Unfortunately this didn't help, since it talks about
PowerPC and
yaboot.
yaboot is the Macintosh Open-Firmware loader—it is like the the GRUB equivalent on x86 machines.
There are a stack of surprises waiting for you, should you attempt to install any of the numerous combinations of OSes on your
i386 Mac mini, and try to understand the respective installation processes. Even a single wipe out and/or replacement of
Mac OS X completely can be a challenge.
You can find many pages of help on the Internet, however, I did not find one that would alone be helpful with any of the installations. In particular they all seem to miss explaining what is really going on, and why one needs to use either, Apple's
BootCamp (
http://www.apple.com/bootcamp ), or
rEFIt from (
http://refit.sourceforge.net ). Nevertheless, one should find all the info on the Internet very helpful, to at the end finally put the pieces of the puzzle together.