USB booting :: Apple-Mini-Mac

I'm thinking about buying a new Apple-Mini-Mac ( the current small model ). Anybody has experience with it ?

Is it possible to boot DSL from an usb-pen on the Apple-Mini-Mac ?

Will the onboard network-card automatically recognized by DSL ?

Thank you in advance for your information.

Quote (Key @ June 08 2007,12:16)

Your best shot would be to try booting it with a DSL LiveCD first. If your hardware is recognized by the CD then it should be trivial to switch over to a USB key.

Quote

Will the onboard network-card automatically recognized by DSL ?

The question after plucking down a few hundred bucks for such an odd piece of hardware is, Will *OSX* recognize it automatically? One sample link:
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=52653

LOL, lucky13 - that is a hilarious link - that poor guy is left out in the cold, trying to get help over dialup! :-D

However, Key, you might find these links a little more instructive in deciding:

http://sowerbutts.com/linux-mac-mini/
(Debian supports the mini's various network cards, so you can probably get DSL to use it, even if DSL doesn't automatically recognize it.)

http://www.redhat.com/magazine/007may05/features/mac-mini/
(Fedora Core 4 seems to work great)

Other random links found using Google:
http://homepage.mac.com/pauljlucas/personal/macmini/
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/power/library/pa-madmac1/
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/11/1242234

If nothing else, you can be assured that you'll be able to run some flavor of linux, even if DSL doesn't work.

Better idea: get a Damn Small Machine and support DSL instead of Apple.
http://damnsmalllinux.org/store/Mini_ITX_Systems/Damn_Small_Machine

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