LinuxMint9 on a Intel iMac 27"
OMR — Sun, 2010-10-31 13:49
How to install LinuxMint9 on an iMac 27 inch Intel machine........
First, use the inbuilt disk utility of the iMac to add a partition your internal hard drive with a partition of whatever size you want/need your linux installation to be. Do not format or do anything with it yet! leave it as blank space.
If you haven't already installed rEFIt (a boot loader thingy for macintosh), then download and install it now!
Put the live cd or dvd of mint9 into the cd/dvd drive on the side of the iMac. Shutdown the computer (shut down, not a restart.)
When you reboot the machine, rEFIt should give you an option to boot from mac os or linux cd (it will show an apple and a nice little pic of 'TUX' the penguin. The penguine is what you want, so use your up/down/left/right keys to highlight it.
When the live edition of mint9 starts up, goto the menu in the bottom left and select menu==>administration==>gparted. Use gparted to format the blank partition to whatever combination you want to use for your linux machine.
Install LinuxMint9 onto that partition...... It should be sda3 unless you may have already repartioned your hard drive to othe partitions as well.
Once installed, do not imediatley restart the machine, go back to use live cd some more then shutdown from there.
Same procedure as above for rebooting at this stage. Once back into the installed mint9 OS, you will notice that there is no sound from the iMac's inbuilt speakers. This is the only thing that does not seem to want to work properly in the iMac linux installation.
Go to menu==>terminal....... In terminal type sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
Scroll right to the bottom of the file and type options snd-hda-intel model=mbp55
Save the altered file.
In terminal type alsamixer
Tab across three times to the Front Sp shown on the screen, press m on keyboard and up arrow to required volume position.
Press esc on keyboard......
Now Reboot/Restart and voila there is good sound appearing from the iMacs inbuilt speakers... I find these speakers are of excellent quality for my usuage.