Help installing on Mac Mini (mid 2011)

DouganatorNZ · October 24, 2018 at 6:52 AM

Hi,

Looking for some help installing LibreELEC on a couple of Mac Mini's (mid 2011). I have searched high and low and can not find a simple straight forward guide for us simple people hahahaha. I am not interested in dual booting, LibreELEC only is fine as these are purely HTPC's.

Thanks

**Iridium** · October 24, 2018 at 6:03 PM Official Post

I'm not optimistic but if you can provide details of CPU and GPU it *might* be possible. If it's Intel then *maybe* (and that;s a big maybe) generic might work, but if it's a G4 then I doubt it. Time to compost your apples and get some raspberries or potatoes

DouganatorNZ · October 24, 2018 at 6:27 PM

Quote from Iridium

I'm not optimistic but if you can provide details of CPU and GPU it *might* be possible. If it's Intel then *maybe* (and that;s a big maybe) generic might work, but if it's a G4 then I doubt it. Time to compost your apples and get some raspberries or potatoes

hahahahaa,

Its Intel i5 with Intel HD Graphics 3000 processor

**Iridium** · October 24, 2018 at 6:56 PM Official Post

You could TRY generic Here but I don't hold out much hope as Apple are renowned for being sympathetic to open source

DouganatorNZ · October 24, 2018 at 7:19 PM

Quote from Iridium

You could TRY generic Here but I don't hold out much hope as Apple are renowned for being sympathetic to open source

I have tried the generic build but I can not get the Mac Mini to boot from USB key. The Mac just hangs on the boot option screen when selecting the USB device.

**Iridium** · October 24, 2018 at 7:30 PM Official Post

I don't want to disappoint you - BUT I think you are *stuffed* Someone might have a solution but don't hold your breath. Sorry.

**chewitt** · October 26, 2018 at 12:39 AM Official Post

Older EFI firmware mac's are crap at USB booting. It's easier to burn an Ubunto ISO to CDROM and boot from that, and do a manual install of LE to the internal drive. It's years since I did one, but basically you need to create a GPT partition scheme with two EXT4 partitions for boot and storage and then copy the files from the first partition of a "Generic" USB image to the first (boot) partition on the drive. Then install a bootloader (syslinux or grub) and possibly rEFInd as a boot manager.