Questions about FreeBSD on a Mac Mini

[Nathan Whitehorn]

Ananda Samaddar wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Feb 2009 17:00:04 -0600
> Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn at freebsd.org> wrote:
>   
>> While the installer does not currently provide a partitioning
>> mechanism or bootloader installation facility, the operating system
>> itself does have this capability, and you can also do it by hand
>> (e.g. from OS X). The gpart utility is capable of partioning APM
>> disks from the command line, and there is a boot loader image
>> (/boot/boot1.hfs) available on -CURRENT that you can dd to an extra
>> 800 K partition to get a boot sector that OF will understand. You can
>> also partition from OS X and copy the loader (/boot/loader) to an HFS
>> partition at that time.
>>     
>
> I run Debian on an ibook already so I'm presuming it's similar thing to
> what they term a 'New World Boot partition' when you talk about a
> 'small partition'.  Also can partitions that have been created under
> Linux be converted by the installer to UFS2?
>   
Yes, and yes.
>> This is remedied in -CURRENT and will be merged to -STABLE in a week
>> and a half, barring any reports of problems.
>>     
>
> So this will be merged into 7.0 as a compile time option for the
> kernel?  Does the supplied GCC support Altivec and if so can ports be
> recompiled for Altivec support?
>   
It will be in the kernel by default. The supplied gcc does support 
Altivec, and ports will use it if you set CPUTYPE=7450 or whatever 
Altivec-supporting CPU you have in /etc/make.conf. I'm currently running 
a world and all my ports built with Altivec on a G4 iBook very happily.
-Nathan