Hey everyone! New to the MorphOS team.

Coming from Amiga 3/4....

I just picked up a Mac Mini G4 and also purchased a msata to IDE and drive to upgrade the HD on the unit.

From my reading it appears I'm going to need a burner and cd's in order to install Morph since USB booting doesn't work? Is that right?

Also, what should I know being a new user?

If you want to update via USB, there is this:

USB Booting Guide

Latest MorphOS updates also include a so called hybrid hdimg which also can be used to boot from an USB stick but this requires both a compatible USB stick and obviously will overwrite all your previous data on that stick as you basically write a raw image to the stick on block level.
I use a dedicated 2GB USB stick for that but those are rare to find these days. It also requires to change the boot device in OpenFirmware to USB as Apple's OpenFirmware doesn't find it automatically.

@ n3m3 - WELCOME - time for the BLUE pill!!

Well, you've just been introduced to Frank Mariak (cyfm) - "head honcho", so to speak !!

USB flash drive installation does work on Mac Minis, though I usually use CDR(W)s - see the MorphOS Library - Booting MorphOS ISO from USB, or check out Installing MorphOS - Instructions.

I feel sure there will be other users who will offer advice and greetings quite soon, so you might want to hang on and decide which way you want to install your system.

Don't forget that there is the MorphOS-Storage website where you can download lots more utilities to benefit your vanilla installation.

There used to be a Chrysalis Pack DVD, but Papiosaur, who runs the MorphOS-Storage site does not currently host that DVD anymore, but intends to add it back onto his site once more as it is a historic MorphOS resource, as it is very useful.

There is an icon pack IconPack-Chrysalis.lha on the website that used to be on the DVD, but there are lots of other programs, Crabum, PolyNet, April, etc., etc., which you can search for using Easy2Install - currently v1.4 that will make searching for such files as easy as possible.

Crabum is an ARexx implementation, by Thomas Igracki, (who has added quite a few add-ons for MorphOS, such as WebRadio, SmartClipboard, YourWeather, YTsearch, etc.) and you will need your old rexxsyslib.library (68k usually dated 04-Dec-2004), that needs to be placed in System:Libs for Crabum to work correctly. It is like Tools Daemon and adds menus that you can add more context menus and tools into. This is one of the things that the Chrysalis DVD used to do virtually automatically, though it did add one or two Francais/French menus here and there which you might have had to edit.

Anyway, hope that's a start for you, and you'll soon be up and running.
Have you got a 32MB VRAM 1.25GHz/1.42GHz MacMini or a 64MB VRAM MacMini 1.5GHz (Silent Upgrade)?

Hope you enjoy your stay here. I migrated from Amiga (A1200 512MB 68060/603 PPC Blizzard & Mediator TX, Radeon 9200 256MB GFX card, plus MANY add-ons . . . but . . . I have never looked back from MorphOS, it is the BEST Amiga NG system by far, IMHO.

I tried OS4, on the classic hardware, and also soon after I migrated to MorphOS on ACube hardware, but I cannot see that OS4 has anything I'd really need or like to have on MorphOS.