The way I managed to get this working was by: Installing Mint 22 (which from my experience is just more stable and compliant to shenanigans), Running the Nvidia legacy driver patch (a tool that lets you force-install the older Nvidia drivers on newer kernels), and configuring the power-management features of the proprietary driver (i.e. telling it to always be used and in constant maximum performance mode, as by default it assumes a power balanced mode more useful for laptops that tends to be unstable on these newer kernels). Other than an occasional weird behavior where a single line of pixels on the right side of the screen rolls a bit (you'll see what I mean when it happens to you), it's been very stable. Highly recommend.
I solved my Nvidia problems with manually installing Nvidia driver version 470 in Linux. The automatic detection did not offer a proprietary driver, as version 390 is not compatible with Mint 22. I am using Mint 22 on my 2010 iMac 27", which has a patched GTX 780M, as my main machine. It also has dual boot with Sonoma using OpenCore. I don't have Steam installed, but Davinci Resolve works and that also requires the proprietary driver in Linux.
After trying, and failing to install Open Core and DosDude Catalina on a 2008 iMAC w/Intel Core Duo E8135@ 2.66GHz, 4Gb RAM and a Crucial SSD (actually DosDude's Catalina Patcher did install, but it refused to launch any internet browser), I installed Linux Mint 22 via DVD, after several failed USB attempts. It now runs very smoothly, although start up is a bit slow. Apple makes things ... "interesting".
They do it by blocking macos updates.. You need hacks to update the os's so you can run latest xcode and you have to have the latest to make builds for appstore. Quite annoying.
@@6StringPassion. Apple silicon sucks, everything is soldered on, and RAM/SSD prices are insane, 200€ price increase to go from 8GB to 16GB of RAM or 256GB to 512GB of storage... While my main PC that I have smokes the Apple M3 with performance and has 64GB of RAM and 1TB + 2TB + 2TB SSD for less than 1000€ LOL, including buying the monitor(it's a mini PC with a Ryzen 7 7840HS 8C/16T 5.1GHz), I also have a M1 Mac but I don't use it anymore, Apple is so greedy... that hasn't changed with Apple Silicon... Apple know they can charge a lot for less to give and people will still buy iphone and mac so why changing that ? The worst is that their M CPUs are fast but they waste everything on other things, like the GPU and their graphics API are dogshit and lacks a lot of features(geometry shaders etc.) that we have on the PC world with Vulkan... and I love macOS but yeah everything else sucks.
Microsoft mimics it with SSE4 or TPM 2.0 requirements in Windows 11... You can't use Ryzen 1 gen or Intel 6/7 gen even they are still powerful enough... In one year these PCs will be obsolete for no reason, when W10 reaches EOL...
@@tennickjestzajety69 Well... Look at it this way: Intel 6 gen retailed 9 years ago this month and Intel 7th retailed 7 years ago. Those processors are old. Ryzen 1 at 7 years old (but newer than 7th gen Intel) is old. Even my Ryzen 2600 system, at 6 years old is old. But old doesn't mean obsolete because you have Linux as long as you don't have apps/programs that mandate the use of Windows.
Was Minecraft running at full speed anyway without the proprietary drivers? I would have expected it to run fine on that GPU with default settings, unless the resolution was set too high. I still think he ought to drop down to 22.04 which still has support, and apparently has the driver's and kernel he needed. Trying to retrofit everything in 24.04 seems like it would be prone to breakage.
I have a 27" iMac with a Core i7 2700, which originally came from a recording studio. I used it in my office for a long time, then the graphics card failed (a known issue). In the meantime, I've installed an Nvidia Quadro, a modern Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card (from a 2014 MacBook), and two SSDs. With Open Core, I can boot into both Windows 11 and macOS Sonoma. However, I mostly just use it with Windows 11 now. It’s currently at my girlfriend's parents' place, in her old childhood bedroom, where we use it as a TV (27" is 27"^^). The old iMacs are still quite usable for everyday tasks, and you can even play some games on them - Fortnite even runs on it.
I have an old 27" iMac and one of the things that is good about this unit is that it uses MXM video cards. Even though most after-market cards are not immediately visible at POST, once the alternate OS is booted, they show up on screen fine. You might try this scenario if gaming is your goal and want to use older Mac hardware to do it.
2009-2011 unibody models have NOTORIOUSLY awful cooling though, so I would stay away from anything more intensive than Minecraft on them. A Mac Pro 5,1 would fare considerably better here, I own both and the stock Pro blows the iMac 27 out of the water.
I worked in a computer refurbishing place for a while and worked on a lot of these. This model is notorious for killing itself if you leave it on idle for a while make sure you set the fan profile to 40% or more on idle
Just installed EndeavourOS (Arch based Linux distro) on a ThinkPad T25 (25th Anniversary ThinkPad) that I got. Sadly, the batteries are pretty degraded, but I upgraded the RAM to 32 GB and the SSD to 4 TB (I didn't have an 8 TB SSD hanging around at the time and it's a PITA to upgrade the SSD inside its cage for this model). Sadly for some people, despite having a TPM 2.0 chip (because it was a ThinkPad) it still can't "officially" run Windows 11 because the CPU is a 7th gen Intel CPU, but given I don't use Windows anymore, that's fine by me! More Linux for me, especially given these things were hard to find! I had to pick it up from a person whose partner worked for IBM/Lenovo's ThinkPad division and went to the Japan R&D lab that they were made back in the day and it took YEARS to find it!
Huge recommendation for using Rufus to set up Windows 11. Removes the TPM requirement, and lets you change a few of the default settings (e.g. allowing you to use a local account).
I picked up one of these two years ago at a school auction for $140. Recently I attached an external USB SSD and installed OpenCore Legacy Patcher, then Monterey on it. It's now an excellent streaming machine especially because I was able to use an old Thunderbolt-DisplayPort cable for a second monitor.
@@ffwast Sounds like when I put PPC Fedora on a 5 year old iBook G4 years and years ago. It was still useless and slow, but it was useless and slow with Linux.
Thank you for crediting that background music. I've added it to my driving playlist. Linux on older Mac hardware has always been amazing. One of the early Linux/Mac distros called itself an Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove. So true.
As far as the Nvidia GPU goes, keep in mind Ubuntu defaults to Wayland instead of X11 these days, and Nvidia hasn't played well with Wayland until fairly recently with it's latest drivers. You may want to try with X11 instead.
If you are using wayland, the old nvidia drivers have no support for acceleration. Gnome had partial support for the old nvidia drivers protocol for a while. With the old nvidia drivers you are forced to use X, or nouveau (but if it goes well, with manual reclocking).
Inspirational as always! Thank you for making the point that "vintage mac" machines are still relevant. I'm making an effort to make Fedora 40 (KDE Plasma) work on a 10+ year old MBP, and thanks to you I don't feel alone!
I always find these 'obsolete' gear videos fascinating, just like watch or guitar restorations. Makes me sometimes wish I was a gamer, developer or power tech user!
I got a Mid-2011 iMac 21” for $44 at an estate sale. I installed Linux Mint, then Debian, then Ubuntu server, and finally put Arch on it. All of that was over the course of a month and a half, and now it’s starting to be more and more of a daily driver.
since he said that, nvidia has became the most valuable company in the world..... meanwhile a few years ago Linus had to leave Linux foundation for a while because of his behaviour
Ah ArtiClean, a true man of taste I see. I feel like you can gauge how long someone has been working on computers based on what they use to clean thermal paste with.
Just got a 21.5 iMac mid 2011 for less than 30$😊 Had just a defective hdd, so a cheap(free) SSD and 16Gb Ram and newest Linux Mint got me the Perfect workshop computer😊👌🏻
I recently bought an early 2013 MacBook Pro for $180 to run my home built cnc machine, I run 3d modeling software on it and adobe creative suite and anything else I need. All it needed was the anti-glare to be polished the rest of the way off. It’s actually become my go-to computer. Stock battery only goes about 1.5 hours, but it almost never leaves my cnc drawer.
To solve your Steam problems either use Proton 7, or Patch your current Proton Versions with the older Dxvk 1.10.3 and vkd3d 2.6 Versions. That‘s because old nvidia drivers (you can go up to 470 btw) do not support newer Vulkan Version required by later dxvk/vkd3d Versions. Works with all Proton Versions.
24.04 is not a great distro as of now... I have a few boxes for games and ai and general desktop... 24.04 has been more trouble than it is worth, I rolled back the gaming and ai box to 22.04 and let the newer distro bake a little bit more.
I also found 24.04 buggy for my nextcloud server I just built. So I reinstalled 22.04 and it's been very stable. The only issues I've had is with nextcloud itself but the OS has been great.
As a rule of thumb, I wait at least 6 months after the release before trying a new Linux distro (especially Ubuntu LTS), and 9 to 10 months before installing a new macOS version. I have been bitten over and over again by new Ubuntu and macOS versions, so no thanks. Well... Time to install Sonoma, I guess... For a new Windows version, if I used it at all, I would wait one year or two.
I've been trying to get the NVIDIA drivers to work on my MacBook Pro from 2009 for ages, so seeing your video makes me feel a bit better oddly. I love what you do, keep it up!
11:24 relatable, the 390 driver works however on ubuntu 22.04, only in the 6.2 kernel, so you have to install ubuntu 22.04.3, then upgrade it with 'sudo apt upgrade' but don't boot with the 6.5 kernel but the 6.2 kernel, then install the 390 driver and it will work
@@ActionRetro your scentbird CEO is also known for claiming hitler wasn't really such a bad guy after all. And some other weird stuff about aliens. Thats some stench that doesnt easily wash off.
I can't help but explode in laughter each time I see somebody blurring a thermal paste application. Looks like applying thermal paste is like welding two metal parts together : you never want anybody to comment on it on the Internet ! 😂😂😂
I have iMacs and powermacs in the basement of my graphics shop that former partners abandoned, a g3 iMac, several mint G5’s a 2004 white iMac, and many iMacs like this one in the video. But they’re all top-spec i7 machines that were maxed out.
@@marxisttheoryandlorenot really. You can swap it provide it has the correct physical socket, and the correct chipset notably the North bridge on the motherboard to correctly drive the PCI lanes and memory buses and with the correct fréquence ranges. In addition the bios must support that processor in it's allowed configurations, to propermy set voltages, frequences, and and layoute of ram banks and channel modes. If your motherboard was based on Intel, you don't have lot of choices as Intel changes the socket type very often, so upgrades are suite limited to a small family.
I have been trying to run this exact machine (without the upgrade) with Lubuntu. Even with that distro it is still a bit too slow. Thank you for the upgrade suggestion. I will give it a go.
I was able to install openSuse Tumbleweed with nVidia 470 on my 2012 MacBook Pro with GT650M. Performance wasn't that great with DXVK so I stuck with Windows 11 in the end which worked perfectly fine even with an outdated graphics driver.
We have one of the Nehelem based iMacs. Amazingly upgradable and damn usable if you throw 16 gigs of ram and a decent quad core (an i7-980). I actually kind of wish I'd thrown in a Xeon for the additional memory support. The main weakness is GPU support, but for the use it's getting the older HD-5000 series works perfectly well.
Old machines arent alwayse usless even in more modern times. Recently rebuilt a friends Phenom II with some updated used components on the cheap he dosent do any serious gaming but he uses it for a media center and just general Office type and internet use. (Phenom II x6 w/overclock (4.1GHz), 32GB RAM and a 2x 1TB SSDs, a wireless card, Radeon RX560 and a newer case. Mostly parts I had lying about, Garage sale and Ebay purchases. Handles 4K video smoothly and anything else non gaming on it. Running Linux Lite 64-bit.
I got a modern Linux distro (AntiX 23.1) to run on a 2001 Pentium III Dell Laptop with only 384 MB of RAM. Had to install an IDE SSD to make the boot process bearable, but it's surprisingly workable. Kernel 5.10, and LibreOffice works just fine.
I was raving about ubuntu 24.04 (I hadn't used it since '09 Karmic Koala) on my 2015 iMac but I looked closer at how Ubuntu packages there Sandbox Snaps and there's definitely some difference between Ubuntu Sandbox Snaps vs Flatpack Sandbox...
is there no mod kit for these flat iMacs that adds magnets for the display panel to keep it in place, like previous iMac models had? I find it a bit hard to believe that they wouldn't have come up with something like that if they're already selling replacement adhesive tapes tailored for these displays...
after you add the PPA, "sudo apt update" so it see the new packages in the newly added PPA, witch it cant see in its old list of packages, because it hasnt been updated to so the new list from the PPA you just added.
I got a Mac Mini from a friend about a year ago. I decided to try it with Linux Mint, and it is smoooth. Even able to play 720p@60 youtube videos, so it became my garage PC. My only complaint is that the original Wireless Keyboard and mouse do not connect, since it's not their home OS. They are disovered, but connection doesn't work. Otherwise these old apple devies are pretty and fully functional Linux PCs for cheap.
Try the new NVK Vulkan extension for Nouveau. Nouveau's lack of Vulkan is going to prevent lots of games running through Proton. Might not be in the Ubuntu repos yet.
Each time I see someone do the iMac screen removal, I wonder why they don't place some tape along the bottom temporarily to keep it from falling while disconnecting the cable?🙄
Using Arch if you use the linux-lts kernel while running the archinstall script everything will work correctly as this uses the 6.6 kernel you were trying to use here and is still fully supported. Be careful when choosing your desktop environment as wayland does not work at all on cards older than the 900 series.
Oh and also be careful while using the archinstall script itself, it gives you the option to use proprietary nvidia drivers but these will install the latest 560 drivers instead of the 390 you need for this old card. You need the 380xx-dkms modules off AUR. Or you can use a 3rd party tool like nvidia-all from frogging family. Make sure you manually install the linux-lts-headers package or nvidia-all will retrieve and use the regular linux-headers package and build against 6.10 which will fail silently.
I have one of these! 21.5” I used my old MacBook Pro SSD adapter with a Samsung 950 512GB kept the 1TB as extra storage. Currently using open core legacy with Monterrey. I didn’t know these CPUs were socketed! If I can upgrade this on the cheap…
Regarding the Nvidia drivers, you probably have to use Nvidia-DKMS. This builds the nvidia driver for your current kernel version. It's the default on Arch for example, because their kernels are usually way newer than the one Nvidia intended you to use.
One could, in a VM use SteamOS/Proxmox Gpu passtthrough. This way you setup once, and add to multiple devices. Even a G5 with Qemu, (or your dedicated Haiku box), etc. Less headache, not at the mercy of whatever idiosyncrasy a given OS has.
How much was the new cpu? I love the way linux mint runs on this late 2015. Looking to upgrade the ram and the processor on it. I cant seem to find anything less than $100 on ebay
Definitely try installing a version of Ubuntu that naturally comes woth the right kernel and has the right deivers on their repository. It soinds like 22.04 is a better bet.
You may give Manjaro (or something in the lines of arch) a try. There you can install old kernels out of the box. I just don't know abozt old nvidia drivers.
You can get much better performance from nouveau (though still no vulkan support) on these cards if you use a tool to manually change the power state of the nvidia card as the foss driver is not able to do it automatically unlike the proprietary one - look up nouveau reclocking
Arch linux does cointain an aur package that compiles and installs nvidia-390 against rather more recent kernels, mb running the linux-lts(6.6) package on it is gonna be great on it, who knows. This driver 💯 requires xorg tho, no cap.
my neighbor has a 2012 imac with ubuntu on it i would install ubuntu on my 2009 imac but for some reason it doesnt work with the gpu very well and splits the picture into 4 smaller ones
I had issues with UEFI on my 2010 Mac Pro server when I had a Mac flashed PC GTX 680 in it. Legacy worked fine, but UEFI under Windows or Linux would cause a black screen when installing the NVIDIA drivers. I switched to an RX 570 in the end and it's been fine. It's worth trying to see if you can install Ubuntu in Legacy mode via rEFInd or something and see if that helps.
oof installing the steam snap package was a mistake, it's notoriously broken to the point that valve recommends against using the snap package, despite that ubuntu keeps pushing it
@ActionRetro i think you can make nvidia drivers work if you look at arch's aur as there are old nvidia drivers. In the packages there are usually patches and applying them on uncompressed stock nvidia drivers should make them work on newer kernels.
im on an i7-3770 right now, and i have been for a long time now, it's worked fine for me, no adobe apps its a minor inconvenience, but i dont care works for what i do ram: 24gb ddr3 gpu: gtx 970 4gb gddr5
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Day 2 Of Asking For A Fedora Video.
Smell of burnt stuff (jk)
I love the constant roasting of Tim Cook every time you mention Apple claiming this machine is totally obsolete.
It's well deserved, yes ^^
censored thermal paste application is the best part of these videos
It's actually SO amazing, lmao!
Nice way to deal with comments about him not applying the paste the way the commenter deems "correct". 🤔
At least it's not swastic :D :D :D
@@haxidenti6001 I thought about it
I laugh every time.
The way I managed to get this working was by: Installing Mint 22 (which from my experience is just more stable and compliant to shenanigans), Running the Nvidia legacy driver patch (a tool that lets you force-install the older Nvidia drivers on newer kernels), and configuring the power-management features of the proprietary driver (i.e. telling it to always be used and in constant maximum performance mode, as by default it assumes a power balanced mode more useful for laptops that tends to be unstable on these newer kernels). Other than an occasional weird behavior where a single line of pixels on the right side of the screen rolls a bit (you'll see what I mean when it happens to you), it's been very stable. Highly recommend.
I solved my Nvidia problems with manually installing Nvidia driver version 470 in Linux. The automatic detection did not offer a proprietary driver, as version 390 is not compatible with Mint 22. I am using Mint 22 on my 2010 iMac 27", which has a patched GTX 780M, as my main machine. It also has dual boot with Sonoma using OpenCore. I don't have Steam installed, but Davinci Resolve works and that also requires the proprietary driver in Linux.
@@andreasascherl2018 Always fun to tinker with this old stuff :)
After trying, and failing to install Open Core and DosDude Catalina on a 2008 iMAC w/Intel Core Duo E8135@ 2.66GHz, 4Gb RAM and a Crucial SSD (actually DosDude's Catalina Patcher did install, but it refused to launch any internet browser), I installed Linux Mint 22 via DVD, after several failed USB attempts. It now runs very smoothly, although start up is a bit slow. Apple makes things ... "interesting".
Not sure if this is relevant but Chrome has issues under the Catalina patcher. Have you tried Firefox?
Apple's highly-skilled accountants made damn sure they put a stop to this kind of product longevity a few years ago.
They do it by blocking macos updates.. You need hacks to update the os's so you can run latest xcode and you have to have the latest to make builds for appstore. Quite annoying.
@@lassikinnunen Yep. But Apple Silicon changed everything.
@@6StringPassion. Apple silicon sucks, everything is soldered on, and RAM/SSD prices are insane, 200€ price increase to go from 8GB to 16GB of RAM or 256GB to 512GB of storage... While my main PC that I have smokes the Apple M3 with performance and has 64GB of RAM and 1TB + 2TB + 2TB SSD for less than 1000€ LOL, including buying the monitor(it's a mini PC with a Ryzen 7 7840HS 8C/16T 5.1GHz), I also have a M1 Mac but I don't use it anymore, Apple is so greedy... that hasn't changed with Apple Silicon... Apple know they can charge a lot for less to give and people will still buy iphone and mac so why changing that ? The worst is that their M CPUs are fast but they waste everything on other things, like the GPU and their graphics API are dogshit and lacks a lot of features(geometry shaders etc.) that we have on the PC world with Vulkan... and I love macOS but yeah everything else sucks.
Microsoft mimics it with SSE4 or TPM 2.0 requirements in Windows 11... You can't use Ryzen 1 gen or Intel 6/7 gen even they are still powerful enough... In one year these PCs will be obsolete for no reason, when W10 reaches EOL...
@@tennickjestzajety69 Well... Look at it this way: Intel 6 gen retailed 9 years ago this month and Intel 7th retailed 7 years ago. Those processors are old. Ryzen 1 at 7 years old (but newer than 7th gen Intel) is old. Even my Ryzen 2600 system, at 6 years old is old. But old doesn't mean obsolete because you have Linux as long as you don't have apps/programs that mandate the use of Windows.
Don't forget Sodium, Lithium, Optifine and other performance increasing mods for Minecraft! You can get a much more playable experience with it.
I don't want sodium or lithium in my laptop
@@Pleyer7575lol you might not want to hear this but check your battery.
@@Pleyer7575lolI produce my own sodium chloride when gaming
@@justminibanana9128 *opens up laptop* AAH
Was Minecraft running at full speed anyway without the proprietary drivers? I would have expected it to run fine on that GPU with default settings, unless the resolution was set too high.
I still think he ought to drop down to 22.04 which still has support, and apparently has the driver's and kernel he needed.
Trying to retrofit everything in 24.04 seems like it would be prone to breakage.
I have a 27" iMac with a Core i7 2700, which originally came from a recording studio. I used it in my office for a long time, then the graphics card failed (a known issue). In the meantime, I've installed an Nvidia Quadro, a modern Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card (from a 2014 MacBook), and two SSDs. With Open Core, I can boot into both Windows 11 and macOS Sonoma. However, I mostly just use it with Windows 11 now. It’s currently at my girlfriend's parents' place, in her old childhood bedroom, where we use it as a TV (27" is 27"^^). The old iMacs are still quite usable for everyday tasks, and you can even play some games on them - Fortnite even runs on it.
I have an old 27" iMac and one of the things that is good about this unit is that it uses MXM video cards. Even though most after-market cards are not immediately visible at POST, once the alternate OS is booted, they show up on screen fine. You might try this scenario if gaming is your goal and want to use older Mac hardware to do it.
2009-2011 unibody models have NOTORIOUSLY awful cooling though, so I would stay away from anything more intensive than Minecraft on them. A Mac Pro 5,1 would fare considerably better here, I own both and the stock Pro blows the iMac 27 out of the water.
I worked in a computer refurbishing place for a while and worked on a lot of these. This model is notorious for killing itself if you leave it on idle for a while make sure you set the fan profile to 40% or more on idle
Just installed EndeavourOS (Arch based Linux distro) on a ThinkPad T25 (25th Anniversary ThinkPad) that I got. Sadly, the batteries are pretty degraded, but I upgraded the RAM to 32 GB and the SSD to 4 TB (I didn't have an 8 TB SSD hanging around at the time and it's a PITA to upgrade the SSD inside its cage for this model). Sadly for some people, despite having a TPM 2.0 chip (because it was a ThinkPad) it still can't "officially" run Windows 11 because the CPU is a 7th gen Intel CPU, but given I don't use Windows anymore, that's fine by me! More Linux for me, especially given these things were hard to find! I had to pick it up from a person whose partner worked for IBM/Lenovo's ThinkPad division and went to the Japan R&D lab that they were made back in the day and it took YEARS to find it!
If necessary, give Tiny11 a try to slap win11 on that thang
Huge recommendation for using Rufus to set up Windows 11. Removes the TPM requirement, and lets you change a few of the default settings (e.g. allowing you to use a local account).
Another Thinkpad rightfully converted to Linux :)
I used Mint Xfce to breathe new life into my sister's late 2012 iMac. It's a dedicated streaming machine and does it perfectly well.
I picked up one of these two years ago at a school auction for $140. Recently I attached an external USB SSD and installed OpenCore Legacy Patcher, then Monterey on it. It's now an excellent streaming machine especially because I was able to use an old Thunderbolt-DisplayPort cable for a second monitor.
I tried out the same on a 2012 macbook my buddy was going to scrap. It's still scrap but now it runs mint.
@@ffwast Sounds like when I put PPC Fedora on a 5 year old iBook G4 years and years ago. It was still useless and slow, but it was useless and slow with Linux.
@@spazzypengin Oh it does light stuff like web browsing fine,it's just been run over.
I worked for the Apple affiliate Jump+ here in Canada in the repair department and these were the bane of my existence. They did look good tho.
Thanks!
helll yeah, love seeing your videos uploaded withing seconds of looking for them, highlight of my morning
You should try Debian 12, it has Nvidia legacy driver 340 and 390.
The 3770 is shockingly usable in 2024. I have one in my daughter's gaming pc paired with an RX580 and it handles everything we throw at it.
Thank you for crediting that background music. I've added it to my driving playlist.
Linux on older Mac hardware has always been amazing. One of the early Linux/Mac distros called itself an Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove. So true.
i am surprised no one has made magnet achieve for the imac. so you can remove the glass anytime when you want. be strong enough to hold it in place.
Quite a lot of success for an action retro video - that’s was funny.
As far as the Nvidia GPU goes, keep in mind Ubuntu defaults to Wayland instead of X11 these days, and Nvidia hasn't played well with Wayland until fairly recently with it's latest drivers. You may want to try with X11 instead.
If you are using wayland, the old nvidia drivers have no support for acceleration.
Gnome had partial support for the old nvidia drivers protocol for a while.
With the old nvidia drivers you are forced to use X, or nouveau (but if it goes well, with manual reclocking).
This is one of the issues with pre Radeon macs, the nvidia video support craps out after a bit.
Have you tried to use Open Indiana on anything lately?
I wasn’t prepared for that Dave Plummer jumpscare at the end lol
Good to know he likes watching Action Retro as well :)
my heart almost stop for a second at 2:17
Inspirational as always! Thank you for making the point that "vintage mac" machines are still relevant. I'm making an effort to make Fedora 40 (KDE Plasma) work on a 10+ year old MBP, and thanks to you I don't feel alone!
I always find these 'obsolete' gear videos fascinating, just like watch or guitar restorations. Makes me sometimes wish I was a gamer, developer or power tech user!
You know I'll stay subbed forever, Sean! Great video!
I got a Mid-2011 iMac 21” for $44 at an estate sale. I installed Linux Mint, then Debian, then Ubuntu server, and finally put Arch on it. All of that was over the course of a month and a half, and now it’s starting to be more and more of a daily driver.
fun fact: there's currently a work-in-progress revamp of the nouveau driver on the Mesa end, which apparently already has notably good performance
As Linus once said, "FUCK YOU NVIDIA!!!"
Linus referred to amd
worst GPU manufacturer in terms of driver support, even mid-2000s ATi was better than todays Nvidia...
@@tennickjestzajety69 but I’m fan of amd in my own opinion
since he said that, nvidia has became the most valuable company in the world..... meanwhile a few years ago Linus had to leave Linux foundation for a while because of his behaviour
2012? That's basically new!
It's also basically the same specs as my ThinkPad T430, which I love.
Ah ArtiClean, a true man of taste I see. I feel like you can gauge how long someone has been working on computers based on what they use to clean thermal paste with.
Just got a 21.5 iMac mid 2011 for less than 30$😊
Had just a defective hdd, so a cheap(free) SSD and 16Gb Ram and newest Linux Mint got me the Perfect workshop computer😊👌🏻
I recently bought an early 2013 MacBook Pro for $180 to run my home built cnc machine, I run 3d modeling software on it and adobe creative suite and anything else I need. All it needed was the anti-glare to be polished the rest of the way off. It’s actually become my go-to computer. Stock battery only goes about 1.5 hours, but it almost never leaves my cnc drawer.
Always love your NSFW thermal compound applies.
That's a unique way to say it
My brother, you compiled the 390 driver for the 6.8 kernel. 14:00 Did you try compiling after booting from the older kernel?
To solve your Steam problems either use Proton 7, or Patch your current Proton Versions with the older Dxvk 1.10.3 and vkd3d 2.6 Versions. That‘s because old nvidia drivers (you can go up to 470 btw) do not support newer Vulkan Version required by later dxvk/vkd3d Versions. Works with all Proton Versions.
24.04 is not a great distro as of now... I have a few boxes for games and ai and general desktop... 24.04 has been more trouble than it is worth, I rolled back the gaming and ai box to 22.04 and let the newer distro bake a little bit more.
I also found 24.04 buggy for my nextcloud server I just built. So I reinstalled 22.04 and it's been very stable. The only issues I've had is with nextcloud itself but the OS has been great.
As a rule of thumb, I wait at least 6 months after the release before trying a new Linux distro (especially Ubuntu LTS), and 9 to 10 months before installing a new macOS version. I have been bitten over and over again by new Ubuntu and macOS versions, so no thanks. Well... Time to install Sonoma, I guess... For a new Windows version, if I used it at all, I would wait one year or two.
Great video, good for people to see that the Ubuntu 24.04 is not the correct choice for this machine.
I'm watching this on a 2011 iMac 12,2 running Sonoma.
Dude, seriously thanks for showing me those web browser settings, I was getting frustrated with mine until this video
I've been trying to get the NVIDIA drivers to work on my MacBook Pro from 2009 for ages, so seeing your video makes me feel a bit better oddly. I love what you do, keep it up!
11:24 relatable, the 390 driver works however on ubuntu 22.04, only in the 6.2 kernel, so you have to install ubuntu 22.04.3, then upgrade it with 'sudo apt upgrade' but don't boot with the 6.5 kernel but the 6.2 kernel, then install the 390 driver and it will work
gotta admit, came here for the imac, stayed for the sponsored slot.
😂
The pleasing odor is half the point!
@@ActionRetro your scentbird CEO is also known for claiming hitler wasn't really such a bad guy after all. And some other weird stuff about aliens. Thats some stench that doesnt easily wash off.
I can't help but explode in laughter each time I see somebody blurring a thermal paste application. Looks like applying thermal paste is like welding two metal parts together : you never want anybody to comment on it on the Internet ! 😂😂😂
love seeing those ancient ArtiClean bottles, my set is nearly 20 years old
I have iMacs and powermacs in the basement of my graphics shop that former partners abandoned, a g3 iMac, several mint G5’s a 2004 white iMac, and many iMacs like this one in the video. But they’re all top-spec i7 machines that were maxed out.
Pro tip, try btop I.s.o. htop. And next to hyfetch try cpufech.
It's funny that you're posting this because I just got one of these off of Facebook marketplace as well, only 20 dollars!
EXCUSE ME? YOU CAN SWAP THE CPU ON THESE? Man, grandma gonna get some upgrades, ssd is the priority, but you know, 16gb and i7 could be of some use...
If you're brave enough you can swap the CPU on anything
Please be very careful with the screen, they seem easy to crack
@@marxisttheoryandlorenot really. You can swap it provide it has the correct physical socket, and the correct chipset notably the North bridge on the motherboard to correctly drive the PCI lanes and memory buses and with the correct fréquence ranges. In addition the bios must support that processor in it's allowed configurations, to propermy set voltages, frequences, and and layoute of ram banks and channel modes.
If your motherboard was based on Intel, you don't have lot of choices as Intel changes the socket type very often, so upgrades are suite limited to a small family.
Just be dosdude1 and swap soldered CPUs
@@pawtail real
Ironically the KDE neon install you wiped was based on the more stable and usable version of Ubuntu than what you installed. Still fun to watch!
Not a fan of Ubuntu, but I am sure it would be lovely with mint! Great video thanks!
thanks for making this HELPFUL video!
would love you see you try and mess with the new NVK drivers and see if that works, most likely wont but would be a fun watch
I have been trying to run this exact machine (without the upgrade) with Lubuntu. Even with that distro it is still a bit too slow. Thank you for the upgrade suggestion. I will give it a go.
Ergh I have the 2015 model and the CPU is soldered in place. Any recommendation are welcome.
You could try simply installing Ubuntu 22.04 instead and installing the proprietary Nvidia driver with that.
I both love and hate that you blur the thermal paste application as a bit. I want to see it!
I was able to install openSuse Tumbleweed with nVidia 470 on my 2012 MacBook Pro with GT650M. Performance wasn't that great with DXVK so I stuck with Windows 11 in the end which worked perfectly fine even with an outdated graphics driver.
We have one of the Nehelem based iMacs. Amazingly upgradable and damn usable if you throw 16 gigs of ram and a decent quad core (an i7-980). I actually kind of wish I'd thrown in a Xeon for the additional memory support. The main weakness is GPU support, but for the use it's getting the older HD-5000 series works perfectly well.
Old machines arent alwayse usless even in more modern times.
Recently rebuilt a friends Phenom II with some updated used components on the cheap he dosent do any serious gaming but he uses it for a media center and just general Office type and internet use. (Phenom II x6 w/overclock (4.1GHz), 32GB RAM and a 2x 1TB SSDs, a wireless card, Radeon RX560 and a newer case.
Mostly parts I had lying about, Garage sale and Ebay purchases.
Handles 4K video smoothly and anything else non gaming on it. Running Linux Lite 64-bit.
Ubuntu. It just works
- Todd Howard
F*CK Nvidia!
-Linus Torvalds
"Ubuntu, it just works!"
Minutes later..
After some hacking... "
😀
I got a modern Linux distro (AntiX 23.1) to run on a 2001 Pentium III Dell Laptop with only 384 MB of RAM. Had to install an IDE SSD to make the boot process bearable, but it's surprisingly workable. Kernel 5.10, and LibreOffice works just fine.
I was raving about ubuntu 24.04 (I hadn't used it since '09 Karmic Koala) on my 2015 iMac but I looked closer at how Ubuntu packages there Sandbox Snaps and there's definitely some difference between Ubuntu Sandbox Snaps vs Flatpack Sandbox...
4:09 OMG you put so much you had to censor it! LOL!
9:21 does it really changes something? Nvidia doesn't support vaapi.
I would give Ubuntu 22.04 a shot on this hardware. Sometimes, latest isn't the best, especially on older systems.
8:40 that is just every modern distro ever, not just ubuntu
is there no mod kit for these flat iMacs that adds magnets for the display panel to keep it in place, like previous iMac models had? I find it a bit hard to believe that they wouldn't have come up with something like that if they're already selling replacement adhesive tapes tailored for these displays...
That zoom in on "unrelenting stench!" cracked me up. 😂
This is a great computer for programming ❤❤
after you add the PPA, "sudo apt update" so it see the new packages in the newly added PPA, witch it cant see in its old list of packages, because it hasnt been updated to so the new list from the PPA you just added.
omg using a dollar store ice cube tray for storing screws is incredibly smart
This computer is perfectly useable for basic tasks. To put it in perspective, it would be like using a Power Macintosh 6400 in the year 2012.
I got a Mac Mini from a friend about a year ago. I decided to try it with Linux Mint, and it is smoooth. Even able to play 720p@60 youtube videos, so it became my garage PC. My only complaint is that the original Wireless Keyboard and mouse do not connect, since it's not their home OS. They are disovered, but connection doesn't work. Otherwise these old apple devies are pretty and fully functional Linux PCs for cheap.
Try the new NVK Vulkan extension for Nouveau. Nouveau's lack of Vulkan is going to prevent lots of games running through Proton. Might not be in the Ubuntu repos yet.
Each time I see someone do the iMac screen removal, I wonder why they don't place some tape along the bottom temporarily to keep it from falling while disconnecting the cable?🙄
Using Arch if you use the linux-lts kernel while running the archinstall script everything will work correctly as this uses the 6.6 kernel you were trying to use here and is still fully supported. Be careful when choosing your desktop environment as wayland does not work at all on cards older than the 900 series.
Oh and also be careful while using the archinstall script itself, it gives you the option to use proprietary nvidia drivers but these will install the latest 560 drivers instead of the 390 you need for this old card. You need the 380xx-dkms modules off AUR. Or you can use a 3rd party tool like nvidia-all from frogging family. Make sure you manually install the linux-lts-headers package or nvidia-all will retrieve and use the regular linux-headers package and build against 6.10 which will fail silently.
I have one of these! 21.5” I used my old MacBook Pro SSD adapter with a Samsung 950 512GB kept the 1TB as extra storage. Currently using open core legacy with Monterrey. I didn’t know these CPUs were socketed! If I can upgrade this on the cheap…
Really nice!
Regarding the Nvidia drivers, you probably have to use Nvidia-DKMS. This builds the nvidia driver for your current kernel version. It's the default on Arch for example, because their kernels are usually way newer than the one Nvidia intended you to use.
Okay and I looked into this for 3 Minutes, Action Retro is right, the DKMS package for the 390 driver seems to be unmaintained. Rip.
oh dear Sean you nearly borked the screen! you are supposed to take it off lying it down on the desk
Is this a newer generation i7 than the i5 that was originally in there? If so, I'd say the speed gains would be minimal.
One could, in a VM use SteamOS/Proxmox Gpu passtthrough. This way you setup once, and add to multiple devices. Even a G5 with Qemu, (or your dedicated Haiku box), etc. Less headache, not at the mercy of whatever idiosyncrasy a given OS has.
How much was the new cpu? I love the way linux mint runs on this late 2015. Looking to upgrade the ram and the processor on it. I cant seem to find anything less than $100 on ebay
Definitely try installing a version of Ubuntu that naturally comes woth the right kernel and has the right deivers on their repository. It soinds like 22.04 is a better bet.
yeah, issue with nvidia here was, that you have to switch the greeter (gdm3 / lightdm) also to X11
Would Chimera OS solve the issue?
14:19 At the GRUB menu, straight up booting it, and by it, haha, let's just say, my imanc
You may give Manjaro (or something in the lines of arch) a try. There you can install old kernels out of the box. I just don't know abozt old nvidia drivers.
I have an older pc which wouldn’t get w11 so I switched to Ubuntu and with an ssd and 16gb upgrade ram it’s like a new machine
These are my kind of videos
You can get much better performance from nouveau (though still no vulkan support) on these cards if you use a tool to manually change the power state of the nvidia card as the foss driver is not able to do it automatically unlike the proprietary one - look up nouveau reclocking
I found a 2009 older iMac for... 30 $. It runs... without any problems!
Nice channel, I like this type of videos
2:45 Hey, why are there screws in my ice cubes?
Arch linux does cointain an aur package that compiles and installs nvidia-390 against rather more recent kernels, mb running the linux-lts(6.6) package on it is gonna be great on it, who knows.
This driver 💯 requires xorg tho, no cap.
my neighbor has a 2012 imac with ubuntu on it
i would install ubuntu on my 2009 imac but for some reason it doesnt work with the gpu very well and splits the picture into 4 smaller ones
I had issues with UEFI on my 2010 Mac Pro server when I had a Mac flashed PC GTX 680 in it. Legacy worked fine, but UEFI under Windows or Linux would cause a black screen when installing the NVIDIA drivers. I switched to an RX 570 in the end and it's been fine.
It's worth trying to see if you can install Ubuntu in Legacy mode via rEFInd or something and see if that helps.
oof installing the steam snap package was a mistake, it's notoriously broken to the point that valve recommends against using the snap package, despite that ubuntu keeps pushing it
@ActionRetro i think you can make nvidia drivers work if you look at arch's aur as there are old nvidia drivers. In the packages there are usually patches and applying them on uncompressed stock nvidia drivers should make them work on newer kernels.
im on an i7-3770 right now, and i have been for a long time now, it's worked fine for me, no adobe apps its a minor inconvenience, but i dont care
works for what i do
ram: 24gb ddr3
gpu: gtx 970 4gb gddr5