Mac mini March: Debian on a Mac mini

Hey, Linux g33ks. In case you hadn’t heard, Torvalds uses a Mac. It’s the cool thing to do these days. jcdenton, a guest poster over at Mac Mini Hacks has posted a link to this tutorial for installing Debian on a Mac mini. The tutorial explains, ”Personally, I bought the Mac Mini as a replacement for my girlfriend’s aging 1GHz Pentium-III system. Thanks to the portability of Debian and its advanced package management tools, making her new Mac look like her old PC took only an hour or so.”

For the most part, the Mac mini hardware is Linux-compatible; however, there are a few trouble spots: Apple Intrepid Audio is unsupported but will probably be fixed soon, Apple Bluetooth module remains untested but should work, Apple 56K V.92 modem remains untested but may work, and Apple Airport Extreme (802.11g) is both unsupported and a fix is unlikely.

So, the good / bad news is: You can install Debian on your Mac Mini (yay!), but you should have a broadband Ethernet connection and USB mouse and keyboard handy, as Airport, modem, and Bluetooth support are all either iffy or never going to happen (boo!).

[via MacSlash]