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Linux Laptop & Notebook Installation Guides: Apple (aka Macintosh)
Linux installation and configuration guides for iBook, iPad, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, PowerBook laptops and notebooks made by Apple Computer Inc.
.
Compatibility reports about running other Unix systems e.g. BSD, Solaris are welcome, too.
And don't miss the resource section at the bottom, containing links to applications, tools, utilities, drivers, community portals, HOWTOs and FAQs.
Have you written an installation tutorial yourself? Then please feel free to
submit a new entry.
Resources
- Laptop Manufacturers: Linux Status Survey
- manufacturer site: Apple Computer Inc.
- Linux Mobile Guide - Installing, Maintaining and Tuning of Linux on Mobile Computers
- How to do-it-yourself Apple (former Macintosh) laptop and notebook upgrading, repairing and modding.
- vendors which sell pre-installed Linux laptops, notebooks, PDAs or mobile phones
Original Equipment Manufacturer - OEM
If you are looking for drivers, software and service manuals for laptops and notebooks you may sometimes find similar models branded under a different name. Especially the FCC-ID can be helpful to detect the original manufacturer.
- OEM relations between manufacturers
- FCC ID: BCG (Apple)
HOWTOs/FAQs
- Linux on PowerPC FAQ-O-Matic: What PowerPC machines work with Linux?
![[archived link]](/pics/archived.png "archived link")
- How to disassemble Powerbooks (in Japanese)
- Use an extended desktop with your iBook. The iBook CAN'T run with an external monitor in any higher resolution than it's internal LCD. There is a hack to enable this feature.
- "Even though most Linux users have treated
Linux as an operating system for their x86 white boxes, Linux runs
equally well on PowerPC machines. This
article looks at Linux on the PowerPC
and the appealing range of PPC machines produced by Apple, where
the option of using Linux is of great value to many users."
-
Yellow Dog Linux Installs Neatly on an iPod
"Forget bootable USB pendrives and use an iPod to boot Linux
on a Mac..."
iBook and PowerBook Specifications, Model History
- Apple computers specification survey
- PowerBook G3 Computers: How to Identify Different Models
- PowerBook G4 Computers: How to Identify Different Models
- iBook: How to Identify iBook Models
- Apple-History an independent source of specifications for Apple computers
- History of Linux for the PowerPC
Community: Mailing Lists, Forums, FAQs, HOWTOs, Wikis
- PowerBookLinux
- Google PowerPC directory
- PowerBook Army - Apple User Group
- A survey of GNU-ification software for MAC OS X
-
FSF: the MacBook holds the dubious honor of being the first product chosen in our
35 days against DRM.
Applications / Drivers
-
GKrellM-PMU
is a plugin for GKrellM to create a battery monitor for
Macintosh PowerBooks and iBooks on Linux/PPC systems. Display includes such
things as dual battery support, time remaining, and a load graph.
-
PBButtons
is a daemon to handle special hardware on the Apple iBook/PowerBook/TiBook. It controls the display
brightness, the sound volume, mutes the sound, changes the trackpad mode, puts the machine to sleep, or ejects the
CDROM on command. It also provides basic power management features. An included client gives the user visual feedback
about all actions with nice little popup windows.
-
PowerPrefs
is a configuration client for PBButtonsd, the hardware
daemon for Apple Powerbooks, that allows the user to change certain
options of PBButtonsd during runtime. This includes temporarily disabling
sleep mode while compiling a big project, changing trackpad or keyboard
mode, and more.
- OSL PBButtonsD
-
MacOSD
is a visualization frontend for PBButtonsD, the button and
power event daemon used for Apple computers. It utilizes Evas with its
anti-aliasing and alpha-blending canvas capabilities for rendering. The
less-eye-candy-rich Xosd can also be used to render shaped windows that
work over video overlays. The theme format is GtkPBButtons-compatible.
- evkeyd listens for media key input events to modify screen brightness, changing the volume or ejecting the CD-ROM
- Power PC Kernel Archives - Your source for the latest builds of stable and development Linux kernels for PowerPC computers.
- Mac-on-Linux - MoL makes it possible to run Mac OS (including OS X) under Linux/PPC. MOL is not an emulator but runs the OS directly without any CPU emulation. Moreover, NO ROM IMAGE is required.
-
pmud
is a daemon which periodically polls the PMU (power manager) and performs functions such as enabling or disabling devices appropriately when the powersource changes. It can also be instructed to
signal init(8) that a powerfailure has occured.
-
An
attempt to write a driver for the R300 3D acceleration engine.
R300 is a family of cards made by ATI, in particular it includes Radeon 9700 cards and Mobility M10 cards used in notebooks.Contains also some tools which are maybe useful for earlier and later Radeon hardware.
-
BackLight Control Tool
- ikeyd
is a simple daemon which sets the volume or ejects a CDROM when hotkeys are pressed on an iBook/TiBook.
-
pommed (former named mbpeventd)
handles the hotkeys found on the Apple MacBook Pro and MacBook laptops and adjusts the LCD backlight, sound volume, keyboard backlight or ejects the CD-ROM drive accordingly.
pommed also monitors the ambient light sensors to automatically light up the keyboard backlight on the MacBook Pro.
Optional support for the Apple Remote control and some PowerBook models is available.
-
Apple Touchpad Driver (by Stelian Pop):
appletouch
appletouch is a Linux kernel driver for the USB touchpad found on post February 2005 Apple Alu Powerbooks.
This driver is derived from Johannes Berg's
appletrackpad driver, but it has been improved in some areas.
-
PowerBook touchpad driver (by Johannes Berg):
appletrack
provides a small in-kernel driver/userspace daemon combination for the touchpad that simply creates a new device which can be used by userspace to read the touchpad data and uses that in userspace.
-
g4mon: plugin for gkrellm2 that monitors temperatures and fan speed on G4 portable computers.
-
SyncMate
is a multitask sync tool that allows you to synchronize data
between your Mac and Windows Mobile devices (via Wi-Fi or USB), Nokia
S40 phones (via Bluetooth), other Macs (via Ethernet), your Google
account or Online Backup Account. SyncMate is presented in two versions,
Free and Expert. The Free edition lets you sync Address Book and iCal
entries between your Mac and supported devices and accounts. The Expert
edition lets you sync iTunes, video, iPhoto, Safari and Firefox
bookmarks, Entourage and Mail notes, todos, and mail, and even folders.
It can analyze the call history of Nokia S40 devices directly on your
computer.
-
launch2net: a launcher for
EDGE, 3G UMTS, HSDPA, HSUPA modems (PC Card, ExpressCard, USB). Available for Linux as well as for MAC OSX.
-
Insomnia:
it always has been a missing feature: disabling the sleep mode on a Apple Laptop. Who does not want to use it as a big juke-box or go warwalking.
There has been a kernel patch, which could do this. The problem it is very dangerous to exchange your kernel and it requires an up to date patch. This tool
provides you a kernel extension which will just disable the sleep mode.
WireLess LAN
-
Petition for BroadCom BCM4301 WLAN Linux Driver which is used in these products include (but may not be limited to): Dell TrueMobile 1180, Linksys WMP11 (rev. 2.7), Apple AirPort, HP Pavilion ZV5000.
Please check
BroadCom
website and search engines, because I have
got rumors that this situation will change.
-
An
attempt to write a driver for the Broadcom 43xx wireless chip.
This driver does not work, yet. Do not expect to transmit or receive data with it.
This wireless chip can be found in many devices, including (but not limited to!): AirPort Extreme, TrueMobile 1300 WLAN Mini-PCI Card, Wireless 1350 WLAN Mini-PCI Card, WL-100G, Linksys WMP54G PCI, Belkin F5D7010 54g Wireless Network card, etc.
-
WLAN Driver EXE for MacBook
-
NetSpot
is a simple and accessible wireless survey tool. It allows you
to collect, visualize, and analyze Wi-Fi data using any MacBook. NetSpot
can visualize your wireless network by building a visual Wi-Fi map. It
will let you see dead zones without coverage and place hotspots (access
points) correctly. Using the visualized map of collected wireless data,
you will also see channels' load and will be able to decide how to
optimize your Wi-Fi site better. NetSpot is a powerful analyzer of Wi-Fi
coverage. It will gather all the information needed for analyzing radio
signal leakages, for discovering noise sources, for locating effective
access points, etc. You can also use NetSpot as a powerful wireless
network planning tool.
Boot Loader
-
Early Macintosh Image LoadEr (EMILE)
makes it possible to boot
linux-m68k from a floppy on a Macintosh such as a Mac II. It can be used
to create rescue disks or remove the MacOS partition (required by the
legacy penguin booter) from your hard drive.
- Yaboot pages + Yaboot HOWTO
-
The Linux on PPC tools
contain a kernel patch for accessing the thermal control chip on ibook2.2 (Linux kernel >= 2.6.4),
a ybin version (based on yaboot 1.3.11 code) which checks yaboot.conf syntax before installing boot partition.
and a modified version of hotkeys.
-
Yaboot
is a bootloader (like lilo or grub) for PPC machines.
Apple Motion Sensor - AMS
-
Apple Motion Sensor Driver (AMS)
ams is a Linux kernel driver for the motion sensor found on post February 2005 Apple Alu Powerbooks and newer iBooks.
-
UniMotion
is a library for detecting motion detection using the SMS sensor found in various Apple portables (Apple Motion Sensor - AMS).
- smack - a small tool written in Python, smack your ThinkPad (with IBM Active Protection System), iBook or PowerBook (with Apple Motion Sensor - AMS) at will to change the workspace of any EWMH compliant window manager back and forth.
- Compiz and SmackPad - smack your ThinkPad (with IBM Active Protection System), iBook or PowerBook (with Apple Motion Sensor - AMS) for workspace switching in Compiz.
Free Wallpapers and Themes
- Tux'n'tosh - Linux and Macintosh Free Tux Stuff really nice wallpapers and icons.
- MacDeskTops
Unix Distributions for Apple iBooks, PowerBooks and MacBooks
- CRUX Linux - A lightweight, i686-optimized Linux distribution. Despite the name a port for PowerPC is available.
- Debian GNU/Linux for the PowerPC
- Debian GNU/Linux for the PowerPC - installation instructions
- Debian GNU/Linux m68k distribution
- Fedora PPC
- Gentoo PPC
- Knoppix - a port for PowerPC is available here.
- LinuxPPC
- Linux/mac68k
- Mac-Linux/mac68k
- Mandrake Linux for PPC
- MkLinux
- NetBSD MAC-PPC model support and BIOS specifications
- OpenBSD MAC-PPC port
- PenguinPPC.org
is the new home of the PowerPC GNU/Linux project, the native port of GNU/Linux to the PowerPC processor.
- RockLinux
- Slackintosh
- PowerPC support has been absent from Novell/SuSE (>= 7.3 or SLES8, no deep link, please use search box). With version 10.0, PowerPC support returned to OpenSUSE/Novell.
- Ubuntu Linux
- YellowDogLinux
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© Werner Heuser 1997-2015 · http://tuxmobil.org/apple.html · last change Sat Mar 1 2014