Disclaimer: I would start with an “eWaste” computer from eBay, so I don’t lose my main machine.
As someone mentioned, Dell Optiplex is a popular option.
We expect a flood of them (and others) to hit secondary used markets soon as companies offload anything that cannot run Windows 11 with secure boot enabled.
Disclaimer aside, assuming the 12 year old Macboom Pro is the secondary machine, the usual guidance applies:
start with a distro that lets you test boot with a Live USB key.
when in doubt, try Linux Mint first.
We love to debate the merits of our favorite distros, but when I was just getting started, I quickly discovered that most of what I wanted to try out actually ran on any distro. The only thing that varried was how many commands I needed to set each thing up.
The link above lacks instructions for creating the Live USB from the Mac, but I believe “Disk Utility” has a “restore from ISO” function that can write the ISO file to a USB key.
Alternately, I recall liking UNetbootin. Scroll down a bit here if you prefer to skip the commnd line answers - there’s plenty of graphical tool options, too:
This is the real pro tip. “Debian packages are behind” but you can just clone the repo or download the .deb and get the latest version of the tool you want. I know there can be dependency issues but I haven’t run into any with the stuff I use.
Disclaimer: I would start with an “eWaste” computer from eBay, so I don’t lose my main machine.
As someone mentioned, Dell Optiplex is a popular option.
We expect a flood of them (and others) to hit secondary used markets soon as companies offload anything that cannot run Windows 11 with secure boot enabled.
Disclaimer aside, assuming the 12 year old Macboom Pro is the secondary machine, the usual guidance applies:
We love to debate the merits of our favorite distros, but when I was just getting started, I quickly discovered that most of what I wanted to try out actually ran on any distro. The only thing that varried was how many commands I needed to set each thing up.
I have a 2008 macbook that I could try this with?
Nice. I would start by testing it with a Live CD.
https://itsfoss.com/linux-mint-live-usb/
The link above lacks instructions for creating the Live USB from the Mac, but I believe “Disk Utility” has a “restore from ISO” function that can write the ISO file to a USB key.
Alternately, I recall liking UNetbootin. Scroll down a bit here if you prefer to skip the commnd line answers - there’s plenty of graphical tool options, too:
https://superuser.com/questions/63654/how-do-i-burn-an-iso-on-a-usb-drive-on-mac-os-x
This is the real pro tip. “Debian packages are behind” but you can just clone the repo or download the .deb and get the latest version of the tool you want. I know there can be dependency issues but I haven’t run into any with the stuff I use.