Xerolinux

https://xerolinux.xyz

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

1. I had the hardware and
2. 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

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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 impressed is an understatement so far.

Also there’s a handy dandy “Post install system config button, let’s see what that does…

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Man, all kinds of goodies to play with!!

With such goodies as Yakuake, Avanti browser and KDE connect preinstaled, the only thing I really needed was a decent office suite, Libre office, of course…

The XeroLinux “Hello” app is quite a setup, offering all the tools you need to get up and running. With an app browser very similar to Discover, used by Fedora, finding LibreOffice was easy, tick a check box, a few dependencies needed confirmation, click install and poof, done.

I was able to seamlessly browse the internet and watched a full length Jackie Chan movie on Netflix with no issues or buffering, Libre-office Calc opened in about 5 seconds, only marginally slower than my regular I7 desktop PC running Fedora 35.

The hardware

2010 MACPRO5.1 with dual Intel Xeon 12 core processors running at 2.5Ghz and 32 GB ram and an ATI Radeon HD 5770 I bought the MAC at a local college surplus auction with no hard drive, and installed a 500GB “spinning rust” hard drive I happened to have laying around.

As older hardware, it’s still fairly quiet and crash free, so far. With a modest up time of 5 days.

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Picture 4

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