Knoppix on the Intel-based Macintosh has some initial details and pictures of Knoppix running on a 17-inch iMac Core Duo.
www.osxbook.com/blog talks about how to tag an existing HID device (a keyboard or a mouse, say) so that it can be considered as a remote control by the system...
I do have strange friends. Take Mark Smith, for example. Mark is essentially a Windows Internals guy -- I would call him OS-agnostic at best. In particular, he is certainly not a "Macintosh person". However, he recently purchased an Intel-based Macintosh because he felt like running Linux (an operating system that he does not normally use) on it.
Then, there is Benjamin Reed, who is decidedly a Linux guy. That said, Ben owns and uses Macintosh computers, albeit with relentless complaints.
Somehow, they think of me as a Mac OS X person — I don't think that's true. In fact, I claim to be no less OS-agnostic than Mark.
So it was this unlikely team that decided to see if we can get Linux to run on an Intel-based Macintosh.
We did succeed, and since Ben is somewhat of a Linux-distribution-connoisseur, we thought of releasing a prototype distribution for Intel-based Macintoshes. However, as far as "first-to-announce" is concerned, we were beaten to the punch by the Mactel Linux people, who posted pictures of their successful Linux-booting attempt yesterday.
Nevertheless, "Test-driving Linux on an Intel-based Macintosh" is a short story about making a penguin eat an Apple — it is a technical description of how we ran Linux on a 17-inch iMac. Moreover, we are releasing a test-drive mini-distribution as an HFS+ bootable disk image. Simply burn it to an optical disc, and boot with the opt key pressed. The mini distribution uses the 2.6.15.4 kernel, with a user-space environment based on the Busy Box software. When you are in Linux, be sure to look around for interesting information in the /proc and /sys directories.
If you have problem reports or any questions about this, please use this forum thread for discussion.
SMSRotateD is a demonstration application that triggers screen rotation based on the orientation data it retrieves from the Sudden Motion Sensor (SMS) built into newer Apple notebook models.
As noted on the "other" blog, iremoted is a command-line program that receives and displays events corresponding to button-presses on Apple's Infrared remote. The program also allows Keynote presentations to be controlled using the remote.
Without any ado:
The accompanying website (osxbook.com) of my forthcoming book (Mac OS X Internals) is up. Although the site is preliminary at the moment, it has useful information related to the book. In particular, a detailed table of contents is available for browsing.
osxbook.com also has a blog, which will eventually cause this blog to retire. In fact, all new Mac-OS-X-related material will only appear on osxbook.com. The existing material on kernelthread.com will remain, but will be obsoleted by osxbook.com's material over time.
Finally, many readers of kernelthread.com have expressed dissatisfaction in the past about the disappearance of kernelthread forums. Well, osxbook.com has its own forums, which will serve as a venue for discussing topics related to the book and Mac OS X internals in general. The forums are now open for registration and discussion.