It does not have to be concerned with built in I/O systems (peripherals like keyboard, mouse, monitors and video cameras) that laptop and to a lesser degree iMac have to deal with. Astute reader will notice that installing Linux on Mac Mini should be the simplest of all. Mac Mini has a special place among all these variants, because it embodies the common denominator mentioned earlier. Depending on which Apple system you have additional requirements and needs start to play a role during Linux installation on an Apple box. These represents the basic set of rules for or a common denominator for all Linux installations on all Apple computers. Namely neither of the Apple machines utilize BIOS, second Apple complies with a disk organization schema, which is based on GUID Partition Table (GPT) rather than on Master Boot Record (MBR) used with BIOS. Regardless on which contemporary Apple platform you wish to install Linux - PowerPC, i386 or some kind of Apple laptop, there is something distinctly unique about them all, and that defines a set of common concerns that we have to appreciate when installing Linux on these systems. JohnStavrakakis triple_boot_on_macbook_pro Here are a few places you may wish to consult if you have an Apple laptop or perhaps a PowerPC Apple system: There are already many pages dealing mainly with Linux installation issues on Apple's laptops.

Though I wish to concentrate on i386 Mac Mini, let us begin with a short description and comparison between a few possible scenarios most often encountered by those who are considering installing Linux onto Apple Computer's hardware.

Though outdated, this document still contains valuable information about the many partitioning possibilities you can choose. Nevertheless, for those that use less powerful machines with less than 8 or even 4 GB memory, the better choice may be to install a dual boot solution. I believe the way run other OS-es on Apple's hardware is within virtual machines. I can not update it because I do not run Ubuntu directly on Apple's hardware anymore. Besides, Ubuntu releases have changed many times in between and Ubuntu installation now is much smoother now. This installation was done on old Mac mini that shipped with Mac OS X CDs (Tiger at the time). I have recovered the text from my backups and fixed the Wiki Markup to accommodate current Ubuntu's format. I have written this document over 6 years ago in 2006 on another Ubuntu Wiki which has since disappeared.

Clean install ubuntu for mac mini