Installing Ubuntu Edgy Eft Knot 2 on a Budget Mac Mini

I’ve introduced this before but I got off to a really bad start and I appologize. So here’s the follow-up. Not only is Edgy Eft 2 quite stable, it also installs just fine on a Mac Mini, it simply doesn’t recognize the Apple Bluetooth Wireless Keyboard yet. You can easily get the install running using a USB keyboard, however, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Edgy Eft Knot 2 is the newest release from Ubuntu, and is compatible with the budget Mac Mini G4s. Ubuntu 6.10 supports wireless on the mini as well as sound! OK now that we have you hooked let’s get started, shall we?

Step 1 – Grab the release

You’ll want to either download the CD image or start scraping the torrent (in my case the torrent was faster but YMMV)
Once you have the ISO, verify the MD5 sum in order to make sure it’s OK. If you used bittorrent, you should be fine as it will calculate the hash as you go.

Step 2 – Burn the CD Image

This part is pretty easy, but if you run into trouble Ubuntu actually has a fantastic guide to burning CD images – it comes highly recommended.

Step 3 – Start the installation

This part is pretty simple if you have Macintosh keyboard. Other keyboards can be problematic. To boot from CD using an Apple keyboard, just hold “C”. If this doesn’t work, and you downloaded the ISO but didn’t verify the MD5 sum, chances are you have a bad download or a bad burn (or both). You’ll want to verify the MD5 sum now! If it passes we know we have a bad burn – so burn it again. Of course if the MD5 sum failed, you’ll want to download again – I’d recommend using bittorrent of course.

Step 4 – Post Install

The install is actually pretty easy and straight forward but we’ll need to tweak a few things in order to get what we want out of this version of Ubuntu. After all, we want wireless right? (By the way – sound should work just like the liveCD, as well as previous versions of PPC Ubuntu) Follow the screenshots below which shothe whole procedure. I’ll be making a slideshow soon – subscribe to RSS and it’ll come.
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