[Wylug-discuss] *nix on G4 Mac Mini

[Roger Leigh]

Dave Fisher <wylug-discuss at davefisher.co.uk> writes:

> I have a G4 Mac Mini that I bought partly out of curiousity and partly
> for the Mac's supposed multimedia editing capabilities ... using the
> excuse that it was the only practical way to do detailed website
> compatibility testing on Safari ;-)
>
> I rarely use it these days, not least because it is dog slow and I truly
> hate the desktop's (non)usability.
>
> So I've begun to wonder about replacing the OS with some sort of *nix,
> e.g. to use it for testing and protyping websites
>
> Has anyone got any relevant experience or recommendations?

I run Debian on my Mac Mini, which is I think the same spec as yours
(512 MiB RAM, 1.42 GHz 7447A Motorola G4 PowerPC CPU, 32 MiB ATI
Radeon 9200 graphics).

A Debian Etch or Testing netinst ISO or similar should just work.
Installation is exactly the same as for i386, with the exception of
the bootloader (yaboot for OpenFirmware instead of GRUB, though GRUB2
supports OpenFirmware if you want to try out a bleeding edge
bootloader).

With a current kernel, or at least one >= 2.6.16, you should have no
problem getting it up and running.  Sound, ethernet should just work.
Graphics should also just work--you'll need to use radeonfb to get a
framebuffer console (there is no vgacon, just video=ofonly to get a
OpenFirmware framebuffer).

I'm typing this mail on the Mac Mini right now.  Since getting it
nearly three years ago, it has been my main (only) workstation.  I use
it for all my Debian development work, and everything else.  It's
perfectly good for everything I do, from web browsing and watching
DVDs to coding and writing, though compiling C++ code could be a bit
faster (blame GCC!). I have been pretty happy with it--it has been the
most trouble free piece of hardware I've owned, and I've been really
pleased with how it has performed.  My only complaint is that Apple
dropped powerpc in favour of i368--I can't buy a replacement system
when this becomes outdated.


Regards,
Roger

-- 
  .''`.  Roger Leigh
 : :' :  Debian GNU/Linux             http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/
 `. `'   Printing on GNU/Linux?       http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/
   `-    GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848   Please GPG sign your mail.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 188 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://list.wylug.org.uk/pipermail/wylug-discuss/attachments/20071118/9f8f392d/attachment.bin