I got linux running on the mac mini (sort of).
After a mere 30 hours of intensive hacking, the attempted use of many distros…Fedora, opensuse, yellowdog, kubuntu, kubuntu alt, ubuntu alt…I got Ubuntu up and running. I had to do an IBM tutorial on working with bash, I had to hack away at my xorg.conf file, I had to fret and swear….but ….
Did it. Wireless and sound work, bluetooth is untested but supposed to work… The problem is that so far I have been unable to install updates…the box sees them, tells me about them…but won’t install them. Ugh!
This is the first time that I have ever gotten Ubuntu installed except under VM. I know people swear by it, but it never supports my hardware…
I left the box dual boot, as I am not that enamored with Ubuntu/gnome. To me Ubuntu seems a lot like OS X, a sort of lite version of a real OS. But talk about accomplishment….major strides for john on working with the command line. Major strides.
My current computing environment goes like this:
My main workstation (a Dell Optiplex) is pure opensuse 10.1.
My Mac test box (ppc Mini) is dual boot with OSX 10.4 and Ubuntu 6.06.
My laptop/tablet is dual boot XP Tablet and Xandros 4.
My HP Media Center is still XP MCE.
In my reckoning that is 3 out of 4! And it informs me that I will never pay the Windows tax again!
When I started, I thought the Mac would be easy, a subset of hardware…but nope, nothing easy here. Literally 30 hours of hacking away at config files and following error and log files. And this from a guy who does not like the command line, who sees it as a throwback to the 80’s. Linux has come a long way since I first tried it about 7 years ago, but this experience shows how far it still has to go… I am a Windows power user, I can do pretty much anything I set my mind to in Windows, still this was hard…and only a basic thing.
But I do not mean to bash the Linux community….you guys and gals are the coolest, the slickest… Thanks to all you developers, I was able to make it happen. Kudos to you folks!
While I can scream “I did it”. I was only able to do it because of you. HURRAY for YOU!!!
