Well, last night I went ahead and installed Mac OSx on my Dell Inspiron 9200 laptop while I was coding on another computer. The process was pretty easy actually. It started with me finding this
website, which gave directions on how to install it. So, following the btjunkie directions (as they were easier), I downloaded the torrent from btjunkie. The download did take a while and I had to let it go overnight, but when I got up in the morning, it was completed and ready to be burned to disc. BTW, since its an image, you can use any software to burn it to disc and aren't required to use Nero. I used Roxio and its fine.
During the install I had to figure some things out. For instance, when it came time to select the media to install to, it didn't show anything. I remembered that I had linux on here, not Mac OS, so the drive format was not correct. So, I saw the menu bar up top and went into the disk utility. This allowed me to format the drive for a Mac recognized format. Once I did this, they showed up automatically. One note though about the disk utility. It looks as if it is only able to format drives, not partition them. I say this because I looked for the ability as I have a 1 gig partition (which was swap for Linux) and a 92 gig partition. That's ok, I can use the 1 gig for storage, but that's not the point.
Anywho, the software installed and when it was done it rebooted. Upon coming up, the video was just screwed!! This was something I had to figure out. I did some research on google and found I needed to get to the filesystem without the graphical interface running. I talked to a friend, Randal Schwartz, online (thanks for the help Randal!!!), and he told me about the -s option to boot, which Mac's us Command-s during boot to activatej. Unfortunately, I am on a dell...... no command button during boot. So, I was playing around with function keys during boot, hit F8 and voila! A boot menu. It allowed me to enter any options for booting. I tried the -s and went into Single User mode (any of you *nix guys know what that is). Once in there, I mounted the main drive and did what I had to do (hid the drivers for my video card that were causing a problem, supposedly).
Upon rebooting, it STILL didn't work, so a little more Google research and decided to boot with the "-x" option, which is like a safe mode. I could not believe it, it worked! Right now, I am staring at Mac OSx, running on my Dell Inspiron 9200. It is SWEEEEEEET!! The only thing so far that is not working is the wireless card, but I will work on that. WOO HOO!!! Sorry, a little happy. Ethernet is working fine though and I am surfing the net.
For those of you interested, there is
an HCL for Mac OSx86 which goes through the supported devices and what had to be done to get them to work. It may prove very helpful in your quest.