Best distro for an old Mac Mini?

[dkm777]

Hi,

I am slowly but surely migrating away from Mac OS X and once I'm done, I want to install Linux on my Mac Mini. It is a 1.83GHz Core Duo with GMA950 graphics and 2GB RAM. The hard drive doesn't matter at this time as it will be replaced anyway (probably with an SSD to make it almost completely silent). What distro would best support the hardware of this machine? As in Wireless and Bluetooth working "out of the box"? The main use would be as a backup machine for web browsing, music (both listening and CD ripping) and watching videos (including DVDs). So far I'm torn between Ubuntu and Mint, but willing to try something else as long as it wont take weeks or months to bring it to a usable state (i.e. no Arch, Debian or Gentoo).

 

[Nothinman]

Debian doesn't take anywhere near weeks to be usable and is what I personally would go for. Barring that, I would go for Ubuntu just because it's Debian based and because of it's pervasiveness. I've never understood the point of Mint, you can install the same codecs and such with relative ease right on Ubuntu or Debian.

 

[lxskllr]

I like Ubuntu. Mint's alright, but I don't care for the default gui. Debian is just about as easy as the previous 2. It takes a little more clicking, and thinking during install, but if you can install any O/S, you can install Debian. It isn't any more difficult than Windows, OSX, or any other mainstream choice.

 

[dkm777]

So, looks like I can scratch Mint off my list, so now it's Ubuntu, Debian and maybe Fedora. The last time I used it it left a very professional impression, but that was on a PC.

 

[lxskllr]

Try a few as a live CD(USB), and see which you like. I partial to Debian based systems. If I didn't use Ubuntu, Debian would be my next choice. Opensuse, and Mandriva are worth a look also.

 

[Nothinman]

So, looks like I can scratch Mint off my list, so now it's Ubuntu, Debian and maybe Fedora. The last time I used it it left a very professional impression, but that was on a PC.

A Mac Mini is a PC.

I've never been a fan of Fedora, it's always felt big and slow to me and I can't really explain why besides the fact that yum is done in python, it's crazy how much faster it is to search for, install, remove, etc packages in Debian/Ubuntu because dpkg, aptitude, etc are all done in C++. And the polish that Canonical puts on Gnome in Ubuntu just seems better to me. If they had a rolling release like Debian sid I'd consider running it full time, but until that happens Ubuntu is a non-starter for me.

 

[Paperlantern]

It's a shame you scratched off Mint, it's what I would recommend. There have been several instances where Ubuntu fell flat out of the box on a driver or two, and Mint did beautifully. This was on non mac hardware however, Ive not personally had the opportunity to try any Linux distro recently on Mac hardware. The last time I did that was using a release of Ubuntu Workstation back in 2004 on an old G3. THAT was an amazing OS in and of itself, I think we had that machine up for 8 months before a reboot with no issues. Heh. Anyway. They are both essentially the same OS with different interfaces, I just happen to like Mint's default better (i'm partial to green anyway, heh, so its very appealing to me).

That said. You can't go wrong with Ubuntu.

 

[dkm777]

A Mac Mini is a PC.

I've never been a fan of Fedora, it's always felt big and slow to me and I can't really explain why besides the fact that yum is done in python, it's crazy how much faster it is to search for, install, remove, etc packages in Debian/Ubuntu because dpkg, aptitude, etc are all done in C++. And the polish that Canonical puts on Gnome in Ubuntu just seems better to me. If they had a rolling release like Debian sid I'd consider running it full time, but until that happens Ubuntu is a non-starter for me.

Yeah, I know it's a PC, but unlike a PC you can't just pull unsupported cards ant replace with something that works.

Now, about Debian - do they have a live CD ISO? All I found for download were install CD ISOs.

 

[weovpac]

Yeah, I know it's a PC, but unlike a PC you can't just pull unsupported cards ant replace with something that works.

Now, about Debian - do they have a live CD ISO? All I found for download were install CD ISOs.

http://live.debian.net/

 

[dkm777]

Thanks.