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I got Fedora 44 Workstation installed on a Mid-2012 28” iMac. It took 8 hours. (media.piefed.world)

submitted 2 weeks ago by homes@piefed.world to c/dull_mens_club@lemmy.world

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I got my dead internal display to work with an external display on mirrored mode, and I got it to reliably boot past Apple‘s incredibly finicky AMD graphics drivers.

I ordered a bottle of Jim Beam, and I’m going to bed. I’m fucking exhausted.

If anyone wants to offer further advice, go ahead, but any Apple bashing will be firmly ignored because I just don’t have it in me to take it

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[–] voidsignal@lemmy.world 22 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Please don't judge Linux as a whole because you have troubles installing it on hostile hardware. I'm a full Linux user, from my router to my phone and everything in between. But installing it on Apple hardware has always been terrible. Linux is not welcome there.

[–] homes@piefed.world 30 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

No no no, you misunderstand

I would not have spent this fucking long and this much effort working on getting it installed on this machine if I didn’t think Linux was worth it.

But I also highly value Apple hardware, especially the older stuff

Edit: I have about 15 years experience with Debian based distributions, and have a little bit of experience with red hat based distro. But diving in with fedora at this level will be new for me. An adventure! And on especially bitchy hardware!

I’m going to drink a bottle of bourbon tonight, and figure this out tomorrow, lol

Edit 2: i’m watching Star Trek two wrath of Khan in 4K with my cat. I encouraged the rest of you to do the same. Happy memorial day weekend 😊

[–] gedfromgont@piefed.ca 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

[–] 1984@lemmy.world 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Shouting "Apple!"

[–] NotEasyBeingGreen@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 weeks ago

Tim Apple does make a good villain....

[–] NotEasyBeingGreen@slrpnk.net 8 points 2 weeks ago

I'll be by later today to pick up your cat, so I can watch The Wrath of Khan with it, as you have encouraged. 😉

[–] voidsignal@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

oh, then cheers and good luck!

[–] homes@piefed.world 12 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Obviously, I started with Linux mint, but that just didn’t work out for a lot of reasons that did not at all seem obvious.

I’ll get into this and any questions you may have tomorrow, after I rest because I am so goddamn exhausted

[–] YeahIgotskills2@lemmy.world 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I have an iMac from 2012 running windows 11, and even that was a minor ball-ache (Rufus, drivers identified with boot Camp). Granted, an absolute walk in the park compared to what you did. Point is I agree, the hardware is still fine and for browsing and YouTube etc - it's still a great looking device that works. I had a play around with a new HP All-in-one recently and the machine itself was so uninspiring and generic in comparison, despite being well over a decade newer.

[–] mrvictory1@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

I have a hackintoshed hp all in one with a shattered screen. How poetic

[–] LilDumpy@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Why'd it take 8 hours?

[–] homes@piefed.world 15 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I had to take breaks. Or I would have smashed things.

Realistically, though, it’s a 2012 iMac, so I’m working with USB 2.0 flash drives and SATA 3.0 HDDs. Shit is old and slow. Plus, because of repeated Radeon driver bugs, I got caught in so many repeated boot loops, I lost count of how many. So, so many boot loops.

Repeated grub and refit problems… Apple efi vs refit, etc, and manually editing the boot efi… Apple ago is so weird. It’s such a nightmare to navigate blind because you can’t edit it, nor even look at it, and it’s unpublished. It’s just trial and error.

[–] lauha@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Just put sata ssd on it and it will feel like a new machine

[–] Killercat103@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 weeks ago

Congrats! That in of it self is a feat of patience! (Take it from a Gentoo daily driver) I wish you luck further onwards!

By the way. Considering how time consuming it was; Have you written down your process or looked into backups? Or maybe timeshift for the btrfs system? Asking because if something went really wrong. (Perhaps deleting wrong files. Bugs or flashing the wrong drive etc) Going through the process again could suck.

Also feel free to DM me with Linux issues in the future. I can't promise I can fix them though.

[–] th3dogcow@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

ordered a bottle of Jim Beam, and I’m going to bed. I’m fucking exhausted.

If anyone wants to offer further advice, go ahead

I’m quite partial to Jim beam and coke. I would advise Coke Zero as it is debatably healthier!

[–] ragingHungryPanda@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Niiiice! What do you plan on using it for?

[–] homes@piefed.world 8 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Well, for the past 14 years it ran macOS 10.13 and was my primary plex server.

But, over the last few years, its software shortcomings have become impossible to ignore. I would have moved on to Linux years ago, but personal problems have gotten in the way, but now - with a solid alternative remote server set up and running - I can finally revamp my own. And so I am.

And, wow - I’m so glad for the alt plex server, because mine will be down for a while! even this 2012 iMac is a real cunt without an Apple os. And I would prefer macOS, but Linux is still great, and I’m glad to have it.

I’m just so exhausted from wrestling with apple’s very finicky hardware, but this hardware, from anyone else, would just be broken. Apple hardware- at least of this generation- was especially brilliantly engineered, and that’s the only reason that this computer wasn’t in a dumpster years ago. So say what you will about Apple hardware, but I’ve had this computer for 14 years, and I’ll probably have it for another 10. So it was worth a lot more than I paid for it. And I definitely think it’s worth the work.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

I got Linux Mint I stalled on a 2012 MacBookPro, and it took only about 20 minutes. Why did it take so long on your 2012?

Edit. I misunderstood. Changed text to match the correct understanding.

[–] homes@piefed.world 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

My iMac had a dead internal screen. That made it an absolute and total nightmare from the start.

And what took me several hours and dozens of boot loops to determine, especially with the dead screen, was that it was the latest AMD Radeon drivers that were unstable on the card I have. What I needed to do was exclude those drivers from ever being updated.

In the mixup, I ended up going with fedora 44 workstation.

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Ah. Dude. Awesome job, then! Seriously impressive that you got all that done without a proper display!

[–] homes@piefed.world 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Thanks! Seriously, other than the driver issue, that had me running around in circles for hours and hours, the rest of it went pretty smoothly. And bog standard fedora 44 workstation runs no slower than XFCE spin. That surprised me.

But I’m taking it slow slowly today, because I’m so fucking traumatized from yesterday, lol. I really thought I was gonna lose a very reliable workhorse server, even though it’s pretty slow. It’s very reliable as a Plex server.

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I ran fedora on live iso, and it was buttery smooth. I just prefer Debian on my daily.

I tried Plex. Found myself pulling my hairs for features that come standard (and free) on jellyfin, so went that route instead. It's been smooth sailing since.

[–] homes@piefed.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Really? I’ve been running Plex for almost 20 years, and when I tried jellyfin, I’ll admit, I saw a more than a couple of interesting features here and there, but I came away looking at a system that I saw in Plex 18 years ago and that I very much look forward to seeing evolve into something bigger and better, but is under developed and immature for now. That said, it is an ambitious project that I enthusiastically support. I don’t particularly like the direction that Plex is going, and it is well beyond time that it open source project fork off to continue what Plex was originally designed to do.

Don’t get me wrong, jellyfin is definitely the future. But jellyfin today exists as approving ground for the future. For today? And after nearly 2 decades of investment in it? I’m sticking with Plex for now and for probably several years. I administer my own server and a few other servers with many many users. I’m not migrating away from Plex for a long time.

Not out of loyalty, just because it’s what best meets mine needs at the moment.

But jellyfin? I’m gonna be around for a long time, and I’m keeping my eye on that project. I expect that’s where the future will be. But not for a while.

But as soon as it’s good enough, I’ll be happy to migrate

[–] 01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Plex is more "enterprise" in its UI and some featuresets, but so are their payment tiers. I don't have many folks on my server, so paying for features that are free on jellyfin doesn't make sense for me. Not sure when the last time you tried it was, but they had a major update late last year that upgraded the experience significantly. My main issue is that a janky Minix miniPC sucks at serving videos lol I really need to upgrade to something from this decade (literally released in 2016).

[–] homes@piefed.world 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I’m running three different servers that service about 15 different users. And I’ve been running those servers for many many many years. And each of those servers have had lifetime passes since they were between 50 and $150. That was a long time ago.

I get where you’re coming from. If I were just starting out, and or if I just had myself to serve, I’d probably just be on jellyfin. And I fully support open source software (which Plex used to be), and I fully support an open source alternative to Plex. Remember, Plex used to be the open source alternative too… In fact, Plex was based on XBMC, the open source alternative to… Itself! So is kodi, so is Emby…

Plex is the project that made it to commercial success, but has, at this point, grown a bit beyond even what I want to do with it. But it’s just, currently, the best solution for my current needs. But jellyfin in its current state is about 10 years behind where Plex is today. I would switch to it in a second if it could meet my needs right now, but it just can’t. I know this, because I keep a very close eye on it, and I fiddle around with it from time to time. It just can’t do what I need to do. Not yet.

But the second i can, I’ll switch.

[–] justlemmyin@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

I have a 2013 macbook with MX Linux. Works great, but that's likely coz it's got an SSD?

And yes it has some ancient nvidia on it so there was some wayland drama with fedora 43, or whichever version didn't have x11 ootb.