Best Linux Distro For Mac Mini

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As useful and well-written as this article is, it has an incorrect assumption: namely, that support for old Macs will continue in Linux. In fact, 32-bit PowerPC support is going away in most. Of course, I know I can also buy Mini PCs that have Linux pre-loaded and part of the proceeds support development of the distro like the Mintbox Mini pictured at the top of this page. I do like the idea of my purchase directly supporting the distro. I also like the Intel NUC, but once configured it can be a bit pricey for my purposes. Linux Mint According to the OS’s website, Linux Mint is now the leading Linux distro, surpassing Ubuntu and all other distros to become the main competition against Windows and MacOS. Zorin OS is a distro designed to welcome new Linux users into the community by making it less likely for them to miss the aesthetics of their former Windows or macOS, especially with the app menus. Zorin OS Linux Distro. 17th December 2014. Linux on MacMini (2006 model) I bought in 2006 a MacMini. That year there were two MacMini releases, mine corresponding to the older model (MA206LL/A, Model Number A1176, Model Id: Macmini1,1), with a 1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo (32 bits).

It’s not particularly easy to create a bootable USB flash drive so you can try running Linux on a PowerPC Mac. It took me a couple weeks of research, asking questions of our Linux on PowerPC Macs group on Facebook, and experimenting before I could finally boot into Linux 14.04 from a thumb drive. I learned some lessons. I’m going to make it a lot easier for you to install Linux on your old PPC Macs.

I’ve experimented with Linux and BSD Macs going back to the Mac IIci era, and I’ve never had much luck. Back in the olden days, Linux was a text-based operating system similar to MS-DOS. Everything was handled through the command line in the late 1990s. This time around I wanted to create a “live” flash drive so I could make sure it actually worked before committing to installing Linux on a hard drive.

If only I’d had a blank CD-R or DVD-R, it would have been a lot easier!

My original testbed was a Late 2005 2.3 GHz Power Mac G5 Dual with 3 GB of RAM and two hard drives, one with OS X 10.4 Tiger, the other with OS X 10.5 Leopard. It’s my most powerful PowerPC Mac, so I figured it would be a good way to take Linux for a spin.

Pick a Distro

Step one is to choose your distribution. After talking with others in our small-but-growing Linux PPC Facebook group, I settled on Lubuntu as a good starting point. Lubuntu is known for having a lighter-weight user interface, LXDE – similar to what Simon Royal used when he put LXLE on an old PC.

Ubuntu Linux has a simple numbering scheme for its versions. Version 14.04 was released in the 4th month of 2014, and 16.04 in the 4th month of 2016. That’s also the latest version available for PowerPC at present. You can download 14.04 and 16.04 from this page, earlier versions from this page, where you can also get version 12.04 for PowerPC, among many other architectures.

PowerPC distros prior to version 12.04 have separate 32-bit and 64-bit installers. The only PowerPC Macs that can use a 64-bit operating system are G5 iMacs and Power Macs. Anything before G5 can only use a 32-bit Linux. Starting with version 12.04 the 32-bit and 64-bit versions are part of the same package for Macs.

I suggest you start by downloading Mac (PowerPC) and IBM-PPC (POWER5) desktop CD, which is designed to be burnt to a CD-R and give you a fully bootable way to test out Linux before you commit to it. That’s fine if you have blank CD-R media or a CD-RW disc, but I haven’t burnt a CD in years and have no blanks at present.

That was also the biggest reason I had problems. Using a USB Flash Drive was an exercise in frustration.

The USB Flash Drive Problem

I do, however, have a few 8 GB and larger USB flash drives, and there are plenty of instructions online for properly formatting the flash drive and getting the bootable ISO installed. And none of them worked on my Power Mac G5. I would spend hours trying this, that, and the other thing. Formatting the flash drive was the easy part; installing the ISO and creating a bootable system stumped me.

The only method I found that worked for creating a bootable USB flash drive with Lubuntu on it required me to use Etcher, a freeware app that takes an ISO and creates a bootable flash drive from it. However, Etcher doesn’t run on PowerPC Macs. Nor does it run on my Intel Macs with OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. I had to use one of my Macs with OS X 10.11 El Capitan installed, and that did the job.

In other words, you need a fairly modern Mac to create the bootable flash drive you need to launch Linux on PowerPC Macs.

I formatted the flash drive as FAT, exFAT, HFS+, Apple Partition Map, GUID Partition Map, and Master Boot Record. Etcher dutifully imaged the ISO file to the flash drive. But it wouldn’t boot.

The key is to format the flash drive using Master Boot Record and FAT. Those are not the default settings, so you’ll have to find them in your version of Disk Utility.

Linux

But It Won’t Boot

Best Linux Distro For Old Mac Mini

I’ve been a spoiled Mac user since 1986, and if I’d had a CD-R or DVD-R, this would have been easy. Start your Mac, hold down the C key, and it will boot from whatever is in your optical drive. That goes back to the first Macs with built-in CD-ROM drives. It’s easy, but there’s nothing nearly as easy for booting from a USB flash drive.

On most Macs, if you hold down the Option key (marked Opt on some Mac keyboards, Alt on Windows keyboard) at startup, your Mac will present you with all the bootable options on your computer. On my Power Mac G5, the options are OS X 10.4.11 Tiger, 10.4.11 Tiger Server, and 10.5.8 Leopard.

If I’d had an external USB or FireWire drive, it would have shown up as well. But no matter what I did, the USB thumb drive never showed up as an option. I couldn’t boot from it in the traditional way.

Open Firmware

Whatever the reason, my last generation Power Mac G5 will only boot from the flash drive if I startup in Open Firmware. Hold down Cmd, Opt, O, and F at startup and hold them down until text appears on the upper left corner of your display. Your modern Mac be in Open Firmware (OF, as in two of the keys you hold down to boot into it). OF is a low-level operating system with a command line interface, like the Apple II+ at work that was the first computer I used, the Commodore VIC-20 and 64 that I used at home because they fit my low-end budget, and that Zenith Z-151 PC running MS-DOS 3.3 circa 1987.

Launch OF. That can take a while, as OF tests all your system memory every time you launch it. Just hold those 4 keys down until OF tells you to let go of them.

As long as you only have one bootable USB device, such as the flash drive with Lubuntu or an external CD-ROM or DVD drive, you can type in the following to boot from that device on a dual-core Power Mac G5:

boot ud:,:tbxi

and then hit Return or Enter. That worked perfectly with my Late 2005 Power Mac G5, but it would not work with my older 2.0 GHz dual-processor Power Mac G5s no matter what I did, and I didn’t bother to try it on an iMac G5.

If you have more than one bootable device, type devalias at the prompt, hit Return, and you will see a lengthy list of devices like this.

Multicharts para mac. That was a bit of a rabbit trail for me. In the end I found the command that let me boot from the front USB port on my older Power Mac G5 – these are all equivalent:

boot usb2/disk@1:2,yaboot
boot usb2/disk:2,yaboot
boot usb2/@1:2,yaboot

But that only worked on one of my Power Mac G5s. The other three I tried simply would not boot from the flash drive. This was an exercise in frustration!

Making a Bootable Linux Hard Drive

Once I saw that Lubuntu ran decently on my ancient Power Mac G5 Dual, I knew that I wanted to install it on a hard drive so it would boot more quickly and allow me to add more software. That would have been easy on the Dual, but I didn’t want to reformat either of its hard drives, so I went through my small collection of older Power Mac G5 models in search of one that would boot from the flash drive so I could easily reformat its hard drive and install Lubuntu.

When I finally got one up and running – the third one I tried (the first one wouldn’t even boot, the second wouldn’t boot from the flash drive) – I started the installer. I really appreciate the concise, thorough, helpful explanations of what each choice means. It’s the kind of polish we don’t see with the Mac OS; Apple knows that most of us just want it to run. Ubuntu knows that we are interested in making informed decisions and that it needs to educate us through the process. Nice!

Or so it seemed. Then it wanted to upgrade from 14.04 to 16.04, but every time I tried to do that, it nattered at me about removing certain files using sudo and compressing other files – neither of which I am able to do. How can I remove 35.6 M of files when I don’t even know what’s necessary?

Okay, I should have just started with the Lubuntu 16.04 ISO, but I didn’t know it at the time. If you want to try Linux on a PowerPC Mac, choose the 16.04 Long Term Release (LTR) version and be done with big upgrades until the next LTR version, probably in April 2018.

If you’re just experimenting, you might want to use Lubuntu 17.04. And if you’re patient, you might want to wait until April when Lubuntu 18.04 LTR is due.

Lesson Learned: Burn a Disc Instead!

I wanted you to understand the frustration of trying to do things with a USB flash drive before telling you to bite the bullet and burn a DVD-R disk with the distro of your choosing. You can burn a CD-R, but that usually means trimming the Linux distro to fit on a disc. With DVD-R you’ve got lots of room for distros approaching 1 GB in size.

And you don’t have to use Open Firmware at all.

Booting from the DVD-R was a breeze after all the frustration I had to deal with creating a bootable flash drive and then actually booting from it. I wiped the 80 GB drive in a 2.0 GHz dual-processor Power Mac G5 with 3 GB RAM and installed Lubuntu. I ended up with a very nice, friendly, functional Linux machine that lets me run the latest version of Firefox on a 2005 Power Mac that was left behind with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard shipped in August 2009.

Is It Practical?

There are two questions to address here: Is it practical to continue using PowerPC Macs in 2018? And is it practical to run Linux on PowerPC Macs instead of OS X 10.4 Tiger or 10.5 Leopard?

Hardware

For those who have a Power Mac G5 Quad, the last and most powerful PowerPC Mac ever, the answer is a resounding yes. With four cores running at 2.5 GHz, you’ve got comparable power to the earliest 4-core Mac Pro. This is lustworthy hardware, although not especially practical in terms of the current it draws.

Dual-processor and dual-core Power Mac G5s are competent performers, and the faster dual-processor Power Mac G4 machines are solid workhorses as well with decent amounts of power. I wouldn’t want to use a Power Mac below 800 MHz or so with Tiger or Leopard, but dual 733 MHz or faster CPUs work well enough.

There may be tasks where processing power isn’t an issue, perhaps a home file server or web server, and there even a 233 MHz iMac G3 may provide all the power you need. Vanavil avvaiyar software, free download for windows 10. Using MAMP, Tiger and Leopard can be configured as Unix servers.

Operating System

If you’re wed to Mac software, Linux probably isn’t going to be on our daily driver Mac. There is a whole learning curve going to a different operating system and using primarily free open source software that may have the power of commercial apps – but you need to figure out how to access it.

But if you want to set up a machine with an up-to-date operating system and browser that can be used more like a Chromebook than a Mac, Linux could be for you. Firefox is a staple in the Linux world, and the latest version is fast with a reduced memory footprint. I can run it on my Power Mac G5 Dual nicely. Not as nicely as a 3 GHz Core i3 iMac, but nicely nonetheless.

Honestly, I would go the triple-boot route. Today I put separate Tiger and Leopard partitions on any G4 or G5 Mac I set up, usually with Leopard getting 2-3 times as much space as Tiger, depending on the size of the hard drive. To learn to live in the Linux world, I would go with two hard drives when possible – one just for Linux, which likes to partition its hard drive just so – and one with partitions for Tiger and Leopard.

Facebook: Ouch

Facebook is a remarkably bloated environment, and you’ve probably been spoiled with modern hardware or the mobile version. Even on my dual-core 2.3 GHz G5, Facebook is frustratingly slow. Bittorrent download windows 10 free. You can really speed it up by going to m.facebook.com instead of www.facebook.com. That puts you in the mobile version, which has its own drawbacks but runs a lot faster than the desktop version.

Conclusion

Don’t try to do it on your own. We’ve created a helpful Facebook group of people who have managed to get Linux running on PowerPC hardware and those who are learning how. Linux on PowerPC Macs was invaluable in helping me get this far.

keywords: #ppclinux #linuxonmac

short link: https://goo.gl/anff6h

Want to try Linux but looking for something familiar? If you are a Mac user who fits this description, then this article is just for you!

ELEMENTARY OS

Elementary OS is often praised as the most beautiful desktop around. It is automatically set up to look and act like a Mac, and has a strong focus on keeping it simple. However, it does not come with the Gnome Software Center, but rather it’s own. Unfortunately, this Software Center is rather limited compared to its’ Gnome counterpart. However, it offers an even more similar experience to Apple’s Appstore, thus keeping it simple and easy for new users migrating from a Mac.

While not as customizable as many other Linux distros, it has a much more beautiful setup by default. As with most Linux distros, they can be made to look however the user sees fit. However, Elementary OS is one of the few that aims to satisfy it’s users as far as looks go, without any changes. Due to this, you can have a gorgeous desktop without doing anything!

Best Linux Distro For Mac Mini 2012

SOLUS

Solus will easily roll you from one year onto another without ever having to reinstall your Operating System. This is due to the fact that it features a rolling release cycle. This means that not only can you update your programs natively, you can also update your system whenever a new component comes out. This means that you can keep your entire system up-to-date indefinitely! Mac’s actually do this also, as shown by their software updates. These software updates allow the user to upgrade their Mac from, for example, 9.3.5 to 10.0. Now with Solus, you can continue this tradition with Linux!

Solus features three Desktop Environments, namely Mate, Budgie, and Gnome. The first Desktop Environment is explained in the above section concerning Ubuntu. However, Budgie and Gnome are not. Gnome is the same desktop that the default flavor of Ubuntu uses, but Solus does not customize the setup as much, leaving it at the default Gnome setup. As for Budgie, that is Solus’ flagship in the DE category. It is a DE similar to Gnome, except for the fact that it’s settings are in the style of a bar on the side of the screen rather than a traditional settings application. This bar features a setup similar to that of a Mac due to it’s Notifications column and it’s General settings one. Overall, this aids in completing the look and feel of a Mac.

Mac

Unfortunately, most rolling distros tend to have more glitches than non-rolling ones. This is because the user is always receiving the newest programs and applications available, and consequently these newer versions of the software have often not been tested as long as the older versions have. Due to this, most rolling distros are not recommended to those new to Linux. However, Solus is an exception. It is known for remaining incredibly stable even though it has a rolling nature to it.

Sadly, Solus does not have quite as much software available as other Linux distros. It includes the most popular programs, but if you are looking for a less known one, you may be out of luck. Thankfully, if you feel you just need a certain application or program, you can contact the developers of Solus and they will at least look into adding the program you mentioned to them into the available software for you to install.

DEEPIN

10 Best Linux Distros

Deepin is rapidly growing in popularity in the Linux world due to it’s attractive interface. It has stunning visual effects and features a settings bar on the side of the desktop. This settings bar replaces the traditional application for customizing your settings, just like the side bar in Solus. As for the taskbar, it can be made to look and act either like a Mac or a Windows machine with one click. Simply right cllick on the taskbar and select Properties and then pick either Fashion Mode for a Mac look or Efficient Mode for a Windows look.

While many distros use tools already out there and available, Deepin does not utilize mny of them. Instead, its’ developers create their own applications to go along with their distro. A few examples of this are Deepin Movie, Deepin Screenshot, and Deepin File Manager. This way, your experience is guaranteed to have a uniformed feel to it.

Conclusion:

While Elementary OS has plenty of software available, both Solus and Deepin are somewhat more limited in that field. Thus, if you are feeling adventurous, it would be advisable to install Deepin or Solus through the Antergos Community Edition. Inside the installer, the “Solus” option will be titled “Budgie” and the Deepin option will remain the same, with the title “Deepin”. If you go with this method, not only will you will have plenty of software to choose from, but your Operating System will be using a rolling release approach. This means that you can just continuously update your system, rather than re-installing it every few years when a new version of it comes out. However, it also means that since everything is being continuously updated, you will be using the newest versions of software available. This is generally a good thing, except when it comes to stability. Since the software is newer, it has not had as much time to be thoroughly tested, and therefore a glitch or two in your system has a higher chance of taking place than it would if you were not using a rolling release approach. This is true for any distro that features a rolling release cycle, with the exception of Solus. As for that distro, the developers have taken great pains to keep it stable and fully reliable, although there are less programs available for it.

Best Linux Distro For Mac Mini 2011

In the end, it is your choice. There are positives and negatives to either approach. However, since all of these distros are 100% free (just like any Linux distro is) you can always change your mind later and install a different distro of your choice. It’s entirely up to you! Enjoy!