Re: debian on a mac?
On (15/10/03 21:06), Kent West wrote:
> >So, lately, I've been drooling over the latest 15" powerbooks. I have
> >never owned or even really used a Mac, but when looking at laptop
> >choices, powerbooks look to be the best. I even had a dream about it
> >last night ... except in the dream, salesmen kept giving me the wrong
> >model, and I'd get home, open it up, realize it was the wrong one, and
> >have to repeat the process. Hopefully the actual purchase will be less
> >painful ...
> >
> >So, question for people who have used this architecture before: If I buy
> >a system from Apple, how hard would it be to reconfigure it for
> >dual-boot? Single-boot debian? What is the Mac way to resize/move
> >partitions? What does one use for a boot-loader? I know that OS X is
> >based on BSD, but I don't know how easy it is to get, say, xfree86 or
> >gnome compiled and running on it.
> >
> >
> >How much functionality should I expect from debian on a mac compared to
> >my x86 setup? Are packages as readily available?
> >
> >What are the gotchas?
> >
> >Any insight into this would be greatly appreciated.
> >
> Later. . .
>
> >Speaking of which, http://www.debian.org/ports/ lists the motorola 68k
> >as the second-most popular debian-port, then later down the list
> >mentions the powerpc. Both mention Macs. Are all modern Macs
> >powerpc, or do I need to look at the specs to know what I need?
> >
>
>
> There's a debian-mac list where you'll find people running Debian on Mac.
>
> I have a Gray&White G4 on which I'm triple booting Mac System 9, OS/X,
> and Debian.
>
> Within Debian, I sometimes run MOL (Mac-on-Linux) which allows me to run
> System 9 and OS/X on top of Debian, even both at the same time, in a
> window or in full-screen, with networking. Works great for a Helpdesk
> area; click, you're in System 9; click, you're in OS/X; click, you're in
> Debian. Of course there are a few minor gotches when running Mac OSes on
> top of MOL, but it's pretty much as successful as running Windows on
> Linux via VMWare, only for free. What a deal!
>
> Boot off your Mac System CD; run Disk Tools (or pdisk, which is more
> like fdisk, but which you'll have to download); partition your drive for
> your Mac OS(es), leaving a large chunk free for Debian _in front of_ the
> Mac partition(s). Install one or both Mac OSes. Then copy down four or
> five Debian files (rescue.bin, etc). Reboot the computer and go into
> OpenFirmWare (or whatever it's called; I forget. Maybe it's
> OpenBootWare, or OpenBootProm, or something. It's sortta like a PC's
> BIOS, but, dare I say, more powerful. The keystroke to get in is
> something like Command-Shift-O-F, but again, you'd have to read the
> install docs rather than rely on my likely-wrong memory. Then from
> there, you feed the OBP some esoteric command to tell the Mac to boot
> off the Debian rescue.bin file that's sitting on the Mac partition. Then
> the install is very similar to a regular PC Debian install. Instead of
> cfdisk you'll use fdisk. You'll see 6 or 7 partitions you didn't know
> were there, which you'll need to keep if you're keeping the Mac software
> around. If you're not keeping the Mac OSes, you can get rid of these 6
> or 7 partitions. You can only have a maximum of 14 or 15 (I forget)
> partitions, so 9 or so (7 plus OS9 plus OS/X) are already used, so
> you'll be somewhat limited in your partitioning options. The only
> remaining hard part is getting the boot record set up properly for you
> to boot into all three OSes. (I forget the name of the boot software,
> but it's kindda like LILO, but not much like it.)
Yaboot - don't use the woody version, it won't work with the latest
hardware. Details here:
http://penguinppc.org/projects/yaboot/doc/yaboot-howto.shtml
>
> After that, Debian is pretty much Debian. You can't run VMWare or WINE
> on it, as they're strictly for x86 architectures. I think bochs will
> work however, and maybe that "other" windows emulator (I say "other" in
> quotes because I know, I know, WINE IS Not an Emulator), which name I
> can't think of at the moment.
>
> (Sorry I'm giving you so many vague "I can't quite remember the details"
> answers.)
>
> Modern Macintoshes, ever since the G3, are PowerPC machines. I doubt the
> G5s qualify as a PPC machine however; I just don't know. There are other
> PPC-based machines besides Macs however; that's why the architecture is
> not called "Macintosh".
>
> Feel free to ask more questions; I can be vague for weeks at a time :-)
>
> --
> Kent
>
>
>
>
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