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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!!!

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