Posts Tagged “OSX”

I like to help in support forums for various things that I am interested in. I am not paid for it. I don’t do it for glory. I don’t do it for popularity. I am just interested in sharing my knowledge with others so that they might be able to do something that they were unable to do before.

I am not going to claim that Linux is the perfect OS and that anyone can use it. I think it just “makes sense” myself, but I also have a machine running Windows Vista that I use as a PVR, and I actually tend to spend more time on my iMac in OSX Leopard than I do in my Ubuntu install. I have the mindset to use whatever you want. I don’t preach Open Source. I am not a Apple fanatic. Yet, more than once, it has been the case that, when someone is frustrated in the Ubuntu Apple Users’ Forum (as well as elsewhere) they threaten to ‘leave’ Linux… to go back to Windows, or OSX, or whatever.

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Introduction

Intel Macs use EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) instead of the typical BIOS (Basic Input / Output System) that most PCs use. EFI has a standardized specification that, unfortunately, Apple, in their infinite wisdom, decided that they do not need to abide by, and slightly modified their implementation. This makes developing Linux software that interfaces with this system difficult. In fact, there is, as of yet, no reliable method of booting Linux directly through EFI although work is being done by the mactel-linux group, elilo, and Grub2 to allow for this functionality. Part of this system is the use of a partitioning system called GPT (GUID Partition Table) which is used in place of the MBR (Master Boot Record) that would coincide with the use of a BIOS. NOTE: GUID means Globally Unique Identifier, which is basically a unique number that is used to identify something, a partition in this case. There is not much more that is needed to understand about that. Apple also places an “EFI partition” at the very beginning of the disc. This is used as a location to place executables for the EFI system to perform firmware updates. Read the rest of this entry »

This question gets asked a lot, especially since people are having non-functioning keyboards in Linux Bootloaders (Windows too). If you make room on your Intel Mac to boot Windows and Linux, most distros will now detect windows and add an entry to grub and/or lilo, and install the bootloader to the MBR (Master Boot Record) of your disk. This is ok on most PCs, as there is not normally any other way to choose which OS you want when booting up. However, most Mactel multibooters are using rEFIt to select the OS, and there is no need to use grub for anything but Linux (and hopefully, a EFI native bootloader will be available someday to replace that).

The way to get around this annoyance is to install your Linux bootloader to the root partition (or your /boot partition if you have one), and leave the normal Windows bootloader in the MBR. I use Ubuntu and Grub, and will focus there, but these general instructions should work for any system.

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Here I am posting a lot of information about my iMac for configuration in linux. Hopefully this will help a few people out that are wanting to try out linux on their Macs. I use Ubuntu linux, so all of this information has been tested only under that system. I am currently using 7.04 Feisty Fawn, although 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon will be released soon and seems to be running OK on my model Mac at the moment.

First, you can download my fully verbose lspci here.

The display built into the iMac is essentially a 20″ Apple Cinema Display. The following are the correct entries for the xorg configuration file including specific modelines as found on the Gentoo hardware wiki:

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier      "Apple Cinema Display"
    VendorName      "Apple Inc."
    ModelName       "Apple Cinema Display 20"
    HorizSync       28-90
    VertRefresh     43-72
    DisplaySize     434 270
    Option "DPMS"
    UseModes "Modes0"
EndSection

Section "Modes"
    Identifier "Modes0"
    ModeLine "1680x1050" 119.00 1680 1728 1760 1840 1050 1053 1059 1080
    Modeline "1280x800" 67.26 1280 1312 1560 1592 800 817 824 841
    Modeline "1024x640" 51.90 1024 1056 1248 1280 640 653 660 673
    Modeline "800x500" 30.98 800 832 944 976 500 510 515 526
EndSection

I recently compiled a kernel for linux 2.6.22.6 with the latest mactel and ck patches. My config can be downloaded here: config-linux-2.6.22.6-mactel-ck1

I know this is kinda trendy, but I had an old Clamshell iBook that ended up just sitting around for a very long time, so I decided to use it to make my own digital picture frame. Read the rest of this entry »