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So I thought I would bring the possibility to the attention of the curious ghacks readers before they toss out those old Macs to make room for other projects. On top of that I had the whole of the Linux catalog of software at my disposal.Īnd now I am faced with reviving an aging eMac in the same way. I really felt like I was using a much newer laptop. With Linux on the machine it felt much more powerful than it should have. The version I used on the laptop was Ubuntu.
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The Mac in question was an old G3 800 Mhz iBook. But after a few OS X updates I realized it wasn't the processor but the version of OS X that was placed on it. At first I attributed it to the processor speed. I shouldn't have to even type the fact that the machine ran very slowly. Your old G3, G4, or G5 will run faster and smoother than it did with OS X. The good news is that the effort will be worth it in the end. If you dont get it on the first try, give it a second. Sometimes they will install and sometimes they wont. The machine had a Gig of ram along with the G3 900 Mhz processor. I have found that, when installing Linux on PPC, the installations can be flaky. When I received it it had the latest version of OS X it would support.
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Make sure that your computer can run Linux.
#Can i install linux on mac mini how to
Within the last year I purchased an older eMac which had a 900 Mhz processor. This wikiHow teaches you how to install Ubuntu Linux on your Windows or Mac computer without erasing your current operating system. One of the issues with trying to use those older Macs is that they do not meet the requirements of newer versions of OS X. There are, and they will make that old machine seem like it's younger and snappier than it ever did. Even better, you can grab a free ISO disk image of Ubuntu directly from their Web site and once you’ve grabbed.
#Can i install linux on mac mini full
In the next installment of this series, we’ll look quickly at the basic Ubuntu operating system, then dive into setting this mini to be a full Linux server. Do you have an old Mac G3 or G4 lying around doing nothing? Did you know that old dinosaur could make a great server or desktop with the help of everyone's favorite open source operating system Linux? Most people don't realize there are Linux ports for PPC. Great choices all around, Ubuntu is my favorite Linux distro and VMware Fusion has been a cornerstone of my Mac experience for many years and does a great job installing and running just about every flavor of Linux (and Windows too). The Mac mini is now set up as a dual-boot macOS / Ubuntu Linux server machine.
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