Mac mini

BobCamp · Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 1:23 am Post subject: VNC on the Mac Mini

Hi

I just got a mini and have spent the last few days playing with it. If you do a free download of Apple's Remote Desktop Client it installs a perfectly adequate VNC server. Like most of the OS-X stuff it works just fine with Gentoo on the other end.

With the Apple DVI to VGA adapter plugged in it will boot just fine with no monitor. Not a bad little server.

The only thing that's not there is an anonymous ftp server ... off to Portage ....

mijenix · Guru Joined: 22 Apr 2003 Posts: 393 Location: Switzerland

Twist · Guru Joined: 03 Jan 2003 Posts: 414 Location: San Diego

Haven't tried, but it looks completely standard. It comes with the unit anyway (the adapter).

Thank goodness Apple didn't force the ADC crap on this unit. Regular old DVI.

-Twist

oaaltone · n00b Joined: 14 Sep 2003 Posts: 3 Location: Amherst, MA

Evangelion · Posted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 8:40 am Post subject:

Henk Poley · n00b Joined: 19 Jul 2004 Posts: 17

And here too:

http://www.smashsworld.com/2005/01/mac-mini-complete-technical.php

dsnider459 · n00b Joined: 27 Nov 2004 Posts: 5

got the bottom of the line one. It works, gentoo is running. Network, USB, Firewire, Sound, the works. Fan only got loud once, after a 5 hour 90 package compile.. :-)

dsnider459 · n00b Joined: 27 Nov 2004 Posts: 5

Anyone have luck with MythTV on it?

skyfolly · Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 10:10 am Post subject:

macmania!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lol

heard that some dude opened and tweated it to overclock 6% of it, wtf, how lame.
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Achille · n00b Joined: 04 Jan 2005 Posts: 74

pentium120 · n00b Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 29

Dsnider,

Congratulations

I'm thinking of getting one of these little guys too. It'll be a nice upgrade from my pentium 120 w/48MB RAM. I'm curious, did you set up dual boot or did you blow away OS X? I'd like to dual boot it, at least initially. Whether that means resizing the OS X partition or reinstalling both OSes with a new partition table, I'd still be interested.

Also, what apps do you have so far?

Thanks!

joshua · Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 9:26 pm Post subject:

Voltago · Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 9:30 pm Post subject:

Antimatter · Guru Joined: 11 Aug 2003 Posts: 463

i'm curious about their performance as an mini server/router will osX work just fine. as a router/firewall because i'm looking around for a compact small sexy computer to act as an server and this looks like a great thing, but i'm not sure how secure it is?

does it has something similar to iptable/ipchain? etc... how secure can it be made as compared to say an harded gentoo installation?

joshua · Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2005 11:22 pm Post subject:

Basically the Mac mini is not that different from the recent PowerBooks or iBooks. Typing this on my 15" PowerBook (G4 1.5GHz) I need to say, that the performance is great - as long as you don't plan to use it as a rendering farm or try to play Doom3. For a server surely it depends on your needs. But I've seen much poorer machines serving important sites. Somewhere I read that the harddisk is rather slow, because it's a notebook-drive. Oh, and you alway will need to add lots of RAM, at least 512Mb or better more ...

The Mac OS X is secure enough for most applications, basically the developers took the best things from FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD, added an stunning userinterface and font-rendering-engine and made all those plug-and-play- and driver-things just work. Great job.

Still, I prefer Gentoo for my home router and webserver, and my Mac and Gentoo boxes do work great together utilizing tools like mt-daapd and howl. But you should keep in mind that the Mac mini comes with the desktop version of OS X which might not be quite appropriate as a server solution as long as you don't change a couple of things deep inside of it.
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kalisphoenix · Apprentice Joined: 28 Sep 2003 Posts: 211 Location: Ohio

If you buy the Mac mini because you want a router, I'll just save you the trouble and give you an already setup SPARCStation. Then you can send me the Mac mini, and we'll both be happy.

$500 on a damn router? Jesus Christ.

pjj · Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2005 6:05 pm Post subject:

Indeed a lot of money

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Antimatter · Guru Joined: 11 Aug 2003 Posts: 463

kalisphoenix · Apprentice Joined: 28 Sep 2003 Posts: 211 Location: Ohio

I'd say it'd probably be able to do all the things you said. If I remember correctly (I haven't researched), there are Firewire TV-in devices. I'd expect it to work as well or better than PCI.

My complaint would be the single ethernet port. That'd bug the shit out of me, personally, but if I got the Mac mini I'd run OS X on it, and so have Airport Extreme support and it'd be just fine. But wait -- what am I saying? I have a perfectly decent Linksys router. $50. Do a web config on the thing and change some settings and it's a perfectly decent firewall, NAT, and port forwarding device.

*shrugs*

Personally, I want one of the damn things. Badly. Yeah, as a server. I want to hook up several external 3.5" HD enclosures (I already have two) with nice, stable, BIG hard drives. I'm aiming for maybe .5 TB of storage. Adequate space for future growth. Then I'll hook it up to my Airport Express, stream my music, serve my printer, and back up my DVDs. I think that sounds pretty nice for $750 or so invested. I've never had any success with TV recording, but this time might be the charm. I'll record... hmm. I don't watch TV. I don't even have cable.

Hell, I dunno. The thing looks fun, though, and I want one.