MX on iMac?

[winemaker]

i had an old white macbook from my daughter that she had aying around. put mx 19 32 bit on it and it is in my shed. has under a gig of ram so a bit slow but for tunes or files or internet info it works great. the only issue if you want to call it that is i have power management all off and screensavers off but when i play music on thie one site the screen goes blank - cursor move will get it back - use a usb mouse - only the first time it ewas stck. other music sites i play fom screen stays live as is and no black/blank.as i said the only issue i see. but not a biggie. felix suggested i try the 32 bit. debain 10 buster would not install due to less than a gig of ram. tried that first since i ran stretch on it but now all my machines are mx 19 - 3 with 64 bit and the mac with 32 bit. installed from dvd by the way.

[fehlix]

Does rEFInd actually work with both?

rEFInd shall work in iMac and it shall find efi-loader and provides boot entries for efi-loader of linux and macOS.
Probably best installed within os x.

[smilliken]

Does rEFInd actually work with both?

rEFInd shall work in iMac and it shall find efi-loader and provides boot entries for efi-loader of linux and macOS.
Probably best installed within os x.

I installed the rEFInd on the MacBook and it works. I placed the Live USB MX19 and booted the system. rEFInd finds the everything and the MacBook booted just fine with the default settings.

My question is, should I remove the rEFInd and try to install MX19 with GRUB or just leave rEFInd in place and see if the new install finds and uses rEFInd?

[fehlix]

My question is, should I remove the rEFInd and try to install MX19 with GRUB or just leave rEFInd in place and see if the new install finds and uses rEFInd?

Please, leave rEFInd installed. It will not conflict with MX Linux installed GRUB. rEFInd can help you to boot into attched USB/DVD or install Linux. You wont's see rEFInd listed within the generated GRUB menu. But if you like, you can add manually an entry to the GRUB menu to load rEFInd, e.g. in case you would boot from an LiveUSB. And yes please do install MX Linux GRUB also. Note further, rEFInd is very good in loading installed efi-grub loader. It can also be used for directly booting the installed system, but I recommend to us it for chainloading in the GRUB menu, as the direct loading of the kernel lacks a bit any additional boot options you might wish to use. E.g if you change boot option using MX Boot Options you wont have those within rEFInd direct loding (IIRC).
Those boot option are only available within the GRUB menu.

[smilliken]

My question is, should I remove the rEFInd and try to install MX19 with GRUB or just leave rEFInd in place and see if the new install finds and uses rEFInd?

Please, leave rEFInd installed. It will not conflict with MX Linux installed GRUB. rEFInd can help you to boot into attched USB/DVD or install Linux. You wont's see rEFInd listed within the generated GRUB menu. But if you like, you can add manually an entry to the GRUB menu to load rEFInd, e.g. in case you would boot from an LiveUSB. And yes please do install MX Linux GRUB also. Note further, rEFInd is very good in loading installed efi-grub loader. It can also be used for directly booting the installed system, but I recommend to us it for chainloading in the GRUB menu, as the direct loading of the kernel lacks a bit any additional boot options you might wish to use. E.g if you change boot option using MX Boot Options you wont have those within rEFInd direct loding (IIRC).
Those boot option are only available within the GRUB menu.

Thanks @fehlix for the info. Should I use a live Mac OSX to shrink the drive? Partition Manager doesn't recognize the drive, "unknown". It uses APS and containers or something?

[fehlix]

Should I use a live Mac OSX to shrink the drive? Partition Manager doesn't recognize the drive, "unknown". It uses APS and containers or something?

Those apple file system might better be handled with native apple tools.

[smilliken]

I have installed MX 19 on a Macbook Pro, 2015 model. All seems to work just fine. I installed reFInd first and use this as the "GRUB" to start the laptop to either Mac OSX Catalina or MX.

The only hiccup is the Bluetooth mouse needs to be repaired at each boot, both Mac and MX.

Code: Select all

System:    Host: macbook-19 Kernel: 4.19.0-6-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 8.3.0 
           parameters: \\boot\vmlinuz-4.19.0-6-amd64 ro 
           root=UUID=630a1d5b-af48-4101-b4c1-9027e5623b50 initrd=boot\initrd.img-4.19.0-6-amd64 
           Desktop: Xfce 4.14.2 tk: Gtk 3.24.5 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm4 dm: LightDM 1.26.0 
           Distro: MX-19.1_x64 patito feo October 21  2019 base: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: Apple product: MacBookPro12,1 v: 1.0 serial: <filter> Chassis: 
           type: 9 v: Mac-E43C1C25D4880AD6 serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: Apple model: Mac-E43C1C25D4880AD6 v: MacBookPro12,1 serial: <filter> 
           UEFI: Apple v: 184.0.0.0.0 date: 04/11/2019 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 58.2 Wh condition: 58.1/74.8 Wh (78%) volts: 12.9/11.4 
           model: SMP bq20z451 type: Li-ion serial: N/A status: Full cycles: 510 
CPU:       Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core i5-5257U bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Broadwell 
           family: 6 model-id: 3D (61) stepping: 4 microcode: 2E L2 cache: 3072 KiB 
           flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 21599 
           Speed: 797 MHz min/max: 500/3100 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 800 2: 800 3: 800 4: 800 
           Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: Split huge pages 
           Type: l1tf mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable 
           Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable 
           Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI 
           Type: spec_store_bypass 
           mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
           Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
           Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional, IBRS_FW, 
           STIBP: conditional, RSB filling 
           Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel Iris Graphics 6100 vendor: Apple driver: i915 v: kernel 
           bus ID: 00:02.0 chip ID: 8086:162b 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa 
           resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Iris 6100 (Broadwell GT3) v: 4.5 Mesa 18.3.6 
           compat-v: 3.0 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel Broadwell-U Audio vendor: Apple driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus ID: 00:03.0 chip ID: 8086:160c 
           Device-2: Intel Wildcat Point-LP High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
           v: kernel bus ID: 00:1b.0 chip ID: 8086:9ca0 
           Device-3: Broadcom Limited 720p FaceTime HD Camera driver: N/A bus ID: 02:00.0 
           chip ID: 14e4:1570 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.19.0-6-amd64 
Network:   Device-1: Broadcom Limited BCM43602 802.11ac Wireless LAN SoC vendor: Apple 
           driver: brcmfmac v: kernel port: efa0 bus ID: 03:00.0 chip ID: 14e4:43ba 
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 894.22 GiB used: 11.23 GiB (1.3%) 
           ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 model: Aura Pro X2 size: 894.22 GiB block size: physical: 512 B 
           logical: 512 B speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: <filter> rev: S0121C scheme: GPT 
Partition: ID-1: / raw size: 51.88 GiB size: 50.82 GiB (97.95%) used: 6.42 GiB (12.6%) fs: ext4 
           dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3 
           ID-2: /home raw size: 371.15 GiB size: 364.32 GiB (98.16%) used: 4.78 GiB (1.3%) 
           fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p5 
           ID-3: swap-1 size: 2.24 GiB used: 768 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap swappiness: 15 (default 60) 
           cache pressure: 100 (default) dev: /dev/nvme0n1p4 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 71.5 C mobo: N/A 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:     No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ buster main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security/ buster/updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb http://mxrepo.com/mx/repo/ buster non-free main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/opera-stable.list 
           1: deb https://deb.opera.com/opera-stable/ stable non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/various.list 
           1: deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/ buster contrib
Info:      Processes: 209 Uptime: 2h 12m Memory: 7.70 GiB used: 1.00 GiB (13.1%) Init: SysVinit 
           v: 2.93 runlevel: 5 default: 5 Compilers: gcc: 8.3.0 alt: 8 Shell: bash v: 5.0.3 
           running in: quick-system-in inxi: 3.0.36 

EDIT: Found that I can not access the Apple partitioned drive. Using Apple's APFS and now attempting to build this https://linuxnewbieguide.org/how-to-mou ... -in-linux/

[smilliken]

Had an update on the Macbook, Catalina 10.15.4, and it appears to have removed the reFInd booting options. Only EFI and MacHD show on the screen and only if the "Option" key is held upon booting.

[errorik]

From what I saw on my 2009 Apple Intel harware, I could dual boot. The one problem I ran into was Grub getting lost and not being able to boot into MX. Was stuck booting into OSX. Which would have been fine. Except the Apple software is no longer supported. So the native software cannot load any websites except Apple.com. I could use it as a standalone and simply transfer all media to it after I formatted it on another pooter. So the viability of this project was put on a back burner.

[errorik]

I got an Inland 500GB SSD from Micricenter.
Would not install OSX from the DVD. DVD was from a Macbook PRo of same year.
Dangled 500GB from laptop and installed to 500GB with laptop using the same install DVD.
Put 500GB back into iMac and booted without incident.
See Apple really does lie right to your face. They put up a message and said the the software cannot be installed for the hardware. Then block you. Well it obviously can be as I just did it.

Had all the same problems with the SSD as I did with the platter build. Except I really wanted to do dual boot. I really want to keep it all Apple since I found some RGB Apple specific keyboards. Even considered going all OSX with it if I could find workarounds for software. But the upgrade path to walk down for Apple is all uphill. And as I am getting to the top the view starts to be not worth the climb. Basically just a graveyard of consumerism.

The iMac came to me with El Crapitan. Which is the latest that it can go from my understanding. The computer was "do something else while the browser loads" slow. SSD just makes it less slow. Tried to do a minimal update so I could run old slimjet/chrome and play Wesnoth. But that was requiring to new of OSX.

So just wiped the SSD with Gparted and install MX Linux on the entire drive again. I have a choice of web browsers and the computer works better than it ever did with Apple software ironically.