Linux On Aluminum iMacs: Does It Work?

July 25, 2010 3:27 PM

Any one have experience running Ubuntu or another Linux on an aluminum iMac? (Aluminum keyboard, wireless mouse, 2.66 Core 2 Duo) What works? What doesn't? I'm not a Linux neophyte. I ran it on my desktop for about ten years, then moved to Apple after banging my head on wireless drivers. (Bought three successive cards that the "community" said worked. They didn't.) I don't mind editing scripts, but I want all my hardware to work immediately after an install or after I grab some supported packages. I'm through chasing around for unsupported code that some guy says works on his hardware. Is my Time Capsule going to be at all useful? (Posted this question on the Ubuntu forum and got only two rather unhelpful replies.)
posted by justcorbly to computers & internet (11 answers total)

I don't have any tips about generally running Linux on a Mac, but as far as your Time Capsule... you should be able to use it manually. It's an HFS+ filesystem in there, so mount it from the commandline like this:

mount -t hfsplus /dev/whatever /mnt

All of your stuff will be in there. Might want to familiarize yourself with the directory structure before you whack your MacOS. The stuff you want is probably going to be in /mnt/Backups.backupdb/[your_machine_name]/latest

As far as backing up to it regularly, I don't know of a truly great solution aside from enterprise level software like TSM. Probably just tar up your essential files and drop it on there once a day. TimeMachine is easily the best part of MacOS to me, and the only thing really keeping me from switching as well.
posted by synaesthetichaze at 4:15 PM on July 25, 2010

If you haven't looked up your model to see the compatibility charts on the ubuntu wiki, you can do so here. A brief glance at what might be your model looks promising -- most everything works out of the box, the rest with installs from the repos.

I've been using Ubuntu on a Macbook Amateur^TM for several years and have been very pleased with the out-of-the-box hardware support.
posted by cowbellemoo at 4:42 PM on July 25, 2010 [1 favorite]

Cowbellemoo, I have an iMac desktop, not a MacBook. An "iMac8,1", to be specific. Maybe it's me, but i can't find any documentation on the Ubuntu site about iMacs.

Re: the Time Capsule. I'm primarily concerned about using its wireless router capability. It would be really nice if that worked out of the box. I can afford to trash the backups that are currently on the thing and start over, if necesary.
posted by justcorbly at 5:07 PM on July 25, 2010

Sorry, I wasn't thinking straight; I assumed for some reason that you were using a simple external hard drive as a Time Machine device ... of course the Time Capsule is more than that, combined router + NAS.

Theoretically you should be able to use the Time Capsule perfectly fine as a wireless router, and Ubuntu even has utilities to connect to it with a java-based emulator of Airport Utility in the event that it requires some reconfiguration or something. No idea how well this works... Apple's official Airport Utility software only runs on MacOS & Windows, so if it comes down to it you could load a VM with Windows and boot into that solely for configuring your router... not exactly ideal.

If you decide to buy another router, you can still use the Time Capsule as a wireless NAS... it runs Samba (aka CIFS), which you can grab from Ubuntu repositories fairly easily. Then you will be able to mount the Time Capsule drive like this: mount -t cifs //10.0.0.1/"Time Capsule Name"/your_machine_name /mnt -o pass=password

The IP will be different if it's not the router.
posted by synaesthetichaze at 6:15 PM on July 25, 2010

I should point out that the Ubuntu Airport Utility emulator isn't explicitly *for* Time Capsules, but it may work. Frankly, I would be a little wary about depending upon it.
posted by synaesthetichaze at 6:28 PM on July 25, 2010

I'm not an experienced linux user, but I installed Ubuntu on my mac using wubi, a year ago. I previously had windows installed (using bootcamp), and then ran wubi within windows. When I booted into windows I then got the choice of using windows or Ubuntu.

It worked fine, aside from a problem with sound, which I figured out after reading some forums. I was concerned at how hot it was getting though (it's a macbook pro), so I uninstalled it after a few weeks. Currently I have ubuntu 10.04 as a virtual machine on mac osx and it is extremely fast, and works perfectly.
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 7:16 PM on July 25, 2010

If I do install Ubuntu or some other Linux, I'll leave a shrunken OS X install intact, so I'll be able to boot into it if and when I need to tweak the Time Capsule or perfrom some other Apple-specific surgery.
posted by justcorbly at 7:49 PM on July 25, 2010

Is this page from the Ubuntu wiki any help? It may be a little out of date.
posted by pharm at 12:46 AM on July 26, 2010

I'd suggest a dual boot.

I'm pretty sure that all of OSX hardware runs fine under Ubuntu (why not just download a live CD?)

The important parts of a time capsule you'll have to set up under OSX...or windows. I don't think there's a way to tweak the router part of it without apple's utility...It can share it's drive as an SMB mount (when I last checked the volume showed up under windows just fine.)
posted by filmgeek at 5:08 AM on July 26, 2010

Pharm, thanks for the link. It didn't show up when i ran a search in "iMac".

I'll try a Live CD. However, if I need a proprietary driver, e.g., a BroadCom driver for Airport, I assume it won't be on the Live CD. Is that right?
posted by justcorbly at 6:49 AM on July 26, 2010

Live CD works with USB keyboard and USB mouse, both from Apple. Sound didn't work, but I didn't try very hard. Appeared to download and install the BroadCom driver, presumably to RAM, after which net connectivity worked and an icon for the Time Capsule appeared.
posted by justcorbly at 5:42 PM on July 26, 2010