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Installing Fedora Core 4 on the Mac mini
Tammy Fox writes "The Mac mini is all the rave. Discover how to install the soon-to-be-released Fedora Core 4 on this tiny desktop appliance, including new features in Fedora Core 4 to support the new hardware."
I can write over OSX, the put on Fedora and then start the endless road into making Gnome behave and look like OSX...which I just wrote over!
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
Here's a related story from the 11th on an IBM article with instructions on installing Yellow Dog on an mini.
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They're reasonably powerful systems with very low power consumption: the entire system (minus display) usually stays under 20W. Even the Pentium-M consumes much more on the desktop (granted, they're also much faster). The most comparable competition in terms of power consumption are Via Mini-ITX systems, which tend to be much slower.
"Options for Bluetooth® and Airport® Extreme exist, however the latter will not work on Linux."
"the Mac mini supports three options: wired Ethernet, wireless Airport Extreme, and Bluetooth. Wired Ethernet gets automatically configured, either via DHCP or static IP, via the system-config-network tool. Airport Extreme, however, sports the Broadcom chipset, where open source drivers are non-existent at present (and there's no reason the believe that they will ever exist)."
How does the article leave this detail out?
The form factor itself is a major selling point. The thing is *tiny*.
Second, it is very low on power usage, similarly to G4 laptops (as it shares much of the architecture).
Thirdly -- obviously this goes away when you (only) put Linux on it -- it's the cheapest available machine that runs OS X.
Generally, you'll have a hard time finding a competitive machine at this price with similar dimensions.
Apple hardware isn't as much of a moving target as PC hardware is, so there are fewer hardware compatibility issues to deal with. Also, not too many pieces of PC hardware at that price point have Firewire 400 and DVI.
This seems like a semi-on-topic question. Why would I want to install Red Hat on my Mac? This isn't meant to be a troll, I like Linux, I use Debian Sarge and Ubuntu Hoary on retired x86 boxes at work. I just would love to know if anyone is running Linux on their Mac - what are you using it for? Why can't I use OS X to do it?
MacBook Pro. Worst name since the Bicycle
Everything is much snappier on PPC.
FYI I run Ubuntu on a Clamshell iBook and it recognized and configured the airportcard automatically during install.
;) if you are happy running obsolete hardware, that is.
So your double use of 'any Mac,''any built-in wireless hardware,' is a bit errr... FUDdy
OTOH, Airport Extreme does indeed not work, so be warned.
Hey, this is SlashDot, one should apologize for *having* read TFA, not the other way round!
Hmm, sounds like an interesting story... Or at least it was, the first two times Slashdot wrote it up.
For real, this story isn't even a dupe-- it's a TRUPE!!!
Oh boy, I get to read all the posters who say, "But why install linux on a Mac?" again. It sure was interesting the first two times, so this time, I know it'll be awesome for sure.
Seriously, I can understand some dupes popping up, when two editors post links to the same story that seems interesting, but this isn't even interesting. A Mac Mini is just a normal Mac. It's no surprise that you can put Linux on it. You can put Linux on any Mac. Hell, you can put Linux on an iPod. As for those who are obsessed with asking "why," why should we install Linux on anything? Because we can! That's good enough, isn't it? This story isn't News, it's only barely for Nerds, and it definitely doesn't Matter, when you consider that anyone who wants to put Linux on their Mac Mini already did so back when they were released.