Hi Folks, thanks for your feedback on Mac's and running ubuntu 12.04 on them. I did some researching last night and my conclusions are as follows: (Note: I ignored Apple hardware prior to 1996 on the basis their CPU's are probably too slow and they are not likely to have enough RAM. ) Apple used the PowerPC CPU's from 1996 to 2006. Since then Apple have used Intel x86-32 CPU's and more recently the x86-64. There seems to be three Mac Desktop products available from ubuntu... Product #1: Download site: From the nz mirror http://mirror.ihug.co.nz/ubuntu-releases/12.04/ Download File Name: ubuntu-12.04-desktop-i386.iso Desrciption: PC (Intel x86) desktop CD. For almost all PCs. This includes most machines with Intel/AMD/etc type processors and almost all computers that run Microsoft Windows, as well as newer Apple Macintosh systems based on Intel processors. Product #2: Download Site: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/12.04/release/ Download File name: ubuntu-12.04-desktop-powerpc.iso Description: Mac (PowerPC) and IBM-PPC (POWER5) desktop CD. For Apple Macintosh G3, G4, and G5 computers, including iBooks and PowerBooks as well as IBM OpenPower machines. Product #3: Download site: Download Site: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/12.04/release/ Download File name: ubuntu-12.04-desktop-amd64+mac.iso Description: 64-bit Mac (AMD64) desktop CD Choose this to take full advantage of computers based on the AMD64 or EM64T architecture (e.g., Athlon64, Opteron, EM64T Xeon). If you have a non-64-bit processor made by AMD, or if you need full support for 32-bit code, use the Intel x86 images instead. This image is adjusted to work properly on Mac systems. Last week I gave the Councillor's the i386 desktop iso as a CD, so that should work OK if he has a newer Mac. Today I dropped him off a CD of the PowerPC iso and the amd64+mac iso. So I figure I've got all the Mac bases covered! cheers, Ian.
Hey Ian, apparently you can burn the ISO to USB and boot off that if he wants to try it on the mac. He just holds the "Option" key down on boot and chooses the USB. He'd be better with a 64-bit ISO if he has a newer mac though.
David, thanks. I did see that I could make a bootable USB release, but thought it was easier just to take the Councillor a CD that I've burnt. I figured that if he's not actually the person with the Mac, then he can give the CD to whoever has the Mac to try it out.