MX on iMac?

[taseefa]

Is it possible (and how difficult) to install MX on an Intel 2009 iMac running OSX "El Capitan"?

[JayM]

I suggest you search the forum to start, and you may be able to get an answer to your question.

[Jerry3904]

Right, a Forum search on "iMac" will give you a good start.

[fehlix]

Is it possible (and how difficult) to install MX on an Intel 2009 iMac running OSX "El Capitan"?

Suggest you try it out, and if it's not working we might help to give instructions. We had some users which could install without problems. Some other user reported some issues, which we have been able to sort out.

[handy]

<3 months ago I installed antiX on a 2007 model intel 24" iMac. It installed surprisingly easily (I'd had some battles in years gone by with other distros. Quite a few years ago now though, they are probably easier to install now too).

I did away with OS/X & just run antiX on it.

You can't run a modern web browser on Snow Leopard these days. Due to Apple no longer supporting the 2007 model iMac, you can't install any version of OS/X that is still supported by Apple on the 2007 model. I guess 12 years old is understandable...

[taseefa]

Thanks all for your advices. I have been able to install MX on my Mac. I found it surprisingly easy and it works like a breeze. However I am not able to pair my Mac blootooth keyboard: the keyboard is seen by MX but the pairing code is not. Other bluetooth devices are working but there is so far no way to connect that keyboard. Any ideas?

[tyrotex]

MX noob here.
I am running MX-19beta-2.1_x64 quite happily on my 2007 iMac 7,1. This is a 64-bit Core 2 Duo with 32-bit EFI.
However, I cannot get the Live-USB to run correctly on my 2009 iMac 11,1, which is a full 64-bit system (system & EFI); Core i7 850 with Radeon HD 4850 GPU.
The Live-USB boots fine and everything seems to work, but then the screen just goes black and nothing more happens.
I can get more output if I select Fail-Safe mode. The boot screen stops at: "live-restore-service - restoring service links".
This behavior is the same whether I use the standard ISO or fehlix's imac ISO.
In case there is a problem with the beta, I tried an 18.2 ISO also. Different interface, but still end up with a black screen.
So, I suspect the GPU is the problem here.
I've read that other users have had success with the 2009 iMac (https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php ... 20#p474320), but it might have had a different GPU to mine.
I've searched the forum and tried various suggestions to no effect. All the Debian packages which (supposedly) cover all Radeon models are included/installed in the beta.
I'd love to run MX on this machine, but unless I can see a screen...
Any suggestions from more experience MX-ers would be appreciated.

[truongtfg]

The first step you can try to install MX-Linux is booting the Live-USB with Safe Video or Failsafe boot options during the boot screen (press F6). You can refer to MX 18 manual user, section 2.4.1 "The Black Screen", page 20 here https://mxlinux.org/manuals/

If you can install it successfully, it is very likely that upon booting, you will still meet the Black Screen. A temporary workaround is boot with the live-usb again, then mount the drive where MX Linux is installed, open /etc/default/grub with a text editor and change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line to this:

Code: Select all

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nomodeset"

After that, you need to update grub by chroot into the mounted boot drive where MX is installed (assume that its name is sdb1) and run 'sudo update-grub'. You can see a detail steps to do this here https://askubuntu.com/questions/145241/ ... m-a-livecd (look at the answer by 'roadmr'.

This is just the first step. As nomodeset disables the graphic driver, your system will not run smoothly. I will try looking deeper into this to see if there is any solution.

Good luck

[winemaker]

i wanted to try mx a while ago. early 2019. an old white macbook. minimal ram. sitting in a room - it was my daughter's old one. ran fine in live mode installed and never would boot. same ecenario happened with bodhi linux. however got debian 9 lxde to run and boot so i left it on it and use it on in the shed.

not sure what is going on with the boot thing and when i asked re: something i had heard about debian's boot messing up other boots i was hassled about something i had read. devian was on the macbook first and then went to mx and then bodhi and then was forced to go back to debian since only one that would boot after install. wish i could have gotten mx to boot. oh well.... just a story of my experience.

[tyrotex]

Thanks for the suggestions @truongtfg.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, by using the Failsafe boot option (which includes nomodeset), I get further in the boot process.
Using 18.2, I get the "classic" black screen mentioned in the manual (with blinking cursor in top right).
(With the MX19 beta, I DON'T get a black screen using Failsafe. The whole boot appears to hang at the "udev done" message on the main screen, with the "live-restore-service" message on the boot screen. But here, I'll focus on using 18.2, since more folks likely to have some experience with that.)
The boot actually completes and I am able to login using tty2-6 (the "black screen IS there on tty7).
The most significant log entry I see is in Xorg.0.log: " (EE) Screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration".
I guess this is caused by the nomodeset option, which stops the appropriate Radeon driver being loaded.
inxi -G reports:
"Graphics: Device-1: Advanced Micro devices [AMD/ATI] RV770/M98L [ Mobility Radeon HD 4850] driver: N/A
Display: server: X.org.1.19.2 driver: none unloaded: vesa tty: 160x45
Message: Advanced graphics data unavailable in console for root"
If I do not use nomodeset, the boot screen goes black (no blinking cursor) at the message: "waiting for udev to be fully populated". No ttys(2-7) are accessible.
The machine seems to have booted. It responds to pings at the IP shown by my router. Unfortunately, because the Live-USB does not have an ssh server installed, I cannot login to check further. The only way to get out of the system is a hard shutdown (power off). Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work.
I'll try to research the name of the radeon driver that is supposed to work for this GPU and specify that on the boot command line.
If that doesn't get anywhere with Live-USB, I'll try using the cli-install (which I can access with nomodeset) to see if a HDD install works any better.