I have an old iMac that I am planning to install some flavor of Linux on and while I was looking at various distros it occurred to me that it might be a good exercise to install Gentoo on it. Other than a separate machine for documentation and downloading the necessary packages, what else should I have set up to try this? Has anyone installed Gentoo on a Mac before? If so, what concerns are there related to things like Apple’s implementation of EFI?
Please log what you do? Please?
I’ve got an older iMac intel and mulling what to use now that it is no longer getting updates
Will do!
You’ll need to be a bit more specific about the iMac. What year is it?
If it’s pre-2017, I’d expect some difficulty with the WiFi. If it’s newer, you might have luck with https://wiki.t2linux.org/distributions/gentoo/installation/ . I haven’t followed that guide, so YMMV.
It’s a 2015 Retina 27”.
I’m fine rocking Ethernet for the purposes of this experiment.
Go for it then! Gentoo is a blast (if you enjoy this sort of thing) and is surprisingly stable once you get it set up.
One tip, before I forget, is to save your firmware from MacOS before wiping the drive. Unfortunately I don’t remember where it’s located, and no longer have access to try and find it 😅
You can easily add Wifi with a USB dongle anyway. Hardly a hurdle.
I had been a Gentoo user for a couple of years on MacBook Pro. I can say only this: it takes a lot of time, don’t do it. Rather: go out with family, have a beer or two.
You don’t need a separate machine to read documentation on. You can install gentoo from any live USB. I used mint, for example, so I could have the handbook open at the same time.
Worth pointing out that Gentoo also maintains a live USB that runs KDE Plasma.
I’d also add a build machine to the setup. Building a modern desktop system on such a machine would take days.
I say go for it. I’ve been using it for about 2 years, and I no longer feel like distro-hopping (not sure if you fall into that category of Linux user), because it’s not opinionated about how it’s meant to be used. It gives you all the tools (and foot-guns) to do whatever you want with your computer.
You don’t need separate computers for a local mirror and/or build server to run Gentoo, I’ve never done that. I’ve never owned a Mac, so I can’t really offer any tips hardware-wise, but use a live USB of a distro that you’re already familiar with, so you can refer to the handbook as you go. The people on Gentoo’s IRC channel & forums are very helpful if you come against any roadblocks.
It does take a while, not gonna gloss over that. Once you have it installed, there are very few issues that would require a full re-install. Portage is an awesome package manager, the language of its warnings/errors took some time to wrap my brain around, but it’s very verbose in describing what’s going on.
Gentoo is really great if you want to learn a lot about Linux really fast. Back when I still used it, the documentation was second to none.