iBooks love Linux

Lisa writes "An Apple iBook turns out to be a great choice for running Debian GNU/Linux. Edd Dumbill, the editor of XML.com explains why." This could also be an argument for why to use Mac OS X instead of Linux in the first place, but if you do want to use Linux, then a Mac is a good choice. :-)

Comments

Booting new macs directly on Debian cds

[stere0]

If you buy a mac and you want to install Debian on it, you can put Apple's CDs away and just boot your toy from the Debian isos. Anything built after the iMac will work.

However, if like Edd you're an experienced user with a good connection to the net, the Woody netinst isos for PPC (they're also available for i386) are what you're looking for. They're a bare, 30 Mo heavy Debian installer which download the base OS and the packages you decide to install from a debian mirror. I've saved a lot of time and bandwidth using them.

If like him you also want to use Mac OS, don't use the "system restore" CDs on your first boot either. Don't create these two partitions from Linux in this case as this has been known to cause trouble. Instead, boot from the Mac OS X CD that came with your mac, prepare two partitions, the first one being for Mac OS, then reboot from the "system restore" CDs.

Once you're done with your Mac OS install, boot from one of the isos mentioned above and install your Debian. Since Mac OS can't read ext2 and Linux isn't very good at handling HFS+, I always keep a small (~100 Mo) HFS partition when I install two systems on a mac, which is very useful to transfer files between the two systems.