Installing Linux on older Imac
 

Hello I have picked up an older imac (os x 10.7.5) and since it is older it will no longer run Mac applications and thought it would be great system to replace the OS with a Linux distro. I was thinking about UALinux Game Pack which is basically Ubuntu with some game software included.

The problem I am having is getting it installed. I made a live USB and tried booting the usb drive but the IMac doesnt recognize the usb as a bootable device same with when i burned a DVD and tried to boot from the DVD.

Can anyone help point me to a better way to do this? I have internet to the Imac and can download an iso directly but not sure if i could install the linux distro that way on an imac. Thanks for any advice anyone can give

I don't remember having any trouble installing openSUSE 15.0 from DVD on my A1225 - 2134 iMac in multiboot with its OEM Snow Leopard. I boot it using uEFInd. Maybe you could install a skeleton regular Ubuntu, then adjust sources.list to convert it to Game Pack.

Imac is 1990s vintage, isn't it. Your gaming performance will suck. Sadly, the world of Electronics is harsh (Take it from somebody who it threw on the scrapheap - Much like your IMAC).

That said, try and get errors. A place I was in had the ancient original square macs which gave you this 'sad mac' picture, when what you wanted was an error message. That i Mac has got a G<something> in it, a Motorola CPU. It's not x86, and your choice of distro may be limited. UA Ubuntu seems to be x86 only. You can often get historic OSes on mirrors better than the distro website. The first powerpc distro I found was here: ftp.heanet.ie:/mirrors/ftp.debian.org/debian/dists/oldoldstable/Contents-powerpc.gz and I'm not sure what you've got there in that distro at all.

So, to summarize, you can't use an X86 distro. That explains your errors so far, I imagine. Forget gaming, as a suggestion, or updates. If yours is a 68k cpu, you'll be lucky to find anything linux for it. From memory, Debian were one of the first to build a mac distro. You may be better off keeping your MacOS. Mac-specific distros went out once they switched to x86 processors.

EDIT: You'll need to put some way of fetching that in front of the link. Try safari ftp://<MY-LINK>

Welcome to the forums, ishban!

To give good advice, we need to know which model iMac you have. Is the MacOS still functional? If so, boot to MacOS, go to the Apple menu, choose About This Mac, and it will give you the hardware info. The most important detail is the year and model, for example mine says "iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013)." It would also be helpful if you could tell us the Processor, Memory, and Graphics. (We don't, however, need to know your serial number. ;))

Generally speaking, if your hardware is so old that Apple has dropped support for it, I wouldn't hold out hope for it being a great Linux machine, either. But if it is right around the cutoff, you might be able to make it work. :)

I sorta-kinda disagree, snowpine. It's only bad if you want to run OSX/MacOS on it, and Apple doesn't support it. But if you go straight Linux, it may be perfectly usable. I had an older 21" dual-core w/8GB of RAM, and it ran pretty good with Tumbleweed on it. Forget the year, but it did support Sierra, when I gave it to my niece.

OP, you can typically find (depending on model), a key-combination to get a Mac to boot from USB. Some of them:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201255

...but it depends on model and architecture (thanks, Apple!) Some will allow USB/optical boot by holding down C after the start chime, others are a key combination. You'll have to look up model. An Intel based Mac should run just fine, and may let you get some use out of the older hardware. From what I read, that's OSX Lion, from 2011...so you're on Intel, with X86_64 architecture. Well supported by Linux, although your graphics may be problematic, depending on your chipset. While it WILL work...you may not get compositing, have screen-tearing, etc. But again, this depends on your hardware. And FYI, you need a Mac video card...a standard, cheap one won't work, since Apple shoves firmware onto those too, so you HAVE to buy a Mac-card (thanks again, Apple!). Otherwise...no booting.

First off thanks to everyone that replied. I remembered the linux community being a very helpful community and I am glad it still is.

The processor is an 2.16 Intel Core Duo

I am not looking for a powerhouse gaming machine. I have my desktop AMD dual booting Win 10 and Ubuntu game pack. I just want to breathe some life back into this Imac. I have read several web pages discussing doing just that and it seemed pretty straight forward. I am sure i am just doing something wrong in creating the live usb. then again maybe the mac cant read usb. I only had 1 DVD here so cant try burning another with a different distro yet. I just like the flexibility in the game pack to load older windows games but if I can get any version of Ubuntu on the machine i can add the game pack later to it.

That didn't really answer my questions, so let's try a different tactic: Does your iMac have a thick body or a slim body? If it has a thick body, then I recommend to recycle it due to its age. If it has the slim body then it is newer than 2012 and might be a good candidate for Ubuntu.

To get it to boot from the USB, turn on the computer while holding down the Option key. You should see your USB stick listed as one of the boot options.

Sorry, did you not read what I posted to you??? There *IS* a key combination to boot from USB, and (as said), I had Linux running quite well on a Core 2 Duo machine in the past. Again: WHAT KIND of iMac is it??? What year?

First of all it only says IMAC on the machine there is no other markings on it.I have never owned a MAc and dont know anything about macs. It is a thin body and there is a post it not on the machine saying 2.16 GHZ Intell Core 2 Duo.

Thats all the information I have so there no reason to get rude. Yeah I know there is a key combination and that you can press the option button to bring up a boot menu but it does not show the usb in that menu. I am asking these questions here because i could not get it done myself and thought maybe someone who has more experience with macs and linux would be able to give some advice. I know it should be able to run linux quite fine but I am havint troubler getting it to recognize the live usb. It does detect the CD when there is a disk in there (But when that disk is a Linux install disk it can not read the contents) and other other hard drives. If there were any other markings I would have already told you. Like I said I got it used at a thrift store.

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/ can probably help you determine what you have if the spec sticker on the bottom of its base is missing or illegible. You may need a magnifying glass to make out what it says if it's still there.

And when people ask you questions, and you don't even reply...that ISN'T rude?? And we have no idea what you know/don't know, unless you tell us. Had you said "I don't know anything about Macs", you would then have received advice on how to find out what model it was, but you did not. I posted advice to you, and looked up key combinations for you and provided a link, told you what version/architecture would work on your machine, and you call me rude for doing so??
First hit from "how to find model number on imac" Google search:
https://support.apple.com/en-jo/HT201634

...going back to 2009. If it's not on the bottom of your Mac, then you probably will have to make some assumptions, based on the OS that's installed....10.7.5 was circa 2011. You can look up more based on the model number after you find it. If it doesn't show the USB in the menu, then that means one of several things:

• The USB device wasn't created correctly
• The USB device isn't working
• The USB port you're plugging it into isn't working

I'd load generic Ubuntu, and load Steam and other items afterwards, to eliminate any potential problems; the UA game pack is based on 16.04, while 'real' Ubuntu is 18.04 LTS, with 18.10 as the 'regular' version. And I would certainly consider the source for the UA version to be suspect, and I'd not trust it. You only say you plugged in the USB drive...if you plugged it into the Mac keyboard USB port, it won't work, nor will it work from a USB hub, you have to plug it in directly to the rear USB port. That said, eliminate THAT as a problem, by swapping the keyboard and USB drive. Since you know the keyboard works, you also know the USB port its plugged in to also works. A dead port may be why it was in the thrift shop.

You can also create a bootable DVD and boot from optical. Directions from Ubuntu's website:
https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutoria...8.1540492218#0
https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutoria...8.1540492218#0

Will your iMac boot to MacOS? If so, you can find out lots of hardware details (including the year and model number) by going to the Apple menu and selecting About This Mac.

I'm still confused which year and model iMac you have, and really can't begin to give you advice until I know that for sure. You say it has the slim body and a Core 2 Duo, but as far as I know, i5 was the minimum CPU spec when Apple moved to the slim bodies in 2013.

If your thrift-shop Mac won't boot up to either MacOS or Linux, maybe there is a serious problem with it? It would be really helpful to know whether the computer is currently functional on any level.

Sorry it was late and it was late and in replying I hit more on another posters info and may have missed replying directly to you.

Background I am not a child and have built PC's for years mainly in the Windows world but on my personal PC I have run various flavors of Linux in dual boot but it was never my primary OS. I have never touched a MAC so when i saw this mac at the thrift store in "Running" condition I decided I would pick it up. I like to tinker and thought this would be a great excuse to tinker with MAC OS. But after several attempts and a trip to my local MAC store I was told I would never be able to run MAC software under 10.7.5 because of the way MACs are designed. So drawing on past experiences with taking dead PC laptops and bringing new life into them with Puppy Linux and other distros I would install Linux on the MAC. Its a intel processor shouldnt be too hard. Well i was wrong...

I will look up the info i can find when i can hook up the MAC again and my time is not consumed by the wife and other projects. Hopefully in the next couple of days.

Then you haven't tried installing and setting up on a powerpc yet (that is kinda hard).
Just kidding (though it is true, but i am not trying to say what you do is a piece of cake).

The Debian wiki has quite some pages about all kinds of (intel and powerpc) Mac's. Probably other distros too, but for Debian i know.
Main problem is what you said yourself: ain't that easy to figure out which model you have got. Once that is clear, you got a search term, and it should be rather easy.
Try that wiki, perhaps, and good luck.

Not saying that is what you need, just that there is stuff,i just used imac as a searchterm
https://wiki.debian.org/FrontPage?ac...esearch=Titles
try at the ubuntu wiki too, also in other forums (mint and such), perhaps the arch wiki, etc.

As an aid to finding out how old the thing is, as a last resort, you can look at the chips for a 3 or 4 digit code, written on it's own. It's the date of fabrication.

3 digits = MYY, Month/Year, e.g. '705' would be July 2005. That's rare.
4 digits = WWYY which is Work Week/Year, e.g. 4902 would be week 49, 2002, or early December. Only some dates appear. I've yet to see anything made in week 52, for instance

Get as many dates as you can. As a very rough rule, if they're grouped around a certain time, add about 6 months from manufacture to shop. If one is much later, ignore the others and add three months from that date. If any are fabulously old, ignore them. It's not uncommon to have rare parts made in a batch and stored for over a year.

At least you get an idea when it went out the door.