iMac 2017 - New Life

[spacelordmaster]

So a friend of mine unfortunately passed away some time ago and his wife gifted me his 2017 iMac with Intel i5 Dual Core. Unfortunately, the machine has a 5400 HDD, which is very slow and installing OS Ventura - the last OS it supports - was a nightmare. The machine was extremely, and I mean, extremely slow, so installing the latest Mac OS version would be impossible in such old hardware. I may be able to install it but it would run slow, so instead of MacOS, I went with Linux Mint's latest version. Since these iMac's are so hard to upgrade due to being sealed, I put a super fast external USB SSD on it then installed Linux Mint. I have to tell you, this thing is flying like a jet. The Mac just came back to life. Everything works like a charm. It has 8GB of RAM which is more than enough. I partitioned the slow Mac internal drive and use it as a backup for stuff. 

Love Linux Mint. That's all I gotta say!

 

[Nick H. Supervisor]

There's really no two ways about it: Linux rocks for older hardware. Yes it comes with its issues, but for keeping older hardware alive? No contest.

And Linux Mint is a solid distribution. Regular updates - including security - and it does 90% of what people normally use their computer for.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Go for it, buddy! Yeah, Mint is great for older hardware.

[darkz]

Afaik they were all quad-core in 2017, weren't they?
Anyway, find a shop brave enough to cut out the display(and trustworthy to assemble it all together working), or use atleast an external SSD, it's worth it in every way. And RAM, Linux or MacOS, can't have too much of that, I guess.