the keyboard wasnt quite right and that the power monitor showed i only had 2 hrs on and 80% charge..ide say the performance from the live cd was equal to or faster than running osx 10.3.9 natively. No flames either way..like i said ,, i really do like osX..but that stupid spinning beachball bothers me.
As a Mac user myself I have cursed the spinning beachball but for a media center where the most you are going to do is swap channels, hit record, or stop, and the like I can’t say I’ve noticed significant response delay on OS X. At least not most of the time anyways. In fact on the backend (not considering the GUI) some Apple multimedia frameworks eg CoreAudio have significantly lower latency than Linux counterparts within the last year or two. Not sure if that has changed much or not though.
If you want to run LinuxPPC better go for a Pegasos based solution. It’s initialaly a bit more expensive but the companies behind are true supporters of Linux and the device is expandable with cheap off-the-shelf compounds. If you purchase a Pegasos via the debian site a decent amount of money goes directly to debian.
Anyway, the mini is a graet device. But I would leave OS X on it (yes – I like OS X) and would buy a Pegasos for Linux (If I hadn’t one already).
forgot to say: 3d-gfx support for Linux on the Peg is far better than it is on the Mac, since you use normal gfx cards (no need to flash tehm to ppc).
But I have applications here of OS X that have icons beside text, icons only, menu handlers on and off depending on the application, applications without tool bars, applications with inconsistent shortcut keys, application with different looks to mention a few. How is OS X any better than GNOME then?
For example, in Xcode, icons usually have text underneath them. In Safari, that isn’t true. Not to mention Xcode, Safari and Mail have totally different looks and feel. I can go on and on. Does this make OS X better?
> How is OS X any better than GNOME then?
In this case I would suggest filling bugreports to Apple. Though my Toolbar explaination is one of many issues known.
But otoh what you are describing are different things here. Window or Dialogs are behaving differently in that aspect. And I recall that MacOSX has Cocoa and Carbon as toolkits as well as offering QT, JAVA and even XUL stuff. I consider this a huge mess. But we also need to see the product as a whole. Apple is doing a bit more here than GNOME, they offer a whole product, Hardware, OSX Layer, Tools, Support and even the Kernel.
But yes I find it quite annoying and irritating to have X types of different window API’s and it should be no justification or excuse that GNOME has to have it the same because MacOSX has it or vice verca..
Quick . . . while the Apple and Linux zealots engage each other . . . somebody install BeOS on there:-)
Well if you have problems with the tool bars on GNOME/GTK applications, I suggest you file bug reports too. GNOME does not have the luxury of providing hardware and software integration to create a unique user experience, like Apple does. But even then, GNOME already has a clean, consistent and pretty look and feel. On top of that, it is very customizable. The question isn’t whether OS X is better than GNOME, the question is how far ahead will GNOME be if it had Apple’s luxury.
I just got a mini and so far I’m not all that impressed. Some things are extremely slow, i’m guessing because of the very slow laptop hard drive it uses. I’ll reserve final judgement until i get my 1GB memory stick in there.
Tiger doesn’t impress me that much either. I find some things very unintuitive. The help does seem good though. Its not too bad but I miss my multiple desktops and other things that I have on my linux workstation. Basically the only reason to have a mac IMO is for the great software apple makes like iLife. OSX is pretty good too it just doesn’t quite live up to the hype I have read about it.
For anyone that is interested in getting a mini I would recommend considering an imac instead. The hardware is just lousy and I think the low end imacs are probably a better bang for the buck.
I am an apple fanatic but I do wonder about some of the silly comments people make. I think its great that people are playing with Linux on PPC. I have Ubuntu live CD lying around ( that admittedly I see no reason to use without airport support).
Why is someone exercising their right to make choices and have interests a bad thing? Especially when it doesn’t affect your choices and interests.
The more people do this kind of stuff, the better for apple and the better for linux and the better for PPC architecture.
Looking at the comments it does make you wonder if the average age of posters hasn’t gone down (severely) over time..
i find it degrading to use this macintosh as a way to promote the powerpc processor.
why don’t they opensource hardware platform based on a ppc. that way _anyone_ (with right skills) can create a computer and put linux (or anything else) if he/she wishes so.
this will then bring a true alternative to the intel based personal computers.
sorry to hear that. I’m assuming you are a Mensa member or live in a high iq society to be calling the people here pathetic. If not you are one off us. I really like apple because i’m a fan of the CPU and RISC tech.
Why bother? The Mac Mini will never run Linux as well as it runs OS X.
To become an *open* platform is exact the aproach of the Pegasos.
See the open desktop workstation:
http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=PPCG…
”
On Bugzilla quite obviously. Why don’t you go there and have a look on your own.”
because you didnt file any.
“No thats knowledge, when was the last time where you have peeked over to KDE ?”
every day
Man, that’s a lot of pages of unsubstatiated arguments. I was hoping for something more to learn. But on topic:
The Mini is rather underpowered. I guess its about as good for development as running PearPC though, so that’s a bonus. And it is a really strong point for Linux to be compatible with practically any hardware imaginable. I don’t find hardware detection or module loading a problem with it, but then if I had a Mac, I’d still be installing gentoo on it and compiling the kernel. Its really not that hard at all. And to rebut an earlier post, Ars Technica named nVidia hardware vendor of the year for the Linux Community. Their Linux drivers are about as good as it gets for Linux. They actually kick the llama’s ….. 😉
And while I’m correcting FUD, Gnome did not “fork” in the sense of starting a new project. They forked in the sense of starting a new branch, similar to Aviary and Trunk in the Mozilla project. They intend to support and update Gnome 2.x while they fundamentally redesign Gnome 3.x. OpenGL rendering is one key feature that has been mentioned for the next generation. Many great programs continue to be developed in GTK2 and GTK#, including GIMP, GAIM, Beagle, and Dashboard. Many others.
So if I had a mini, I’d probably install gentoo on it, with OS X and Gnome for daily use and KDE to play with. But I wouldn’t pay $500 for features like a 4200 rpm HDD, weak GFX card, or any of that. So I guess its pointless to hypothesize on that.
Well i sure would have been nice to be able to dual boot between OS X and Linux, but i would’nt run just Linux on a Mac.
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http://bitsofnews.com Giving you the latest bits.
Surely very funny posts for this article. People going out of the way comparing Mac OS X and GNOME. you are sick if you comapare an OS to a UI. You can of-course compare Aqua and GNOME but that is out of the way for commenting here. I dont understand why a person would want to run only Linux on their Mac minis when dual booting can be a feasible alternative.
umm… the mini uses a mini-dvi connector which means that you can buy modules to allow you to connect to any number of AV I/O Ports.
I own a Mac Mini and a PowerBook and they have exact the same hardware, sad to say also the mentioned BCM4320 WLAN chip.
I would not go again with YDL ’cause their concept for a desktop linux sucks. Instead I would go for a Debian Sarge installation of the PPC NetInstall CD.
Very nice how to at http://tinyurl.com/53s8p
I am not happy with MacOS for dev work either, all of the libaries for Perl, eca. a heavily modified by Apple. But I would not go so far to call Apple *evil* – for now
.
MP
I see a lot of flaming each other, OSs and desktop environment. But I think most are missing the point, I think the size of the mini makes it a great candidate to make it a great candidate for an open source multimedia center, such as a PVR. I use Windows XP, Gentoo and FreeBSD and they all have their places. And I use both KDE and Gnome.
And lets not forget one of the most positive thing about open source and that’s choice. We can choose whatever we want to run on whatever we want. We all got our preferences, at the end of the day it’s what work best for us and what we enjoy.
I don’t think nothing is wrong with running Linux on a mac, this is the attitude that fuels innovation. Cmon, if we just accept things, there might still be no pc today. So I say go crazy and do your stuff.
No. explain the research methodology used there in detail. you will find that the sample is skewed
In what way?
I think you’ll find it isn’t. It’s a representative sample of the people who took part, and no foul play has been suspected at all.
This is just all bizarrely off-topic though.
Because the Mac Mini is what the many thousands of people who have been running a Linux/MythTV/media combination have been waiting for. A kick-ass bit of slim, low-power and low-noise hardware that they can use as a real centre of home entertainment – not some Intel/x86 bloody windfarm, and without all of the layers of unecessary stuff with the Mac OS (the Broadcom wireless is a pain though). They can then couple this hardware with a slim operating system with only the components necessary for a proper media system which is what you get with Linux and the open source software around these days.
I take it n one read the article then? It doesn’t really amount to much – just getting the basics up and running. Hopefully, future parts should put more meat on.
Then you shouldn’t have purchased a Mac, should you? By purchasing a Mac, you’re telling the world “I don’t care if it’s open source or not!”, and it’s not like people at Apple KNOW (or care) that you’re running Linux on it, no statement is being made here other than “I purchased a propriety operating system”.
If you want to make a statement then go buy one of the many x86 solutions that come with Linux preinstalled, that actually shows the world that you purchased something open source, it makes a difference to the numbers, purchasing a mac and then install Linux adds up to NULL.
People buy that piece of crap because it’s a cheap OSX system, not because it’s a cheap system. Of course linux is gonna run on it, they port it to everything… But this article is about as much of a waste of time as an article about running linux on a toaster, who needs it? You can spend less money and get better hardware running linux on an x86 mini (mini atx, itx, eden I dono wtf they’re calling them these days)…
I’m sick of this argument. It has happened every couple of weeks since the release of the Mac Mini. People, please understand these couple of points:
– We all know that OS X has a UNIX based core and Aqua is an elegant interface on top of it.
– Some people prefer to use Linux as a development platform. The Mac Mini provides a cheap soulution for PPC based development. Compare the feature set of the Mac Mini to something like the Kuro Box. (I’m not at all saying the Kuro is a bad choice for development.)
– Linux is open source and IBM has thrown much money into development, they will continue to be an excellent resource for the Linux community. If you check the site, they have many articles about PPC development using the Mac Mini, not only for “Media Centers”.
Most people who troll here are have closed minds and just do not have the foresight to look beyond thier current use of either OS. I really don’t understand these repeated arguments about OSX/Linux/BSD/WinXP, KDE/GNOME/*DE.
Which platform is best is determined by your project goals, price, etc…
So stop trolling, STFU and use what you prefer.
(I use Linux primarily, dual boot with XP, and I wish I had OS X)
Are you even listening to yourselves? Let’s mention some simple guidelines a good deal of you seem to be ignoring.
1. Staying on-topic for one. At best, you’re at an extreme tangent.
2. Personal attacks. C’mon people, this is ridiculous on both sides. You don’t like what they have to say? Fine. Take a deep breath and argue the points. Calmly. I’ll say it again. Calmly. They attacked you? Ignore it. It’s okay, really.
3. Make a wild claim or generalization. Substantiate it. Yes, I know googling for evidence to back up your statements isn’t as exciting or fun as flaming them, but that’s the breaks.
4. Common courtesy. This is very similar to both points #2 and #3. Adopting a superior stance or condescending tone of voice adds nothing to the conversation. Neither does sarcasm or “look what he/she said/did” statements.
5. Take a deep breath. You are reading (mostly anonymous) comments on a message board on the Internet.
This is just an appeal for civility and reason. Would you rather enjoy coming here and engaging in debate, or have to watch your blood pressure everytime someone says something that pisses you off? And yes, none of us follow these guidelines all of the time, but trying is what counts.
It’s supposed to be fun, people.
Damn straight Eric!!
It was a pretty good article. The procedure outlined will probably help people who want to do this sort of thing.
I’ve read a book by the author, it was called something like “Embedded Development on a Shoestring”. The book was about how to build a the GNU toolchain for cross compiling to an ARM7 development board. It included info on how to set up the C runtime (actually setting up the stack and memory maps and stuff), build a standard library (glibc is too big and encumbered), and bring a target up. It was a good book also.
Coming from embedded angle, getting any kind of system that has graphics and sounds for $500 is a real deal. When doing embedded stuff a dev setup may cost many $1000’s and may be incredibly pathetic in terms of power compared to a standard desktop machine. A G4 is actually a very powerful PowerPC machine if you are using it for embedded work and not on the desktop or server space.
As an slightly related matter, I’ve read up a bit on a device called a Peplnk Manga. This is a managed router that can run Linux. It does not have a display, optical drive, sound, or even a drive, but costs $400. I know some people who have bought these to run Linux and the price is reasonable for them. When straying from the commodity desktop PC world devices cost more.
Running Linux on a Mac Mini is a hobby or an experiment, it does not have to make good financial sense.
Well this seems to be most moderated post spree. Well almost 60 comments moderated and it really shows that OSNews as a community hates trolls.
>Why spend $500 to $1000 on a system it’d be cheeper to get a PC version of.
Are you sure it is possible? If you can please direct me to where I can buy a full featured PC with DVD/CDRW measuring something like 16x16x5cm(6.5×6.5×2″) for $500-$700 or less?
A G4 with 256 MB RAM and a 4200 rpm HDD is hardly “high performance.”
“Then you shouldn’t have purchased a Mac, should you? By purchasing a Mac, you’re telling the world “I don’t care if it’s open source or not!”, and it’s not like people at Apple KNOW (or care) that you’re running Linux on it, no statement is being made here other than “I purchased a propriety operating system”.
If you want to make a statement then go buy one of the many x86 solutions that come with Linux preinstalled, that actually shows the world that you purchased something open source, it makes a difference to the numbers, purchasing a mac and then install Linux adds up to NULL.”
This sounds like a person who is locked in their house with a tin foil hat. Who cares about the numbers they are nothing but marketing ploys.
Well, I wrote a review here a while back about the Mini from a Linux user’s point of view. I guess I should report that I have installed Ubuntu Hoary and not rebooted back into OS X in several weeks. I bought the Mini to replace my monster big and loud previous desktop (now it’s a server). OS X was great. But Linux is also great and comes with the software I’m used to: Evolution (better than mail.app), Pan (the only comprable OS X newsreaders cost money), GLabels (not available under Fink or Darwinports) which I need for work. To use the latest open-source software under Fink or Darwinports, like the latest version of Gimp, you have to use “unstable” versions and I ran into a lot of dependency problems, which I don’t get with the Ubuntu repositories. And it won’t cost me $120 to upgrade.
I have a wireless router so don’t need Airport. I did have to patch the kernel for sound to work. I also tried Fedora 4 PPC (testing) but it wasn’t quite ready.
On the downside I don’t have a Java plugin for Firefox.
I wrote an article about it some time ago. It is in spanish but perhaps you are interested in it. Here it is: http://www.proli.net/?q=node/18
If you want to, here you have the http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fww…
>>By the way, looks like Apple is selling Mac Mini with Tiger
>>already.
>
>Does anyone have tried it? Does it run decently? What about
>the video card, does it cope well with the new features?
Tiger fixes the overscan issue for me on my HDTV. I was using a shareware app to correct it, but it chopped some lines off of the porches. Apple’s solution provides me with the full resolutions.
tiger runs well on the mini, but then again i have the 1.42 ghz model with 1 gb of ram.
Shouldn’t the link be over a different part of the text (like ‘Linux on Mac mini’)? I couldn’t figure out what the link for the article was since the only thing linked in the description was the phrase describing what a ‘future’ article will be about. I wanted to read the current one…
Before I rant, I liked the article. Sounds like some fun!
Then someone had to start a war by making some obnoxious comment, then it all went flying out of control… so I might as well add my 2 pence worth…
Statements such as the following irk me:
“Also, I very much dislike Aqua. I prefer GNOME where I can simply click the user prefs and adjust things like sloppy focus. Perhaps I’m spoiled, but I like an interface that I can tweak to my liking, I always feel like I’m fighting Aqua when using it.”
Why? Because someone said something like that a long time ago and now everybody quotes it for every operating system. If it isn’t YOUR preferred operating system, then you “feel like you are fighting” it to get work done.
Come on! Unless you are a COMPLETE idiot, the windowing paradigm is nearly identical on all major operating systems these days. Windows, Gnome, KDE, Mac OS X, BeOS, SkyOS. They are ALL much more alike than they are different. They all make use of the same concept of grouped folders and files. They all have cut and paste, they all have multiple views (like icons, list, etc).
Mac OS X gets in your way. Please. I DO work on WindowsXP, Redhat Linux, some HP Unix and Mac OS X (at home). I have also worked on OpenVMS in the past (x/motif). In my best Dr. Evil voice: “They are all the frickin’ same!”
While I am ranting… stuff like “Apple sucks, they make money off their software and hardware!” whines are ridiculous as well. Of course they do. As does Microsoft. I wish I could come up with something good as well that the public wants so I could sell it and make a bundle of cash.
Other favorites are “they aren’t open source” or “I won’t use anything that isn’t GPL’d” are wonderful. [again w/Dr. Evil] Good for frickin’ you! Go eat some frickin’ tabouli and leave me with my rare steak, bottle of bourbon and my expensive high-quality cigar to I can slowly kill myself.
While I am ranting… stuff like “Apple sucks, they make money off their software and hardware!” whines are ridiculous as well. Of course they do. As does Microsoft.
No. Microsoft makes $0 on an x86 preinstalled with Linux.
“I am *so* fed up with Linux distros who think they have it all but can’t get one of the principle parts of the mac experience – simple wireless networking – to operate at all. I don’t care what the reasons for the failure are,nor do I care how they fix it (maybe emulating the Mac OSX driver interface and installing apple’s driver will work, in the same way that NDiswrapper works with Centrino wireless on Linux x86)
Just sort it out. You’d think nobody had ever reverse engineered closed hardware before to hear the way the PPC distro makers tell it.
The truth is that none of the big PPC distros finds the market to be worth enough to put the effort and funds into fixing it.. this casual contempt for users requirements will result in my casual apathy toward PPC linux.”
Maybe you’d be happy also to fund people who’d reverse engineer the airport express? It’s a known fact that Broadcom won’t release the specs but _you_ insist it’s Linux developers’ faults. Wow.
I have a G4 400 MHz powermac upgraded to 1 GHz and a g4 800 MHz iBook. the iBook has 640 MB RAM and the Powermac has 604 MB RAM
the Powermac has only a 100 MHz Bus and the iBook has 133 MHz Bus and uses DDR 266 RAM. Tiger runs fantastically on both machines. Better in fact than panther.
given these facts, a Mac Mini will run tiger very well indeed.
you so totally missed his point.
No. Microsoft makes $0 on an x86 preinstalled with Linux.
================
Errrrr… that makes sense?!
Anyway… it really is a cool article and someday, when my next mac comes around I just might do this.
It would be cool to have Ubuntu running on my mini.
If I were using a Mac as a server of some sort (web/mail), I’d probably put Linux on it. A fairly decent combination of a free OS and a small, quiet, low power-consuming box.
For one, it’s pretty much the same software doing the work, and I don’t need Expose or iLife to run Apache/Tomcat and Postfix. For another, I’ve seen some indications that OS X’s disk I/O drivers are quite a bit slower than Linux’s on the same hardware (this may have improved, though – it’s been a few years).
Of course, any advantage would probably be negated by the 4200RPM laptop drive in the Mini; I wouldn’t use one for serving without an external FW drive. And at that point, it starts to make more sense to spend less money and just get a machine that doesn’t already need an upgrade right out of the box.
all you “why” guys.
you can’t see how silly you seem.
the same arguments that support the question “why run linux on a mac” can support the question: “why run a mac at all?”
silly little fan boys.
and yes, i’ll forget more about bsd/darwin/os-x then most of you will ever know.
windows admins who also run mac: priceless
solaris admins who also own a mac: priceless
linux doodz who dual boot an ibook: priceless
5 years ago a buddy of mine ran an amiga on one desk, and a mac on the other: rotflmao priceless
mac users that can sit down at an aix box and “get around” and get stuff done: astonishingly priceless
… and your typical “apple is my entire universe”, clickety click click click, vi is the name of a metal guitarist, dumb as nuts, “i’m a liberal, but I fall down at that small little part called ‘tolerance'” mac user?
not worth spit.