Intel Mac experiences

[James Earl]

On 5/26/06, vayu <vayu at sklinks.com> wrote:
> I can understand the desire.  OS X does have a polished and beautiful
> desktop environment, but it is not FreeBSD.  If money were no object
> for me, I would want a Macbook Pro with a triple boot of OS X, Win XP
> and FreeBSD.
>
> Back to the original topic: James, I'm curious that you had any
> results booting with any BSD or Linux.  The Intel Macs have no BIOS,
> I have read of hacks that got Linux (and Windows before Apple offered
> it) to work, but it didn't seem straight forward based on the
> accounts I read.

Maybe I'm just experiencing withdrawls from not using FreeBSD!  ;)

To try to boot any of these install CD's all ya do is hold down the C
key to boot from the CD drive.  Gentoo Linux had no problems booting,
and GNOME actually felt quite fast (this is using the LiveCD).  I
think the hacks you read about are for getting an EFI compatible boot
loader setup, or for getting winxp running before Apple's Boot Camp
came out.

I got the Intel Mac Mini mainly for the hardware.  I like it's tiny
size, low power consumption, and silent operation.  I have another OS
X machine at home, so I always planned to install FreeBSD on this Mac
Mini when it was possible.  I can get my work done on any system.  So
I just like to run the system that I enjoy playing with the most!

James