Install Mint on 2010 Mac mini running OCLP? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by SiriusCybernetics@lemmy.ca to c/linuxmint@lemmy.ml

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Hi, I'm quite new to Linux. I installed Mint Cinnamon recently on a Windows laptop. Impressed.

Question: I have a semi-retired 2010 Mac mini server (two HDDs in it) that is running OCLP and MacOS Monterey. It runs, but it crawls without an SSD. I use it for music playback and occasional web browsing (which is painful). I am wondering if Linux would run better, but would prefer to keep a dual boot with MacOS.

How doable is this? Any opinions on what version of Linux to install?

Specs: 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor 3MB on-chip shared L2 cache 1066MHz frontside bus 8GB of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics processor with 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM Dual 500GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA hard disk

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[-] ChrisG@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

tl:dr use Ubuntu/Mint

We have a 2009 iMac here, not identical to you but very similar vintage. After running through a battery of Linux distros on it (I'm a bit of an operating system nerd) I found that Ubuntu/Mint have the best hardware support for old Mac's.

Being told to try Debian on Mac's of this vintage is not helpful in my experience. No disrespect to Debian.

Your spinning rust will run Linux better than MacOS in terms of performance and resource use.

Installing an SSD running Linux will do wonders with old Mac hardware with the caveat that Apple's firmware will maliciously set the system fans to full blast for the sin of using a non Apple SSD.

The fan issue is easily fixed with a small bit of software which over rides Apple's firmware to set the fans back to normal speeds.

As a bonus, if you'd like to get rid of the loud Apple 'bong' at startup there is a way to do it in Linux.

Reply for links. Cheers 🎄

this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023

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