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

  • 0x4E4F@infosec.pubEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    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.

    Something NetBSD related might run better, but that’s about it.

    Don’t dual boot an OS that has no security support whatsoever.

    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

    You can use it for storage… that’s about it.

    • SiriusCyberneticsOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      ”Don’t dual boot an OS that has no security support whatsoever.”

      I’m not following. Which OS has no security support? And what difference does is make what other OS are on the system?

      • 0x4E4F@infosec.pubEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’m not following. Which OS has no security support?

        I meant the MacOS, it’s EOL I presume.

        And what difference does is make what other OS are on the system?

        It doesn’t. You can boot whatever you want in multiboot. Just remember to disable hibernation on all, and if booting Windows, fast startup.

        • SiriusCyberneticsOP
          1·
          1 year ago

          Oh I see, no it’s OCLP which allows running the latest MacOS. But I do have another partition with something EOL on there like Sierra or something.

          Not sure if MacOS has hibernation. No Windows on this machine. :)

          • 0x4E4F@infosec.pubEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            IDK what OCPL is, I’m not familiar with Macs at all.

            Just don’t install anything Ubuntu based, they’re moving towards a pro based service, so there are nags all over the place, plus you have no idea what they might remove from the free version and include in the pro subscription in the future. I’d recommend something community based, but you’re a beginner, so the ones I listed seem like a good choice for a beginner. Also, see if you can try out BTRFS (it comes by default on Fedora I believe). It has some maintenance to it (not a lot), but it really is a lot better than the classic journaling files systems.