Mac mini March: Debian on a Mac mini
Hey, Linux g33ks. In case you hadn’t heard,
Torvalds uses a Mac. It’s the cool thing to do these
days. jcdenton, a guest poster over at Mac Mini Hacks has
posted a link to this tutorial for installing Debian on a Mac
mini. The tutorial explains, ”Personally, I bought the Mac Mini as a replacement for my girlfriend’s aging
1GHz Pentium-III system. Thanks to the portability of Debian and its advanced package management tools, making her new
Mac look like her old PC took only an hour or so.”
For the most part, the Mac mini hardware is Linux-compatible; however, there are a few trouble spots: Apple Intrepid
Audio is unsupported but will probably be fixed soon, Apple Bluetooth module remains untested but should work, Apple
56K V.92 modem remains untested but may work, and Apple Airport Extreme (802.11g) is both unsupported and a fix is
unlikely.
So, the good / bad news is: You can install Debian on your Mac Mini (yay!), but you should have a broadband Ethernet
connection and USB mouse and keyboard handy, as Airport, modem, and Bluetooth support are all either iffy or never
going to happen (boo!).
[via MacSlash]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Gammah said 11:57PM on 12-01-2005
I'm a long time linux user, and *I* don't understand why in HELL you'd buy a mac and NOT use Mac OS. OSX is better than linux will EVER be. It has all the best of the unix-guts, and the best window manager in existence. I mean KDE? A joke; Same with Gnome.
But, I still think it's cool to get linux running on anything; but to buy a mac to run linux doesn't make sense.
Reply
MB said 4:18AM on 7-13-2005
I just don't see the point in using Linux on a Mac. But I am a long-time Mac user.
For people using Linux it's nice to be able to run the OS they are used to and love. It's a pity they don't give OS X a try, or make a dual boot system.
My girlfriend would kill me if I put Linux on her G5.
Reply
Matt said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Umm...why not just run Yellow Dog Linux? Is there a reason to use Debian instead? Beats me...I admit I'm not a Linux expert or anything, but I installed YDL on an old iMac once for fun and played around with it for a few days...not quite sure what's so "great" about it when OS X already has BSD command-line goodness built-in, and if you get tired of typing at the command line you can use a *real* GUI instead of something that looks like a half-baked rip-off of Win95.
Reply
Borun D. Chowdhury said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
The Bluetooth works perfectly fine. My keyboard and mouse both communicate over Bluetooth.
Reply