Linux which Distro ?

[bogdanw]

Thank's bogdanw, I just have a problem with the @ and # keys (not in the right place).
What distro are you running ?

Serviteur,

The distribution is not important, all have ways to select a different keyboard layout.
Here is how to “Use alternative keyboard layouts” in Ubuntu
https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/keyboard-layouts.html.en
Utilisation d’agencements de clavier alternatifs
https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/keyboard-layouts.html.fr

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

The distribution is not important, all have ways to select a different keyboard layout.
Here is how to “Use alternative keyboard layouts” in Ubuntu
https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/keyboard-layouts.html.en
Utilisation d’agencements de clavier alternatifs
https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/keyboard-layouts.html.fr

Yes, I always choose English(Australian) if I can, or English(US) if it is not available. Choosing English(UK) for the keyboard always generates confusion because I want the English(UK) dictionary, not the English(US) dictionary.

Of course, if you really want confusion, choose the Dvorak keyboard, or for a more subtle confusion, choose the German keyboard.

 

[olrik77]

Many thank's, bogdanw and DFC,

Now, I am ready to install Ubuntu (or Mint...I don't know yet), on my MacMini (2014) to have an optional and "rescue" OS beside my iMac (2020) and my MacBook (2017), both running Monterey and soon Ventura !

Serviteur,

 

[tomcatrr]

Using Manjaro in my 2011 15" MBP.
(Did the patch for disable the DGpu).

Working fine after "patching", from tutorials over the net.
I can get about 4 hours with is stock battery from 2011... (1H30 in Ventura).

Be aware that no Wifi after install, must use ethernet cable or buy a wifi usb dongle.

Note: What is not working (never work in this mbp, since I bought it, about 3 years) is sleep/hibernation.
Sierra, High Sierra etc... until Ventura.
I think the problem is with the 16 Gb 1600 MHZ ram.
Because some months ago i did a clone of my ssd, and put it in another 2011 15" Mbp with 8 Gb and 8 GB (1333 Mhz) and do not have problem with sleep/hibernation.
Also sometimes i get the 3 beep, after sleep (only after sleep).

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

I have, after tried many, many, many distros (including, but not limited to, YellowDog, Fedora, SUSE, Manjaro, PopOS!, Kubuntu, Elementary, Solus, PeppermintOS and others that didn't stick around long enough for me to remember), settled on Linux Mint Cinnamon and Ubuntu Mate.

The latter gives me a bit better performance (I can even run it off a normal HDD) but LMCinnamon gives me a somewhat more pleasant experience.

This is on my late 2015 27" iMac. All Linux distros are on external SSDs.

For my Raspberry Pi 400 (the keyboard model) I have been using RPi OS (64-bit), Ubuntu Mate and Ubuntu Budgie. Interestingly, for the RPis, its native OS (Raspberry Pi OS) gives a bit better performance than the other two, but running off SSDs, none of them suck, and the differences are very marginal.

For all versions of Linux, I put the Panel (aka Task Bar) along the top and run Plank docking app along the bottom. That way everything (Mac, Linux, RPi) has a similar working experience.

 

[s1oplus]

Im no linux expert but i would recommend mint and ubuntu

 

[MacBH928]

For all versions of Linux, I put the Panel (aka Task Bar) along the top and run Plank docking app along the bottom. That way everything (Mac, Linux, RPi) has a similar working experience.

this works for all DEs?

 

[DaveFromCampbelltown]

this works for all DEs?

Apologies, I should have made it clearer.
I meant to say "For all versions of Linux that I use".
So that includes Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu Mate and Ubuntu Budgie. It also includes plain Ubuntu, but I found it too laggy on the RPi 4/400.

There are many other versions of Linux, including those in the Red Hat/Fedora family, the SUSE family and many others. I have tried several of them, but I find that the suite of software I use is best served to me by the Ubuntu/Debian family.

 

[Yael-S.]

I tested all the systems listed in DistroWatch's top 200.
These are the systems I find most useful out of all of them.

Easy and for AMD/Intel/Nvidia users: mageia, Nobara Project, Mint, ROSA Fresh, Neptune, openKylin, GhostBSD, siduction, ALT Sisyphus, EndeavourOS
Average and for AMD/Intel users: Devuan, Void Linux, OpenBSD, Clear Linux, FreeBSD, Artix Linux, DragonFly BSD, Alpine Linux
Average and for Nvidia users: Void Linux, FreeBSD, Artix Linux

Desktop environments that I recommend: LXQt (for Qt and KDE apps) and XFCE (for GTK apps).
Window managers that I recommend: bspwm, i3, xmonad, spectrwm, PeKWM, fluxbox and StumpWM.

 

[MacBH928]

I tested all the systems listed in DistroWatch's top 200.
These are the systems I find most useful out of all of them.

Easy and for AMD/Intel/Nvidia users: mageia, Nobara Project, Mint, ROSA Fresh, Neptune, openKylin, GhostBSD, siduction, ALT Sisyphus, EndeavourOS
Average and for AMD/Intel users: Devuan, Void Linux, OpenBSD, Clear Linux, FreeBSD, Artix Linux, DragonFly BSD, Alpine Linux
Average and for Nvidia users: Void Linux, FreeBSD, Artix Linux

Desktop environments that I recommend: LXQt (for Qt and KDE apps) and XFCE (for GTK apps).
Window managers that I recommend: bspwm, i3, xmonad, spectrwm, PeKWM, fluxbox and StumpWM.

why some distros do not work as well with hard ware over others?

Shouldn't the ones that ship proprietary drivers all work well with all hardware?

 

[LIVEFRMNYC]

I started using Feren again. A real sleeper.

I tried to use Elementary and it worked pretty good for a week, but a kernel update screwed something up and it would hang on boot. Even tried a fresh install with the updated kernel, and same issue.

 

[Matty_TypeR]

I use and like linux mint on my Mac Pro 5.1 with Pixlas mod and 6950xt with Syncretic's patch it works flawless and everything loaded. even made it look like mac OSX but its faster, and smooth as silk.

 

[NEPOBABY]

There's a Linux distro called Lirix which copies SGI's Irix interface. It's neat but glitchy. I installed it in a VM to play with it but no you can't use such an outdated interface today.

 

[MacBH928]

I use and like linux mint on my Mac Pro 5.1 with Pixlas mod and 6950xt with Syncretic's patch it works flawless and everything loaded. even made it look like mac OSX but its faster, and smooth as silk.

what is the pixlas mod?
what is Syncretic's patch?

How do I make my linux look like that? I wish there is some sort of a tool you run and it auto does the theming for you because the tutorials i saw you had to do it manually.

Does Linux Mint really run better (less issues) than other distros or the real jewel of it is the Cinnamon interface?
I know they are aiming for it to be dead simple and they really hit the nail on that one, I just find it really dull...

There's a Linux distro called Lirix which copies SGI's Irix interface. It's neat but glitchy. I installed it in a VM to play with it but no you can't use such an outdated interface today.

is the Irix interface the same as the earlier linux, BeOS, and Next interface? they all look pretty similar

 

[Matty_TypeR]

what is the pixlas mod?
what is Syncretic's patch?

The pixlas mod is here. https://thehouseofmoth.com/mac-pro-pixlas-mod/

Syncretic's patch?

for Mac pro 4.1 5.1 to run linux mint with 6950xt and be supported to 2027 and beyond.

How to make it look like Mac OSX here

 

[NEPOBABY]

is the Irix interface the same as the earlier linux, BeOS, and Next interface? they all look pretty similar

Very similar, which means compared to modern systems multi tasking is a pain and many apps will either look weird installed on Lirix or have broken interfaces.

Still, it was fun to install it in a VM for 10 minutes. I couldn't get the hard drive image to boot without the CD ISO booting first.

 

[Yael-S.]

why some distros do not work as well with hard ware over others?

Shouldn't the ones that ship proprietary drivers all work well with all hardware?

Different kernels support different hardware.
Many printer and scanner drivers are only installable via RPM or DEB.
Ubuntu has issues that it's buggy with specific hardware when other Linux operating systems aren't buggy. You have OS specific hardware patches.
Sometimes you need a specific app or package to get the support for you hardware and does the OS have the same amount of packages?

Conclusion: hardware support is not exactly the same for every Linux distro.

 

[MacBH928]

Different kernels support different hardware.
Many printer and scanner drivers are only installable via RPM or DEB.
Ubuntu has issues that it's buggy with specific hardware when other Linux operating systems aren't buggy. You have OS specific hardware patches.
Sometimes you need a specific app or package to get the support for you hardware and does the OS have the same amount of packages?

Conclusion: hardware support is not exactly the same for every Linux distro.

1- So why not all the linux distros that have no problem with proprietary software/hardware not ship everything prepackaged so their distro "just works" ?

2-You say ubuntu is buggy but I thought ubuntu is the most user friendly one that is base for most distros including mint?

 

[lamboaudi4]

I used Manjaro a while back. I liked the package manager. But as a daily driver I would just use good old Ubuntu.

 

[DCBassman]

Mint or Manjaro for me.
Edit: I'll qualify that somewhat: latest versions of Mint have an absolutely useless Bluetooth manager. I thought this was because I was using it on Mac hardware, but my wife's Dell laptop exhibits the same uselessness with the same distro.

 

[MacinMan]

Hey all, I'm considering Linux over the OpenCore legacy patcher route for my iMac. I've been testing Linux for years in VMWare Fusion, and has worked well this way, I have also tried it natively and it works well that way as well.

My biggest problem seems to be with Grub, it wants to be the main boot loader and doesn't seem to play nice in custom configs such as keeping it on the external drive linux is installed too. I did find out that OpenCore has Linux support now and I can change settings to add the drives for it to detect and boot Linux. It sounds like, if I do this, I don't even need grub once OpenCore is configured for this.

Does anyone here have experience with this? my iMac is an iMac 17,1, and my Linux of choice are mint, or Ubuntu, for now.

EDIT: I wanted to add that when I mean grub wants to be the main boot loader, it installs to the internal drive, if I want it there, or not. I found a tutorial last night on how to install it on an external drive, but as soon as I ran the updates as it was a new install of mint, grub put itself on my iMac's internal SSD and then I had to hold option for Monterey to boot again, and then I had to mount the EFI partition and get rid of grub. If I was ready to make Linux my primary OS, this wouldn't be such a pain, but getting it to play nice in a dual boot situation has been the challenge.
I can stick to the VM route, but I want to use it with direct hardware support as it will perform better for graphics related stuff.

 

[B0ukman]

@MacinMan

What you are looking for is Fedora Workstation. When installing, this distribution detects that you are using Mac hardware and instead of using Grub, it will create a nice EFI partition on the drive that you selected which is natively recognized by the Mac bootloader when you start your Mac while holding the option key. It doesn’t touch or modify anything to your internal drive if you chose to install somewhere else.

Fedora is among the big linux distributions so you should be able to find support if you have questions.

Also you should know the people from Asahi Linux, famous for booting Linux on Apple Silicon, are actively collaborating with Fedora.

The new Fedora Workstation 39 is about to be released in the next few days and I think this is the one you should try.

On another note I have read about your experiments running OS in virtualized environments and may one day have questions for you if I decide to do that also.

 

[MacinMan]

@MacinMan

What you are looking for is Fedora Workstation. When installing, this distribution detects that you are using Mac hardware and instead of using Grub, it will create a nice EFI partition on the drive that you selected which is natively recognized by the Mac bootloader when you start your Mac while holding the option key. It doesn’t touch or modify anything to your internal drive if you chose to install somewhere else.

Fedora is among the big linux distributions so you should be able to find support if you have questions.

Also you should know the people from Asahi Linux, famous for booting Linux on Apple Silicon, are actively collaborating with Fedora.

The new Fedora Workstation 39 is about to be released in the next few days and I think this is the one you should try.

On another note I have read about your experiments running OS in virtualized environments and may one day have questions for you if I decide to do that also.

Thank you, will look into Fedora Workstation. I used to use it way back when, when it was Fedora Core. Then switched to debian based such as Ubuntu, Mint, etc, because at the time they worked better, and I liked the included tools over redhat.

 

[it wasnt me]

FYI, there is an easier way to have OpenBSD on Apple Silicon now.

https://bsd.network/@tobhe/111264758043873098

 

[mortlocli]

I've been trying MX Linux 23.1 current with Fluxbox...from USB sticks.
Using the LibreWolf browser (based on Firefox)..as its quite small.
On both my iMacs 5,1 and 10,1.

It has three menu systems and with one of them appearing with a right click on the desktop, I've cleared everything off for a clean look..with a pop up dock if required.

It has a range of conky options ..one of which displays the Airflow 1 (TA0P) temperature. Linux seems somewhat lacking for my iMacs fan control but there is Sensor built in for a fuller check on temps and fan speeds.

The USB stick maker will include any additional software or docs if one doesn't use a MX iso..giving the choice of making a stick with a copy of your current set up or having a default clean setup by using a iso...which is neat as I can experiment with system adjustments and easily get back to default if I muck or clutter things up.

I'm still trying to find a solution that works on my iMacs for fan control..want to speed up the minimum speeds of cpu, HDD and optical drive fans to prevent the GPU getting too hot.