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: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: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: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.