MX Linux Forum

Posted: **Sat Sep 07, 2019 7:10 am**

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

Posted: **Sat Sep 07, 2019 7:15 am**

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

Posted: **Sat Sep 07, 2019 7:16 am**

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

Posted: **Sat Sep 07, 2019 8:01 am**

taseefa wrote: Sat Sep 07, 2019 7:10 am 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.

Posted: **Sat Sep 07, 2019 9:33 am**

<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...

Posted: **Thu Sep 12, 2019 8:13 pm**

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?

Posted: **Mon Sep 16, 2019 8:06 pm**

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.

Posted: **Mon Sep 16, 2019 9:31 pm**

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

Posted: **Mon Sep 16, 2019 9:53 pm**

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.

Posted: **Tue Sep 17, 2019 12:04 am**

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.

Posted: **Tue Sep 17, 2019 1:42 am**

The boot command line would not accept the option xrdvr=radeon, which is the actual driver name as far as I can determine.
It would appear that the last time Radeon VR770 worked without mods was for kernel 3.13 (2014-era) - See https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=98046 .
I'm running the cli-installer now, but given the apparent incompatibility with current kernels, I don't really expect it to work.
It seems that I could run the machine as a server, with no GUI. But that would be rather wasteful on an iMac with a very nice 27" display

So, unless anyone knows any differently, I think I'll give up on this project for now.
Thanks for reading. Hopefully, it might save someone else from spending their time chasing the MX rabbit down this particular hole.

Posted: **Tue Sep 17, 2019 4:08 am**

You could try installing the Debian 4.9 kernel on your live USB (on another computer) following the instructions here and see if it will boot normally on your iMac. It's worth a shot. (Maybe.)

If that doesn't work, try the newest 5.x kernel from the stable repo.

Posted: **Tue Sep 17, 2019 4:34 am**

I thought radeon has now been included by default in the more recent kernels, so you may not even need the bootcode?

Posted: **Tue Sep 17, 2019 7:49 am**

tyrotex wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 1:42 am The boot command line would not accept the option xrdvr=radeon, which is the actual driver name as far as I can determine.

Have you tried boot option xorg=safe , which shall give you a vesa video driver, so you could at least install.

Posted: **Tue Sep 17, 2019 8:24 am**

tyrotex wrote: Tue Sep 17, 2019 12:04 am 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.

My bad, somehow I missed that line you wrote

. BTW, you can wait for several days (or 1-2 weeks) for the Kernel 5.3 to be available in the repo (especially the liquorix kernel). I have heard that this version improves compatibility with some macbooks.

In the mean time, did you successfully install MX Linux, or are you still stuck at the live usb boot?

Posted: **Tue Sep 17, 2019 8:34 am**

Thanks for the suggestion and link @JayM. I'll try that when I have more time. From what I read, I believe that the problem is actually in the Debian kernel itself, so I'm not sure it will help.

Yes, @asqwerth, all the radeon-related stuff is included in the kernel & packages. Up until 14 months ago, it seems that the kernel code just doesn't work with this particular GPU (since kernel v3.13).

Thanks @fehlix. yes I tried using xorg=safe on the boot command line (after checking the wiki https://mxlinux.org/wiki/system/boot-pa ... #X-Windows - linked from the manual as suggested by @truongtfg). Nada.

@truongtfg - No, I didn't manage to get a bootable install yet - I was installing to a large USB drive, rather than an HDD. I'll try the cli-installer again to an HDD partition soon.

Thanks to everyone for their assistance.

Posted: **Thu Sep 19, 2019 9:23 pm**

I followed these instructions: https://www.lifewire.com/dual-boot-linu ... os-4125733
I have now MX 18 installed on my iMac (2008) alongside El Capitan and everything works (except the bluetooth Apple wireless keyboard). I kept my Mac partition in case needed, just shrinked it and now I have 250GB for MX and 250 for Mac. My iMac automatically boots on MX but if needed I can boot on Mac by holding the OPTION key while starting. Works perfectly for me.

Posted: **Thu Sep 19, 2019 10:31 pm**

Good news! Glad you got it working. Thanks for sharing.

Seaken64

Posted: **Fri Sep 20, 2019 8:06 am**

Well, I've had a frustrating couple of days trying to get some distro running on this GPU (Radeon HD 4850/RV770).

Because I thought the problem was in the Debian kernel, I tried various non-Debian Linux distros, like Arch, Knoppix & Fedora.
I even tried to get FreeBSD & OpenBSD to run - Boy! are they a pain to install compared with Linux.
I just couldn't get a GUI to work. It seemed that I was to be stuck on increasingly out-of-date macOS versions.

But, when I saw the post by @taseefa, I checked the link he included on Ubuntu. The main graphics-related point was the use of nomodeset, which I had already tried with my installs.
Given my experiences with those other distros, I had not bothered with Ubuntu, given its Debian heritage.
But then, with nothing to lose, I tried a Xubuntu 19.04 live image. Blow me down with a feather! It worked! (with nomodeset).
So, after installing on my HDD and working out how to pass 'nomodeset' through the rEFInd interface, it's all good. I now have at least one Linux that works on this aging system.

I would have preferred to use MX Linux, but the Xorg.0.log shows that the framebuffer driver was "(EE) Unable to find a valid framebuffer device", so no GUI.
OTOH, under Xubuntu, fbdevhw finds "(**) FBDEV(2): claimed PCI slot 1@0:0:0" and it all works.
It's weird, because xserver-xorg-video-fbdev is v1:0.5.0-1 on MX Linux and v1:.0.5.0-1ubunt on Xubuntu. I have no idea what the difference between them might be, unless ubuntu just does a better job than MX Linux at enumerating the hardware to pass to fbdev.

I'd still like to get MX running, if anybody has any ideas on how to do it.
But, for now, I'll just stick with a working Xubuntu.

Posted: **Fri Sep 20, 2019 11:42 pm**

A brief update on my last post.

Fedora also works fine. Not sure why I couldn't get it to work on an earlier attempt.
Linux Mint also works. But then, it is an Ubuntu derivative.

If I can work out how to set up X-windows , I might try a manual configuration (specifying the hardware) on my MX Linux install.

Posted: **Sun Sep 22, 2019 3:20 am**

@JayM, Thanks for the suggestions to try different kernels in the live USB https://forum.mxlinux.org/viewtopic.php ... 14#p528376 and for the instructions in your link.

When I tried to follow the instructions, I was able to boot to my live-usb (MX19 beta 2.1) and install a new kernel using the MX Package installer.

However, when I tried to run the Kernel Updater, it barfed, complaining that:
---
Error: one or more partitions on /dev/sdb are in use at:
/live/boot-dev
Paused at exit
---

So, I wasn't able to make it to the remaster step to save the changes.

Is there a way to get around the mounted partition issue, or to save the changes manually?

BTW: When I update to the v5.2.0 kernel from Debian backports, the dkms build complains mightily and often:
---
depmod...
System has not been booted with systemd as init system (PID 1). Can't operate.
Failed to connect to bus: Host is down
---
Will that create problems (if and) when I do get the kernel installed?

Posted: **Sun Sep 22, 2019 4:52 am**

If you want to use the beta of MX-19 then this topic should be merged with its feedback topic. You can get more help there than here. Otherwise stick with MX-18.3 and wait for 19 to be released later this year.

Posted: **Sun Sep 22, 2019 4:59 am**

Thanks. I’ll try again with 18.3.

Posted: **Sun Sep 22, 2019 7:41 am**

I've used a fresh live USB of the 18.3-August snapshot.

I get the same error when I try to run the Live-USB Kernel Updater - "one or more partitions on /dev/sdb are in use at: /live/boot-dev".

Not sure what to try next.

Posted: **Sun Sep 22, 2019 7:51 am**

If you have a PC available try remastering on it instead of on the imac,

Posted: **Sun Sep 22, 2019 8:32 am**

Thanks, @JayM.

I just used the same 18.3-August live USB on an HP N40L microserver, with the same result.

I can install the Debian kernel (4.9.0.11, rather than MX's 4.19.0.5). Attempts to install kernels from stretch-backports or antix kernels both fail.

The Live-USB Kernel Updater gives the same error message and stops.

I really appreciate your help with this, but don't want to waste more of anyone's time. I think I'll just forget about it for now and use Xubuntu if I need to.

I'll have another try at MX Linux after MX19 is released.

Posted: **Mon Oct 14, 2019 7:15 am**

I put AntiX 32 bit on my 2009 iMac 24" . Found out it was 64 bit. Put 19.3 beta on it. So far so good.

This computer came with an install DVD. So I burned the iso to disc. I had to open up disc utility in OSX. I deleted one of the partitions and formatted it to MS-DOS (Fat32). Then a Windows drive and an EFI drive showed up when I held the option key upon start up. If I remember correctly either one would boot the disc drive. The process was slow because of the much bloated El Crapitan and slow laptop drive.

The installer ran well enough from the 19.3 live media. So far so good. The speed difference is like I replaced the spinner drive with an SSD.

SO great job MX peeps. I was pretty feeble-minded from a Win 10 Pro N install on a Dell laptop. I was still able to stumble through the iMac rotten apple and fall face first in the right place :D :D

Posted: **Mon Oct 14, 2019 7:23 am**

@errorik:

1. Welcome to the forum.

2. Jolly good show for getting MX to work, old bean! Pip pip and all that sort of rot!

Posted: **Wed Oct 16, 2019 7:46 am**

I did it without Kentucky Straight Bourbon or Russian vodka ( tech support ).

It makes me appreciate the MX team even more :)

MX "just works". Ha hah!

Posted: **Thu Nov 28, 2019 7:04 pm**

I was thinking of placing MX-19 on a MacBook 2015 and dual booting the two OSes. Does rEFInd actually work with both?

Posted: **Thu Nov 28, 2019 8:07 pm**

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.

Posted: **Thu Nov 28, 2019 8:50 pm**

smilliken wrote: Thu Nov 28, 2019 7:04 pm 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.

Posted: **Sat Nov 30, 2019 5:51 pm**

fehlix wrote: Thu Nov 28, 2019 8:50 pm
smilliken wrote: Thu Nov 28, 2019 7:04 pm 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?

Posted: **Sat Nov 30, 2019 7:53 pm**

smilliken wrote: Sat Nov 30, 2019 5:51 pm 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.

Posted: **Mon Dec 02, 2019 7:29 pm**

fehlix wrote: Sat Nov 30, 2019 7:53 pm
smilliken wrote: Sat Nov 30, 2019 5:51 pm 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?

Posted: **Mon Dec 02, 2019 7:40 pm**

smilliken wrote: Mon Dec 02, 2019 7:29 pm 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.

Posted: **Fri Feb 28, 2020 6:17 pm**

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/

Posted: **Tue Apr 07, 2020 10:43 pm**

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.

Posted: **Sat Dec 26, 2020 8:05 pm**

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.

Posted: **Sat Dec 26, 2020 10:19 pm**

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.

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