Linux on your Mac

[Emrys]

Don't know where this should go but...

Anybody try running a Linux distro on your Macs? I am thinking about installing Gentoo on my iMac, I have installed it on one of my x86 machines and it is pretty fast.

Supposedly you can even dual boot so you wouldn't have to give up OS X, just a couple GB for the distro.

Anybody try this?

 

[MacAddikt]

i dont know about putting linux on my imac, although it would be pretty cool. i think id rather use virtual pc with a linux rom. i do however have yellow dog 2.2 on my old apple 7200 and its also dual bootable to Mac OS 8.6

 

[Amen-Moses]

My question would be: Why?

I have yet to find an X11 app that won't run native, just compile and go, well almost.

Just install the developer tools, followed by X11 and off you go, I got gimp working this way really easily although since doing so I haven't actually had a need for it!

Amen-Moses

 

[Emrys]

Yes, I've done that as well. It is just cool to see what a completely different OS will do on my iMac.

 

[nko]

This topic happened a while ago, but I was wondering if anyone went through with it or anything. I downloaded the Gentoo Live-CD. It booted, but couldn't seem to do anything neat or useful. Then I downloaded Yellow Dog, and finally SourceMage. Neither of these latter two distros will even boot off the CD's I burned. Anyone had similar problems? I think I'm doing it right; the md5's check out, and I'm holding 'c' as I reboot. Yep, the CD's in the tray, and the tray's bay is closed, m'kay...

Thought I'd, ya know... rhyme. Seemed like the thing to do at the thyme.

And hey, how's performance, while I'm asking about this sorta stuff?

 

[nko]

Oh yeah, and do Airport cards work in Linux? I figure it's worth a shot to ask. If it doesn't, I'm probably not gonna be booting in to Linux much, and installing a source based distro will be a hassle

 

[Emrys]

I posted in another thread about installing Yellow Dog Linux. I have installed it. And it does support everything in my iMac. I do believe it does support Airport out of the box as well. Basically it is a RedHat clone, optimized ( at least the drivers ) for Mac products. I would give that a try first, to see if you like the performance of Linux. I didn't. I've also install Gentoo a number of times on my Intel machines, and depending on the method you choose, it will take a long time to get Gentoo working on your machine. Try YDL first, and see if you like it, if you do, then by all means set down the Gentoo path. Gentoo is a very nice OS.

 

[nko]

I can't say I've really ever liked anything RPM based outside of Mandrake, and that was because it felt well configured for the whole user experience. Still, I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong with these CDs not to be able to boot off of them... Maybe I'll try Debian.