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Operating Systems => macOS => Topic started by: brucecassidy on 18 May 2006, 23:45

Title: Linux on a mac
Post by: brucecassidy on 18 May 2006, 23:45

Ok so im new to the world of the mac and love it got a mac mini and it works a treat OS X is by far the best OS ive used, thing is i got quite interested in Ubuntu linux and had it on my PC, and i was going to buy a older Mac G3 just for fun, play around and if i screw it up hey its cool, so anyway my question is how well does linux run on a Mac and if so what are the best ditro's to go for.

Title: Re: Linux on a mac
Post by: davidnix71 on 19 May 2006, 02:33

If the mini mac is a G4, (unless you have the brand new Intel version), then the latest 'live' version of power pc Ubuntu would be the choice. With OS X there is no way I know of to boot from a firewire hard drive unless it's got OS X on it.

If you use the install version of Ubuntu, then you'll have to partition you mini's hard drive, and probably hose both OS's eventually. I've never been a fan of dual-boot.

But - if you cloned your internal hd off to a firewire drive and booted from it a few times to make sure it works, then you could install Ubuntu on the internal and boot from the fw drive when you want to run OS X.

I have Virtual PC. It will run Dynebolic live pc linux. Ubuntu's pc version won't run in VPC. Knoppix and Free BeOS won't run either. Knoppix has video problems at run time and BeOS can't find the virtual hd, but the live version runs okay. If I 'formatted' a virtual hd first, BeOs might run, but I didn't think it was worth the time.

If you use the OS X version of any type of Linux, then if you want to go on the web with it, you must have dsl or cable through your ethernet adapter or 'maybe' wireless. There is no proper way to put a hardware modem on a G4. My Hayes Accura works through a pda usb to serial adapter in Panther only because the adapter has OS X drivers.

Title: Re: Linux on a mac
Post by: Pathos on 19 May 2006, 08:25

Use the ubuntu live cd and see how it works,

you should be able to download 'parted' binaries from the repositories and repartition without losing any data.

then you can install whateva distro you want (that supports powerpc) but I highly recommend the latest ubuntu dapper beta release.

Title: Re: Linux on a mac
Post by: H_TeXMeX_H on 19 May 2006, 19:14

Lots of Linux distros run on PPC, but yeah you should try a live CD first ... Ubuntu would be a good choice.

Title: Re: Linux on a mac
Post by: worker201 on 19 May 2006, 22:31

I've heard that you can actually dual boot a Mac, but I've never tried it.  Do Macs actually deal with grub/lilo, or is there some other thing going on there?

Title: Re: Linux on a mac
Post by: Calum on 21 May 2006, 17:58

on a related but irrelevant note, i just *found* a 15 year old Apple Classic II in a skip. 10 inch b/w screen and only a floppy drive! i haven't switched it on yet as i am waiting for it to dry out, but i think i will have to try linux on it if i can find a way. the lack of a cdrom is probably my first main hurdle.

this is just for interest, i am not trying to hijack the thread!

Title: Re: Linux on a mac
Post by: Aloone_Jonez on 21 May 2006, 18:22

Interesting, I don't know much about this but didn't the old Macs use a Motorola CPU? If this is the case you'll need to recompile the kernel and you might have to write a bootloader from scratch sice it's probably very hardware specific and it might include some asm code, good luck.

Title: Re: Linux on a mac
Post by: WMD on 21 May 2006, 20:36

They have Debian for Motorola 68k Macs.  Whether or not the Classic II will run it, who knows.  The only time I heard of it working for somebody was using an SE/30 with an external CD-ROM.

Title: Re: Linux on a mac
Post by: sean on 22 May 2006, 05:56

I've been thinking about trying this too.
Question- Will Ubuntu work w/ Airport?
The machine I'd like to try it on is a G3 iMac w/ Airport connected to an Airport Express. I am running WPA wireless security.

Title: Re: Linux on a mac
Post by: WMD on 22 May 2006, 07:31

Ubuntu (and all the distros) will work with the 802.11b Airport, but not Airport Extreme.

Title: Re: Linux on a mac
Post by: sean on 23 May 2006, 00:45

Cool, the iMac has an 802.11b Airport card. I'll have to play around w/ the security settings. For instance, OS 9 works w/ WEP but not WPA; where OS X works w/ both.

Title: Re: Linux on a mac
Post by: 7031 on 5 June 2006, 22:12

I think that you shouldn't keep Ubuntu and Mac os both on the same HDD as apparently OS X has some issues with that, like davidnix71 said, copy over OS X onto the firewire HDD and install Ubuntu on the internal. I think it should work pretty well. I can't be sure though as I only use OS X. I found Linux pretty obsilete after trying Mac OS for a while.

But if I were you, I would definately try a live CD first just to test the compatibility.