Linux beats Windows to Intel iMac

Ctrl+Alt+De1337 writes "The Mactel-Linux folks have now successfully booted Linux on a 17" Core Duo iMac. They used the elilo bootloader, a modified kernel, and a hacked vesafb to boot from a USB drive. No GUI pictures for now, just white text on a black background. The distro of choice was Gentoo, and instructions and patches are promised this weekend."

Comments

Slashdotted

[dch24]

The link is to the coral cache of the original page. Even that is slashdotted right now. Here's the article: (it's a Wiki)

Main Page

Mactel-Linux is the effort to adapt the GNU/Linux operating system to Intel-based Apple Macintosh hardware.

This requires changes/additions to at least the following projects:

• the elilo bootloader
• the Linux kernel
• several drivers

This site is not about Linux distributions for Intel-Macs, but about developer communication.

Status

Using elilo and a modified Linux kernel, we can boot from a USB hard disk on the 17" iMac Core Duo. We are using the hacked vesafb driver to inherit the bootloader's framebuffer, keyboard and a USB network card work. Gentoo runs and can compile the Linux kernel with a compiler that runs on linux, which was compiled in linux, on a mac running the new intel duo processors.

lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 03)
00:07.0 Performance counters: Intel Corporation Unknown device 27a3 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controllers cc=AHCI (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Unknown device 71c5
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8053 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 22)
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 UART (rev 01)
04:03.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Agere Systems FW323 (rev 61)

dmesg click if you want to see it

Instructions and Patches

Coming this weekend.

FAQ

Can I already run Linux on the iMac Core-Duo?

Not quite. The kernel boots, and you can interact with the system on the command line, but that's as much as you can do with it at the moment. If you're a developer, though, that's a starting point.

[edit]
Why Linux? OS X is so great!

Sure OS X is great. But this is fun.

[edit]
Why Linux? Why not Windows?

Windows isn't fun.

[edit]
Why not OS X on non-Apple PCs?

That's way uncool.

[edit]
The Intel-based Macs are standard PCs, aren't they?

They share many characteristics with PCs, yes. Though, their firmware is EFI, not the old 1982 PC-BIOS.

[edit]
Then what took you so long??

Re:Why do this?

[Chirs]

There are those that like/need to test stuff in various OS's. Having one box that can do linux/OSX/windows would be convenient.

Currently of course you need to reboot, but once VT comes out on the core duo chips then this will let you use Xen/Vmware to run all three simultaneously on the same hardware at near-full speed.

Re:FUD ALERT

[peragrin]

G5's are only a tad slower than Opeteron's at the same speed. The big difference though is in servers. OS X is a lousy server with extremely poor thread creation. Where as Linux on a G5 rox's.

Now for a desktop/workstation poor thread creation doesn't affect much after booting. Giving OS X an advantage there.

Re:Great!

[Kadin2048]

World's most expensive desktop linux machine

No, I think that dubious honor belongs to this: the IBM IntelliStation A Pro. Take it home today, only $11,779.00.

And that's for a dual-Opteron system with RHEL, it's not one of the big RISC-based AIX workstations. Granted, it does come with 8GB of RAM, Ultra320 SCSI, and a ridiculous display card (3DLabs Wildcat Realizm 800).

Frankly though, I think the Mac looks cooler.

Re: It uses ACPI

[dch24]

I realize that EFI can replace ACPI, but it looks like they just took the easy route.

I'm looking at the dmesg listing, and it runs through EFI first...

But then it identifies and runs through the standard ACPI listing. Processors identified, power states, the works.

Not to say you aren't right about needing to throttle the processor, but Apple made it a little easier by using ACPI instead of reinventing the wheel...

Screenshot link

[sackeri]

Enjoy.

http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2006/02/linux _running_on_an_intel_imac.html

Re:FUD ALERT

[PFI_Optix]

Can you purchase/make a regular PC with the screen/compactness of the imac?

In a word, Yes. Just like when the first iMac came out and PC makers released clones, you can find LCDs with embedded PCs.

Here's one from Sony. I know it's $2,000, but it looks like it's a lot more than the iMac as features go.

Here's another one: http://www.boldata.com/html/unique.cfm

Here's one that came up on Google ads that I couldn't get to load from work: http://www.lcdpc.com/ I don't have a clue what's on it right now, but judging from the URL I think it's relevant :)

That's all I hit on three Google searches, but seeing as I had no clue what terms to search, I think it's a fair start.

Re:Modified kernel?

[Bill Hayden]

And has anyone tried sticking in a pre-release DVD of Windows Vista, holding down the D key, and seeing what happens?

I tried a few times to compose an answer to that question without being sarcastic, but I couldn't pull it off. In short, yea, pretty much everybody who has spent 2 seconds thinking about Windows on Mac has thought of this idea and/or tried it. I'll just point you to here, here, and here. I'm sorry to be pissy, but the forums where people are actually trying to work on this problem are so cluttered with this "novel" idea that it gets really annoying after a while.

So as not to be a complete rant, I'll explain why this doesn't currently work. The Mac uses the new UGA standard for video cards, and does not support VGA at all. Windows (even Vista) only supports VGA (or UGA with VGA fallback, which Mac doesn't have either). There are also drive partitioning issues, among other problems. Basically, any feature that Apple didn't need for booting MacOS was left out of the EFI, including BIOS-compatibility mode as you noted. No current PC hardware is so legacy-free. However, with a bit of massaging, the Vista install disc does boot, you just can't see anything on the screen. When Vista gets a real UGA driver, we should be able to make quite a bit more progress.

Re:Also, this proves once and for all...

[jbolden]

I suggest you read the threads on /. about Paladium. Pretty much:

1) TPM chip allows an OS to determine if it is running in an debugger or against raw hardware.

2) Trusted applications load only under trusted OS and get codes from TPM chip to verify they are on the actual machine (and since the OS is running against real hardware).

3) Data is encrypted in ways that only trusted applicationsc an read.

One more point about TPM chip. The chips can have a password they can't read. I.E. the chip can apply a function that it has no way of reporting to an external process.

Re:Linux on iMac - so what?

[damiam]

Contrary to popular opinion, OSX is not FreeBSD and isn't really very closely related to it. AFAIK, the userland UNIX tools are derived from BSD, but the kernel is Mach and just about everything else is proprietary.

Re:Oh boy!

[caseih]

Am I the only one who finds OS X's user interface to be just as inconsistant as any other current Linux desktop UI? Here's a number of my pet-peeves that seriously affect my efficiency in OS X:

• Inconsistant PageUp/PageDown use. Some programs move the cursor, some just move the screen. Very annoying when only the page moves. Now if all aps standardized even on the annoying behavior at least we'd be consistant.
• Home/End keys. If you understand the logic, it's not bad. Command-left_arrow and command-right_arrow do the trick. But if you go in and change your OS X keybindings to restore normal windows/linux home/end behavior, you only get very spotty coverage with some apps honoring the keybindings, some not.
• Click to focus a window absorbs that click. But not always. Depends on the app. Really slows you down if you use dual-monitors and have lots of windows spread between them.
• Scroll wheel can only affect a focused windows. This means you can't have your browser slightly underneath your program editor and scroll up and down through API docs without clicking away from the editor window. This one is pretty close to being a show-stopper for me. Combined with the previous problem with the focus these leads to some serious impedence of work. In essence the UI fails in this aspect because it doesn't get out of the way and let you work. Instead it is in your face.

So I just laugh whenever people talk about one UI (be it Windows or Gnome or KDE or OS X) being so much more consistant and usable than any other UI.

Re:FUD ALERT

[Logic and Reason]

Here's one from Sony. I know it's $2,000, but it looks like it's a lot more than the iMac as features go.

Did you look closely at that Sony TV-PC? The screen may be 20", but it has a resolution of only 1366x768. I'd hardly consider that an acceptable computer display for a $2200 computer.

The BOLData ones just look like crap, both visually and in terms of quality.

If you really want the iMac form factor in a "regular PC," I know Dell makes or used to make some decent ones. They still don't compare in overall quality to a Mac, though.

Re:Oh boy!

[Walkiry]

I think you missed something important in your comments, and it's that most of the time it was the inconsistency of the behaviour in every point what annoyed the GP poster. Inconsistency is always an irritation, even if it's relatively small.

Oh and one more thing:
>You know, I wanted focus follows mouse for a long time, but then I realized that if you had
>focus follows mouse, you'd never be able to choose anything in the menus

You have found just another source of irritation for people who prefer to have independent menu bars for each app. And of course, mouse focus (although you've quite handily pointed out why we'll probably never see mouse focus for the Mac).