Linux on Mac Mini

I put together this page for people running Linux on Mac mini (version 1). Linux on Mac mini works perfectly, all hardware is supported. For example Ubuntu Feisty supports all the hw in the Mac mini. Note that you need to install special firmware to make the driver for the wlan adapter (bcm43xx) to work.

.config

This is my .config for kernel v2.6.20. It has support for all the hw in the mac mini plus some support for tv-adapter (pvrusb2), else it's close to minimal.

Note that to make sound work on kernels older than 2.6.12-rc4 you need the patch below.

patch to make sound work

Update! Benjamin Herrenschmidt has made a driver for mac mini sound. It's included in kernel 2.6.12-rc4 and later. You need alsa-lib version 1.0.9rc3 or later too. You should use that driver, if possible, instead of my patch. The performance is much better.

The patch is for linux 2.6.8 to 2.6.11 : linux26-macmini-sound.patch

Xorg config

This is my xorg.conf for Xorg/X11R7.0

mplayer+alsa problems

If you keep getting the error "alsa-space: xrun of at least msecs. resetting stream" in mplayer, use alsa:mmap as the audio driver instead of alsa.

e.g. $ mplayer -ao alsa:mmap