Ubuntu 24.04 on an EXTREMELY Minimal Mac

49 thoughts on “Ubuntu 24.04 on an EXTREMELY Minimal Mac”

• Go to https://bit.ly/4aCuT5P for the incredible Autofull M6 Gaming Chair!

• The UI will only be stuttering if you have no GPU driver and the CPU has to do all the composition.

• I find KDE much snappier than gnome on low end without cutting down things too much. It really runs surprisingly well on old computers, similar to lxqt/xfce in my experience. Gnome seems ok on the mini there though!

• Yeah, I think some of those graphical glitches were due to the open-source GPU drivers. Maybe it’s possible to install an older version of the proprietary ones from the NVIDIA site or a PPA? Might not be ideal, but could provide a better gaming experience.

• Enjoy the sound of really f-ing loud fans

• That's no big deal at all. Modern Linux distros can run just fine on 4GB of RAM and Core 2 Duo processors unless the system is just massively bloated. I have some Dell Inspiron 1545s here in those configurations, running the latest Mint and PCLinuxOS, and they do the job very well. That Mac mini with the Nvidia GPU actually has more graphics horsepower.

  Install antiX Linux on there and you can get something useful with even older hardware.

• very nice

• not very good bang for buck imo. You can get a 6th gen hp, lenovo or dell micro 1L PC instead and run all of this with ease, those start at around $40-50

• Pennsylvania? Why did I think you were from Utah…

• Pronunciation is oo-boon-too

• What is the power consumption of this Mac machine? If it is low then it could run as a 24/7 server with a linux distro with no GUI.

• You mentioned how gnome was snappy. Idk how but the wizards at gnome have made it super efficient on low end graphics as long as you have enough ram(they've also slimmed it down in that way but it's not the lightest)

• The slowness is just the Ubuntu iso, I had a computer with a 8 core cpu and it still took a lot of time to boot.

• I think what struck me most here, is that kids born in 2009 can drive

• This is a great machine! I've got myself one with a 2.53GHz Core2Duo for about $120USD a while ago and then put 8GB RAM + 500GB SSD on it to use it everyday as my home server for files and backups using the officially supported "El capitan".

• Take care of yourself. $0.02

• This is the Action Retro equivalent to Michael MJD running windows 11 on the 2010 Alienware laptop

• So do you think it would work any better in the original Mac Pro from 2006, the 2.66 Ghz model?

• Great Video. I've historically struggled with Linux (as I'm a total novice). But after seeing your video, I gave it a go with my 2011 Mac Mini and it worked perfectly! Thanks Sean! Love your vids… Keep up the great work.

• you can get an android dev box with 3x the cores, 3x the ram, and a 1tb SD card for $40 dollars and you can run the shit out of ubuntu

• Running a maxed out Mac mini (with SSD) just like this w/ EndeavourOS as a smarter smartTV/Media centre. Love the I/O. Works great! 🙂

• Disappoint you didn't toss some modern AI models at this.

• Really shitty the video was members only for a couple of hours!

• I had this mac in 2010 and there was major interference between airport and bluetooth that caused mice to lag. Maybe similar reasons?

• I put Manjaro on a 2011 mac mini recently to use as a server. Only tried it for Jellyfin so far but seems to work well. The one thing I cannot figure out but saw you do was to get back to that EFI boot choice. It worked fine to pick up the installer usb but I cannot seem to get back to it now that Manjaro is on there.

• I'm using one of these 2009 with Ubuntu as a daily driver. What is really lacking in this video is the Broadcom wifi Bluetooth driver installation which is also not that difficult and improves a lot the overall experience . A suggestion; use it just with some local installed office work suite and for web browsing …. no games work fine in this old dude…

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• i have a problem with an imac with an i5 4570 and a gt640m and ubuntu works terribly bad and drivers do not install well, u cant change resolutions, u cant play games and u cant use anything that needs drivers, and the graphics card is a pretty decent one that can run basic games and works for basic editing but on ubuntu just straight works terrible

• Try it with opencore legacy patcher!!!!! 🙂

• Nice! I have one of those… maybe mid-2009 so the middle clock speed. I added the maximum ram and it was a great machine. But the hard disk died… I bet one of these old sata ssd in a box on the shelf would revive it.

• 7:51 oh god no the Steam snap no, oh god oh god

• Been trying to install Linux on a 2,1 mini for awhile now. Can get it to install from a usb drive but not boot into it from the ssd after

• ubuntu has viruses!

• I ran WoW on this very Mac mini model back in the day. Could you use it for bitcoin blockchain validation maybe?

• 24.04 doesn't like my 2010 imac i7. Actually everything runs fine — it just won't recover from Suspend. Working fine on my 2012 mac mini though.

• This is bad ass!!!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

• This is the perfect cheap little YouTube and DVD player!

• 1:41 Ah, yes, back when putting enough ports on a Mac was acceptable! 😂

• clean those specks off the wall I got fingerprints on my monitor because of them!

• I've switched to Ubuntu on my PC after Windows 11 bloated everything. I can play all my games using steam proton on steam. Ubuntu has come A LONG way from when I last tried it in the early 2010s. It's actually a viable replacement to Windows. I find it actually easier and nicer to use than Windows 11 now too.

• it's pronounced: Ooh – Boon – Too The letter “U” has the same phenome in each instance, it is not pronounced Uh- Bun-Two with three different “U” pronunciation.
  Love your channel!

• I've been using this Mini as my media center/server for several years now, but El Capitan is getting pretty old. Might be time to switch it to my OS of choice… Debian!

• As "appliances", in other words a one application at a time device, old machines are quite usable. But the instant you are using several apps developed with web technologies on top of your main app (coding, office, media creation), they are useless. Funny how we traded 20 years of hardware development for the convineance of Spotify, Slack and YouTube.

• As a retro Apple collector, I really need to get into these. They're dirt cheap and I can use my much newer and cheaper keyboards and mice for a surprisingly modern experience.

• I just installed Ubuntu Server 24.04 a week ago on one of these. It was kind of a pain because the bootloader was getting messed up by the mac firmware, but now, it's a really capable server, running some Docker instances and more.

• How about a followup with @johnruschmeyer5769
  suggestion of "add the nvidia-legacy PPA" to sort the graphics (as I wouldn't know how to do this..), then after that of course Haiku-OS!

• Dear Apple:
  Every machine you no longer support is better supported by Linux AND Windows.
  You Suck because open source 10.4 Tiger for example would rock on EVERY old Mac…..

• Seeing this video I’m so sad my dad threw mine out a year ago :’)
  I even had an 8gig of ram kit in there and a ssd… so long partner

• I have a g4 of that.. I still love it.. best audio computer

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