Xerolinux

https://xerolinux.xyz

I installed XeroLinux on an older I mac I had, mostly due to 2

factors,

I had the hardware and

A review I saw touted the MAC like interface from a modified KDE

Plasma base.

As a Plasma user, how could I resist.

I had previously installed Fedora 36 on the MAC and was receiving

random hardware issues at boot time, I wanted to see if the issue

persisted on and Arch base, and since I had never used Arch, this was a

perfect test case.

The install:

Power on the MAC and (if you have a MAC keyboard) press and hold the

Option key. This presented me with 2 options, boot into fedora, or to

the EFI partition on my USB with XeroLinux installer.

Select the EFI USB device

I was then presented with 4 menu options, XeroLinux installer, REFI

boot options, MAC OS and reboot

I chose to boot into the Installer

In the GUI installer I was first given the options to install

several fixes for virtual environments including Qemu and VMWare as well

as an install option

Next I was greeting (literally with a welcome screen proclaiming

“Welcome Fellow Linux Nerds” )

I am at home...lol

After selecting language, time zone and Keyboard layouts, The disk

partitioning options are presented (and in much less confusing verbage

than Fedora) and you are given choice of what swap partition type to

use, No Swap, Swap no hibernate swap with hibernate and swap to file

also a choice of file system, xfs, btrfs of ext4. I chose xfs the

default, and since this is just a toy, not a high availability/high

capacity server, there is no need for BTRFS, and if I am happy with the

state of the system, I may well use it as a media server or Plex server

and in that case I’ll need the larger file capacity of XFS Also

available are the file system encryption check box and a manual

partition options

Under the user account setup, it detected and offered to set the

machine name as MAcPro51, which is fine, it’ll help me id the device on

my network, VS a unique name I would then have to come up with but would

inevitably also contain “MAC” The page also included check boxes to

validate password strength (forcing strong passwords, an auto-login

option and an option to “reuse user password as root password. Obviously

for SUDO purposes, this would not be recommended, but in my situation, I

did chose it and the strong passwords validation

The next screen verifies all the selections and when next is clicked,

A pop-up wants you to confirm again that you want to make the changes

selected.

(insert jeopardy music while the install happens)

During the install, there is a button to observe what is actually

going on in the background, partitioning, file copies, compiles,

etc

First boot and login

Well poop,I see a message in the boot screens referring to a hardware

issue in CPU0 bank 8, there might be a hardware issue, it IS and older

Intel MAC after all…

Step one is, as always, update the system

Picture 1

Click the thumbnail to see

the full-sized image

Yes, that is a silhouette of the MST3K guys, I’m using a 720 P TV as

my monitor and watch movies when I’m in my home office. 121 packages are

ready fro update including Kernel 5.19.12

(more jeopardy Music)

next stop: install proprietary driver , open source drivers and

non-preinstalled apps All this went very smoothly, as though the distro

maintainers had put lots of work and thought into it. To say I’m

impress