Mandriva SA, the third-largest Linux distributor, said its version of Linux is already compatible with the 32-bit dual-core Centrino processors, which are also used in conventional Linux and Windows PCs. While technical issues, for now at least, prevent booting Mandriva on Apple hardware, a fully compatible version of Mandriva Linux "could appear sometime in the second quarter of 2006," according to David Barth, vice-president of engineering at the Paris-based company.

Canonical Ltd., which is behind the fast-rising Ubuntu Linux distribution, said that despite current technical hangups, a Mactel-compatible version of Ubuntu could be available within the next eight months, when development on the next major release of Ubuntu is expected to finish, according to Jane Weideman, a spokesperson for the Isle of Man, England-based company.

Other Linux distributors are less definitive with their plans. Linux market leader Red Hat Inc. has denied earlier reports that it's actively rewriting its Linux distribution to run on Mactel hardware. And Novell Inc. is waiting for the open-source community to provide a technical solution.

Linux long available for older Macs

Many flavors of Linux already run on Mac hardware using PowerPC chips, which Apple is phasing out because of chip-speed limitations and excess heat. The main problem with getting Linux to boot on the new Apple computers is the newish Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) it uses to connect the operating system to the hardware and peripherals at startup.