I am going to be replacing my OSX on my 2009 iMac with Elementary OS 5.0 Juno perhaps this weekend. I will be gathering notes on how this can be accomplished for those of you who would like to know how to install a modern fully functional OS that can breath new life into your hardware that Apple has left behind. I had installed Linux Mint (I forget which version) on this same iMac 2009 before to see what that was like. I had installed it in a dual boot method because at that time the OSX which is Sierra was still fully supported. If you have an older iMac or MacBook of MacBook Pro and Apple hasn't left it behind, unless you are a hard core Linux enthusiast you will likely not want to replace OSX just yet. But for those of you that are not yet ready to throw out your old hardware, this thread is for you. Since then Apple has moved on to two newer versions of OSX High Sierra and now Mojave. Some things to note up front. There may be an issue with your wifi card. So far in the past I have solved this by connecting to a wired connection and updating my Linux wifi driver, so I expect this to continue to be a thing. There might be an issue with setting up GRUB-2 where you have to boot back to your live version and run this fix https://www.howtogeek.com/114884/how-to-repair-grub2-when-ubuntu-wont-boot/ . Be mindful where you install GRUB it should be on the same storage device as your Linux install.
For starters I plan to put Elementary OS 5.0 Juno on a thumb drive and take the OS for a spin in a live boot mode. Elementary OS 5.0 Juno like previous versions of Elementary OS are compatible with both Intel based Mac products as well as machines that typically run Windows. But it has a lot of the feel of OSX whereas most Linux distros feel more like a cousin to Windows. Trying a Linux distro on your machine from a thumb live using a live copy should have no effect on your locally installed OSX..... unless while in it you make a drastic series of choices. So feel free to test drive, and if you are a novice as it pertains to dual booting OS's then just don't make choices that would modify your host computer and all will be well.
Personally I am of the mindset that Linux is a better environment that either Apple or Microsoft put out simply because of the portability of it. The fact that you can use the same system on such a variety of hardware effectively. The biggest draw back have to do with persons feeling strongly dependent on specific software products produced by either company, and in a few cases online industry pushing us to use proprietary products that are not available cross platform. But his is becoming less and less of an issue as time moves on. For example compatibility issues that had to do with things like Flash player, Java, or Shockwave now matter less as things move towards HTML5.
And to be clear I don't see a point to keeping Sierra as an option any longer as there have been so many issues with it, now that it is not very supported, that I see it as a waste of hard drive space.
So if anyone is following along I will post updates to this Forum as I go through this experience.
Disclaimer I am an experienced Sys admin with a healthy stack of industry standard certifications to include Linux +. Some of the things I am going to be talking about are likely to be out of your comfort zone if you are not experienced in things like setting up new operating system instances onto blank hardware.
For starters I plan to put Elementary OS 5.0 Juno on a thumb drive and take the OS for a spin in a live boot mode. Elementary OS 5.0 Juno like previous versions of Elementary OS are compatible with both Intel based Mac products as well as machines that typically run Windows. But it has a lot of the feel of OSX whereas most Linux distros feel more like a cousin to Windows. Trying a Linux distro on your machine from a thumb live using a live copy should have no effect on your locally installed OSX..... unless while in it you make a drastic series of choices. So feel free to test drive, and if you are a novice as it pertains to dual booting OS's then just don't make choices that would modify your host computer and all will be well.
Personally I am of the mindset that Linux is a better environment that either Apple or Microsoft put out simply because of the portability of it. The fact that you can use the same system on such a variety of hardware effectively. The biggest draw back have to do with persons feeling strongly dependent on specific software products produced by either company, and in a few cases online industry pushing us to use proprietary products that are not available cross platform. But his is becoming less and less of an issue as time moves on. For example compatibility issues that had to do with things like Flash player, Java, or Shockwave now matter less as things move towards HTML5.
And to be clear I don't see a point to keeping Sierra as an option any longer as there have been so many issues with it, now that it is not very supported, that I see it as a waste of hard drive space.
So if anyone is following along I will post updates to this Forum as I go through this experience.
Disclaimer I am an experienced Sys admin with a healthy stack of industry standard certifications to include Linux +. Some of the things I am going to be talking about are likely to be out of your comfort zone if you are not experienced in things like setting up new operating system instances onto blank hardware.
