I was recently given a second 20″ iMac 2007 to go along with the first. They’re beautiful machines, but Apple doesn’t want me to keep using it, so they’re making all their software not work on it anymore. So I’ve been wondering how they’d do as Linux machines.
Apparently, it isn’t very easy to get an old iMac to boot a Linux system. I don’t think I have a Firewire cable, much less a HDD enclosure with a Firewire interface.
Some time ago, we bought three HP laptops. One had a failure we were never able to resolve, and another was replaced by an ASUS desktop. The last was decommissioned back in January. So I decided to try installing the most recent Ubuntu 18.04LTS on one of them. Here’s my notes from the process.
First, re-read this explanation of UEFI Secure Boot and Windows.
turn the ISO into a bootable USB stick
boot it up and answer lots of questions
wait while everything gets installed
then install Dropbox and Google Chrome
$ apt install ssh # to get the OpenSSH server
$ ssh some-machine # then copy any data not in Dropbox
$ apt install telegram-desktop
$ apt install gnome-tweak-tool # to enable permanent workspaces
$ apt install colordiff antiword jhead csvtool ffe poppler-utils
$ apt install sqlite3 sqlite3-pcre
$ apt install git curl libreadline-dev
$ apt install vim vim-gtk
$ apt install build-essential
$ apt install libssl-dev zlib1g-dev
$ cd ; git clone git://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv.git .rbenv
$ rbenv -l # to find what version to install
$ rbenv install 2.5.1 # or whatever