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Load Linux on the Mac mini
An anonymous reader writes "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."
Linux keeps on running. I just installed it on my microwave!
Meant to be funny... not trolling.
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
what is linux going to offer over OS X since you get OS X with a Mini anyway?
plus does linux have support for AirTunes? and will it have support for the possible video streaming over AirPort Express that was hinted at in the discussion of iTunes 4.8? I don't know but I don't think so.
Why would anyone waste hardware and time doing this?
Not to be a troll, but you've got BSD running under the hood with a clean UI, so uh, what do you gain besides bragging rights?
Or am I missing something? I did read the fine article and I see they want their project to be OpenSource, but THEY ALREADY PAID FOR THE LICENSE!!!!
The opposite of progress is congress
People have been installing Yellow Dog on Macs for a long time. This is nothing new.
Since it doesn't support the built in wifi or bluetooth I'm not sure why this would be such a good idea though.
This is Slashdot; I know better than to ask why someone's installing KitchingApplianceLinux 0.3 on his toaster, or trying to get his car to boot off a Knoppix disc, but this, to me, seems asinine.
Paying the absurd premium for Apple hardware just to rip the already-beautiful OS off of it and install *nix?
It's like buying a souped-up $50,000 Cadillac and replacing the engine with something out of a Honda. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Hondas, but if that's the performance you want, why on earth would you spend the money on the Cadillac?
Next up on Slashdot: How to install Windows on that pile of hardware you just bought!
Umm, why/how did this get posted?
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
what you said may be factually true, but you still miss the point completely.
you even quote the relevant sentence yourself but go on to ignore the most important word: PowerPC.
plus if you RTFA it's about the Mini being good because of its small size etc. so all your points about cost are worth fuck-all unless you can find an x86 machine with the same size and aesthetics. any retard can order a tower peecee from Dell. we didn't need you to point that out.
I haven't done it on my mini yet, but I did install YDL 4 on my iBook last week. It was the easiest linux install I've ever done. If you've used any version of Red Hat > 8.0 then YDL will be very familiar. It's basically a PPC port of Fedora Core 3.
this is getting old and so are you
blog
"and it would probably outpower the mini just by virtue of the cheap x86 gear no longer going DOWN as low as 1.25GHz. You have to pay more for gear that's compatible with those speeds."
/. Congrats.
One of the dumbest lines of thought I've encountered on
look at ddr ram. pc2700 is more expensive than pc3200.
Point proven.
You cannot compare a G4 at 1.25GHz to a x86 at 1.25 GHz. It just makes no sense whatsoever.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
I initially bought my 12" iBook G3 to install Linux on it. I chose for the iBook because of the size/battery life/price. It was going to be my first mac, I didn't even work with one before.
After all, I did install Linux on it (YDL), but I didn't use it for longer than an hour! Before that time I used Linux as the OS on my PC. It's just because the sharm of OS X I didn't use it.
Now, 1,5 years later, I bought a Mac mini and I'm not planning to install Linux on it... I'm totally OS X'ed.
Plus add the fact that important stuff like Airport Extreme won't work.
But when a G4 at 1.25GHz costs as much as an x86 at 2.8GHz, and the x86 demonstrably beats the pants off the G4, then that makes sense from an economic point of view.
plus if you RTFA it's about the Mini being good because of its small size etc. so all your points about cost are worth fuck-all unless you can find an x86 machine with the same size and aesthetics.
There are some decent smaller PC cases out there, with happy fun handles to make 'em easier to haul around. I won't argue aethetics, PC cases (even the cool micro/flex ATX stuff) are still basically boxes.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Actually it does. The G4 has very similar IPC to a old-style Athlon Thunderbird or late-model PIII chip. The only saving grace is Altivec, and that really only makes a difference is a small number of cases (movies, some photoshop).
You can argue 20% either way, but a 1.25GHz G4 basically Year 2000-level PeeCee peformance. Note: I own a Powerbook with this exact chip.
Hey I just did
I'd very much like an x86 case that has the size and quietness of a Mini for a project (yes, I need x86, I have a Mini here too).
There are some decent smaller PC cases out there, with happy fun handles to make 'em easier to haul around.
Links, man!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I'd like to take this opportunity to warn that the first one of you knuckleheads who uses the word "boxen" is gonna get a smack in the head.
Thank you. Please carry on.
Since IBM is hosting this article, I'm not that surprised that this was done. IBM has always seen Apple as a threat, not an ally. If you could run Linux on all Apple hardware (which has been done for years I know) then that hurts Apple in IBM's book.
How come no one has figured out how to install Linux on an iPod yet?
GOBACK.
Directron has some small form factor cases... I like the ASUS pre-built one, but I've always liked ASUSes stuff some I'm biased. In general, the small form factor stuff has always worked out pretty well from what I've seen. I certainly haven't played with every brand, but none of the ones I've messed with are craptastic
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
How exactly is this news? Is it really that hard to use other distributions on the Mini?
Actually, if the G4's IPC is similar to the Pentium III, then the G4 is far, far better than an equivalently clocked Pentium 4. The Pentium 4 has one of the worst IPCs of all time.
The Pentium III (especially Tualatin) has a much, much higher IPC than the Pentium 4. In fact, the Pentium 4 was ridiculed early on because the Pentium 4 was easily outperformed by Pentium IIIs that ran at hundreds of MHz lower. Pentium 4s only started outperforming Pentium IIIs when Intel started ramping up the P4's clock speed like mad, pushing it past 2 GHz in a few months, and past 3 GHz not much later than that.
Also, the Pentium M is very similar to the Pentium III when it comes to architecture--the PM is basically just a jacked-up PIII with lots of cache and lower power consumption. Right now, we have 1.8 GHz Pentium Ms beating the crap out of 3 GHz Pentium 4s. Why? The P4's NetBurst architecture just plain blows.
Although I do agree that the grandparent is wrong--it's just that the only time a G4-to-x86 comparison is valid is when you're comparing a G4 to a Pentium M or Athlon 64 (especially the Pentium M, as the G4 is a 32-bit CPU).
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
But they aren't mini small. Only one of those even comes close to being as thin as the mini, and it's much wider.
In general, you're going to be bigger than the mini on the basis of power supply alone, because the mini has a power brick under the desk.
Why would anyone waste hardware and time doing this?
You need to think of something beyond (or below) the desktop. For example look at the Navy's sonar image processing, Mac hardware running yellow dog Linux.
You are assuming everyone is popping the extra $100 for the WiFi and Bluetooth. Wireless for my laptop, absolutely, for a machine that's deskbound and already has easy access to cat5s, its a waste. Call me a luddite but the ongoing cost of havng to put batteries into my keyboard and mouse is not attractive. ;)
I'm with you 99%.
You cannot compare a G4 at 1.25GHz to a x86 at 1.25 GHz. It just makes no sense whatsoever.
However you can compare a Pentium 4 1.5GHz to a G4 1.25. PowerPC CPUs tend to get a 25-30% performance improvement over their x86 counterparts. The applications that are well tailored to a RISC architecture are few and far between. If you are running one great, but all folks should really expect is the 25-30% boost.
Sorry, but I don't get you people. Who the fuck cares what "window manager" is running? Do you spend all your time playing with your window manager or do you run software to actually accomplish something productive?
You've got it backwards. Those of use who care about window managers do so
because we want to minimize the pain of working with a window manager
so that we can be more productive.
I use FVWM because I can configure it to stay out of my way as much as possible
so that I can work in the fashion most natural to me.
*sigh* back to work...
boxen
A quick digression: Directron are less than a mile from me, and they're pretty damn cool.
No, you can't get a PC as small as the mini, because the mini is basically a repackaged laptop, not a stripped down desktop. But you can get a mini-ITX box and motherboard and a decent AGP video card that's small enough. There's not really all that many situations where a one-foot-cube is too bag, and a laptop isn't really what you're looking for... and for those a reconditioned laptop is still pretty price-competitive.
*smack*
OUCH !
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
> You cannot compare a G4 at 1.25GHz to a x86 at 1.25 GHz. It just makes no sense whatsoever.
Very true, different x86 processors vary wildly in performance. A 1.25Ghz Pentium-M beats the crap out of a 1.25Ghz P4 or a 1.25Ghz Via C3.
" I'd very much like an x86 case that has the size and quietness of a Mini for a project (yes, I need x86, I have a Mini here too)."
Check it, we put a nano-itx mobo IN your mini
Although I haven't seen (or looked) to see if any nano boards are out in the wild yet.
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
I for one welcome our yellow dog linux installing overlords...
/. post?
Are you pissing on it because you don't think it's worthy of
*shrug* I think it's a pretty cool project, but i'm mostly interested to see the next step unfold (the whole multimedia/HTPPC part ). Maybe THEN it will be more clear (besides the author's desire to use OSS as a project goal) why he went in the direction he did.
i.e. is he planning on just using it as a client to a MythTV Backend or is he going to hook up a Plextor USB ConvertX PVR to it? (which has linux and Mac drivers)
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
I've been thinking of buying a mac, buying one doesn't make me gay does it?
by your name I'd say you know something about big iron, but newsflash: IBM provides Apple with CPU chips, so it seems unlikely that anyone there sees them as a threat. Not to mention iPod Linux being around for a while now. Where have you been lately? Time to step away from the terminal, and get some fresh air.
1. Don't want to pay $129 to upgrade OS 2. Minimize Server OS- Decrease boot time 3. Tighten Security- Yes, I know there's few (none?) viruses, but I don't want lusers to even try to install games,chat,etc so I turn to OpenBSD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
http://www.plextor.com/english/products/TV402UMac. htm
Not exactly what you're looking for, but..
Eye TV for Mac OSX PVR software: proprietary
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
Apple hardware is reliable, and lately their customer suppport has been very good, as opposed to cheap X86 boxes. On the other hand, I just don't trust Apple software in the long run. I believe open source OSes keeps OS X competitive, if Apple "drops the ball" on any issues, I want to be able to turn to a "free" un*x
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
Wifi and bluetooth aren't built in. They're addons that cost money.
Does anyone know if you can get a rebate on OS X if you decide not to use it? I'm guessing the system software is licensed differently than Microsoft's windows so getting a refund on OS X is impossible. Anyone know if this is true? It would be great if one could buy a $500 computer and then get an extra $130 off of that.
check out the best blog ever:
http://oehlberg.com
Hey! He said you can't do that! Stop that immediately!
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Do you know what X is? Do you know anything about X other than 'it doesn't like pretty on my osx box'?
If, like a reguluar PC, you could by the Mini 'un-encumbered' with Mac OS X, or if Mac OS X didn't have a full featured UNIX sub-system and two fantastic portage packages etc.. then maybe, just maybe these articles would only irritate me a little. I can see the point that Linux has MythTV and that is a wonderful product, but thats not news either. Its not that I don't see the point, I climb mountains for fun, "Because its there" is my raison d'etre. The fact is that installing Linux on Mac is so easy so as to bearly make a blip on my geek radar. I thought this was "News for nerds - stuff that matters". The fact a mac mini can load and run linux is simply not news. Call me when its running Windows XP PPC or somebodies grandmother managed to get Micorsoft Office running on Darwine without looking at source code or configuration files.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
There's already two functional Unix platforms that supports all of the Mac mini hardware.. That's MacOS X and Darwin (F/OSS). Most useful linux apps will compile without trouble on MacOS X, if they aren't already available via the excellent Fink project.
Cartoon miniature golf for Mac: http://www.funpause.com/gardengolf/
Actually, I write quite a bit of code under the X window system. I would say this makes me quite qualified to make this observation.
In fact, I bet I know more about it than you do, since you're too much of an idiot to call it by its real name. How about you do us all a favor: go use some shotgun mouthwash. No one likes you, fag.
499.00 USD (price of mac mini)
-129.00 USD (price of OS X)
-79.00 USD (price of iLife 05)
=291 USD
Does anyone really believe that Apple is making a lot of money on the minis? Show me an X86 machine with similar features/form factor for anywhere near that cheap.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
After reading this article I bought a mac mini, installed debian on it, and voila, discovered that I can't run java 1.4.2 on it.
Oh I tried IBM's sdk, but it core-dumps whatever I attempt to run. What are my options? Kaffe? Jikes? Blackdown?
I haven't been using Linux since OSX came, so I don't really know what works. If I can't run java, I'll have to reinstall tiger.
Wrong wrong wrong. Early P4s sucked, but the later chips with fast busses and hyperthreading have better IPC than PIII chips. Not as good as A64s, but still better.
The G4 isn't even in the same league as the P-M or A64.