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Red Hat, Linux and Intel iMacs
segphault writes "Ars Technica examines the implications of Red Hat's recently announced plan to get Linux running on Intel Macs. 'Red Hat representative Gillian Farquhar announced last week that the company plans to add support for Apple's new Intel Macs to its popular distribution. Fedora and several other commonly used Linux distributions support the PowerPC architecture used by Apple in the past, and Red Hat wants to ensure that its software will continue to run on new Apple hardware in the future.'" The real question is will Windows or Linux be first?
Since apple has autorized yellow dog linux to resell macs preloaded with linux on them it surprises me that they weren't given development versions to have it running already. Then again, powerpc is the yellowdog deal - although their homepage proclaims 'we have an answer' to the intel move without really elaborating on the boot situation....
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
as long as you'll eventually be able to boot OS X, Linux, and Windows. When you can boot all major OSs (and the more fringe ones like Solaris and BSD) from one machine, then you know the route to go is to buy an Apple--no other manufacturer will allow you to do that. Apple considers themselves a hardware company, and having the choice of any and all OSs (and creating a multi-partition/multi-drive system that gives you all the ones you need/want to use for your various computing needs) will certainly help make them a very popular computer hardware company. I know I'm in for a laptop once this whole booting mess is solved (I might buy one before, but I don't have the disposable income to experiment with it and possibly fry my machine...) I wanted a machine with OS X any way for testing/graphics/video stuff (nothing heavy that needs a lot of power, just some lighter editing/graphic creation), but being able to use it for gaming (Windows) and having my friend Linux on it will sweeten the deal. If it turns out to be impossible to dual boot (which I doubt will be the case) then I'll just get the mac mini as it's cheap enough...
Read my blog posts on usability.
> .. aside from the whole dual booting fad, why would someone go pay good money for a mac, only to install RadHat?
/etc/passwd. OS X is better than Windows, in my opinion, and it's nice to have a Unix back end and a terminal window that's actually functional, but NetInfo and Aqua aren't innovative, they're restrictive.
For my part, it's because Apple produces excellent hardware, but their operating system isn't configurable enough. Most obvious example of this: focus behavior. Second most obvious example: vi
cswingle Fairbanks AK
It doesn't seem to make much sense to me to have Linux take over the entire box.
OS X is very stable, even if it's most common variant isn't server grade, and easier to administer. Paying Apple's hardware premium just to run Linux natively seems a tad screwy.
I'm far more stoked about getting Virtual PC or VMWare for OS X/Intel. If I need Linux, then a penguin-powered virtual machine can be a client for OS X's X11 server. (May as well let the prettier GUI do all of the graphical heavy lifting, no?) The performance hit would be bearable on a Core Duo (one core for OS X, one for the VM), so long as disk access isn't somehow hobbled (e.g. the files used as "drives" in Virtual PC).
Could someone explain to me what the advantages of booting Linux natively again would be here?
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Okay,
Linux running VMware with Windows as a client.
I think that's enough for me to get by as a Windows developer without ditching the Macintosh. (Or needing to buy a PC again. Yay! )
Most linux distros for x86 dont include efi support in the default kernel so editing grub wont work. Also the El Torrito bios feature which boots cdroms is not available on the macs. So they wont boot and macosx uses its own method to boot from the cd's.
You can get it to work if you use linux from scratch which is a pain in the ass and for experts only. My guess is Gentoo will be first since its developers are familiar with linux from scratch which gentoo evolved from. All they need is EFI support in the bootable kernel as well as efi cdrom support and instructions on how to configure grub for EFI.
http://saveie6.com/
Two things: one, I completely agree with your original point, re: installing Linux on OS X. Two, OS X is actually incredibly customizable; Apple doesn't provide options but I assure you it is very tweakable (for instance, all UI elements are stored as PDF snippits, easily replaced). You just gotta dig for it and do some research. Or use something like ThemeChanger and the million other Mac freeware UI-tweaker apps.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Is target disk mode not feasible on the standard BIOS? I honestly don't know, I know BIOS is troublesome to architect around and may be a good thing to get rid of. Target disk mode is nice to have, but it isn't something I need to have more than once or twice in any particular machine's life.
I believe the primary reason they went EFI was to run TCPM or whatever hardware protection the new chipset uses to make OS X only run on Apple machines.
And in reality, many open source apps DO NOT run on OSX. Sometimes its assembly code which the intel macs will help with, but other times the develop wrote code specifically for linux. Heck try to get a recent kde or gnome install in OSX on their build of X11. You may ask why anyone would want to do that, well there are a lot of nice OSS apps out there.
On a personal note, I love my mac for surfing, web design and iTunes but I also love a CLI once in awhile. terminal.app is not the same as a full screen virtual terminal in freebsd or linux.
I can guarantee that I'd triple boot a new mac if it were possible with OSX, FreeBSD and Windows. I may even want linux for homework assignments at my university.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
I'm a student who hates Windows as much as the next guy. I like using the Mac, and the Mac will always be my primary workstation, and I use it whenever possible. I don't want to carry two computers around, but I still need to be able to run Xilinx ISE and AutoCAD and ANSYS and Fluent and all the other things that won't run on the Mac. Fortunately, I can run MATLAB on the mac side of things with the rest of my life, but when I need to design or simulate something, I have to use Win32. It'd be nice not to have to use a separate machine for that.
Dual-booting isn't a fad for some of us, it's what we have to do if we want to be able to use the Mac and still get work done.
-twb
Hmm, I'd think a lot of folks think the exact opposite. That is that they want a Mac for the OS, and aren't as particular about the hardware that runs it. I for one am in the market for a Mac, but I'm not thrilled at the prospect of buying a proprietary hardware design that offers pretty much no user serviceability. If you really just want to run Linux, a homebuilt computer is gonna be leaps and bounds ahead of any pre-manufactured box from a quality perspective, including Apples. Cheaper too.
"The problem with internet quotations is that many are not genuine" -Abraham Lincoln
I have definitely used Windows, even if it was the 64 bit edition, and EFI at the same time. Both operating systems (Linux and Windows) can support EFI, so it is just a matter of time before each of them releases it. I'll bet my dollar on Linux because there is a whole community of nerds out there who want it way worse than Microsoft does, in my opinion.