Installing OE on a modern Mac Mini

[VirtualRain]

All the threads I could find on installing OE on a Mac Mini were a few years old involving really old Macs and probably before OE supported UEFI.

I have a 2014 base Mac MIni I want to install OE on (single-boot exclusive to OE).

Is there anything I need to know? Does the black magic in those old threads still apply, or have things improved?

[chewitt]

No. idea. I'm the only person on staff that has any Apple kit, and my personal and work laptops are not used for experiments. If it's a single-boot scenario you have the luxury of being able to fcuk it up and experiment repeatedly until it works though, so please let us know

[Porkchop999]

I have this setup with a Mac mini 2014 single boot this is what I have done,

Boot up off a mac usb installer, format the internal drive as fat , set the scheme to master boot record (This will wipe everything!)

Boot up off the openelec usb installer and install on the internal drive

Once finished reboot holding down the option key so you can see boot drive options

To set the startup disk use this guide

http://www.macworld.com/article/1135944/...pboot.html

I think openelec install shows up as efi boot

I have a 4GB external hard drive plugged in for media and had some troubles with openelec not booting sometimes, I used this guide to fix it

http://openelec.tv/forum/124-raspberry-p...-right-way

I edited /flash/efi/BOOT/syslinux.cfg

from this APPEND boot=LABEL=System disk=LABEL=Storage ssh quiet
to this APPEND boot=UUID=D107-D309 disk=UUID=8a6d04aa-a196-4b95-8d66-f00f5c02f327 ssh quiet

using the uuids from my hard drives (yours will be different), now boots fine evertime

My macmini has intel graphics am I have been using this version which works really well

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=231955

Hope this helps

[VirtualRain]

I have this setup with a Mac mini 2014 single boot this is what I have done,

Boot up off a mac usb installer, format the internal drive as fat , set the scheme to master boot record (This will wipe everything!)

Boot up off the openelec usb installer and install on the internal drive

Once finished reboot holding down the option key so you can see boot drive options

To set the startup disk use this guide

http://www.macworld.com/article/1135944/...pboot.html

I think openelec install shows up as efi boot

I have a 4GB external hard drive plugged in for media and had some troubles with openelec not booting sometimes, I used this guide to fix it

http://openelec.tv/forum/124-raspberry-p...-right-way

I edited /flash/efi/BOOT/syslinux.cfg

from this APPEND boot=LABEL=System disk=LABEL=Storage ssh quiet
to this APPEND boot=UUID=D107-D309 disk=UUID=8a6d04aa-a196-4b95-8d66-f00f5c02f327 ssh quiet

using the uuids from my hard drives (yours will be different), now boots fine evertime

My macmini has intel graphics am I have been using this version which works really well

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=231955

Hope this helps

Awesome... thank you very much for taking the time to post this!

I've got myself a bootable Yosemite installer USB for the first step.

A couple of follow-on questions if you don't mind...

I asume I use the generic x64 UEFI download of OpenElec and follow these instructions to create the bootable USB for it?

I don't plan to run any other drives other than the internal Mac Mini drive for OE. All my media is on another Mac shared drives... so hopefully OE won't cause me any troubles that way.

My main priorities with this are smooth 1080p playback and bitstreaming HD Audio (with Atmos) for those few movies out there that offer it.

I opened the last link and was like... "Whoa!... what is all this about?" I gather it's some video hardware accelerator stuff... but why? Does Kodi/OE not offer any hardware acceleration for Intel?

[Porkchop999]

Yes use the generic x64
My receivers a bit old for atmos but dts etc has been fine
post #2 http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=231955 has OE images you can use they have been improving the visual quality with intel drivers on linux I do think it makes the video look better than the standard OE generic, but either should work.
I don't know if the built in wifi works as I use ethernet, you might have to but a $30 dongle if you want to you wifi.

[VirtualRain]

Yes use the generic x64
My receivers a bit old for atmos but dts etc has been fine
post #2 http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=231955 has OE images you can use they have been improving the visual quality with intel drivers on linux I do think it makes the video look better than the standard OE generic, but either should work.
I don't know if the built in wifi works as I use ethernet, you might have to but a $30 dongle if you want to you wifi.

Thanks again. I'll start with the generic image and then look at alternatives once I get my bearings. I use WiFi as little as possible... will be using Ethernet in my case also so, again, fewer issues to deal with.

[VirtualRain]

Just a quick update: Everything went smoothly following the steps above. Thanks again.

My Mac Mini is now running OE/Kodi with PlexBMC to my Plex Media Server and bitstreaming HD Audio with Atmos. Awesome!