Resurrecting an old Mac Mini

For fans of old computers, this might be mildly interesting. I put Linux on my 2010-era Mac Mini, and it works well. I stopped using this computer about five years ago, because Apple and others had added enough bloat to make it annoyingly slow. The latest version of OSX Apple will let me put on the machine is Yosemite, which Apple stopped supporting maybe a year ago, so OSX is now slow and insecure. I did manage to preserve OSX on a small partition, just in case that has some marginal utility in the future.

Anyway, with OSX the computer was basically unusable, but with Linux it's OK. The computer has a hard disk (not an SSD), and both booting and launching are a little slow, but Linux performs much, much better than OSX. I haven't tried anything really resource-intensive, like Android Studio, but for casual use it's perfectly adequate.

Indeed, this computer has become the thing I hook up to my TV set to watch Apple TV. Apple TV isn't available for Yosemite anymore, but Apple TV on Chromium with this old Mac Mini booted under Linux works fine. Somehow, I don't think this is what Apple intended I do :-)

My five year old wireless mouse doesn't work directly on the ten year old computer, because Bluetooth changed during that time, but somehow I managed not to lose the little USB radio that came with the mouse. My old wireless travel keyboard uses the older Bluetooth protocol, so between the two, I don't even need to get off the couch.

Using my new M1 silicon Mac Mini isn't a serious option for Apple TV, since I like to watch TV on a TV in my living room, not on a monitor in my den. The computer came with a free year of Apple TV; the only annoying part now is that every once in a while (maybe once a month?) it does two-factor authentication, which forces me to walk over to the den to get a six-digit code off of that computer.

In about five years, when crappy software makes my new computer slow again, I assume Linux will work well on M1 silicon. It’s the circle of life.