Trisquel working on Mac mini 2014
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I have a 2014 Mac mini for which Apple does not provide macOS "upgrade" anymore.
It has a mobile Haswell processor and 8GB of memory, unfortunately soldered on the mainboard.
One SATA3 port and an additional PCIe port for Apple's custom SSDs, but it's not difficult to find *unofficial* adaptors so that you can use the standard nvme SSDs.
(Unfortunately again, it's limited to Gen2 x2, so you won't make full use of modern SSDs.)
I decided to "migrate" my older Core 2 Quad desktop PC (which had been already running Trisquel) to the Mac mini. The configuration on the older machine was indeed obsolete - legacy BIOS and thus MBR partitions, SATA2 in IDE mode, no more than 4GB of memory recognized etc.
Now? The migration worked nicely and the Mac mini is now a chic machine running a free OS! MacOS stays on the SATA SSD while Trisquel has been installed on the nvme drive. Interestingly, Apple's UEFI boots Trisquel, not macOS! Presumably it attempts to boot from nvme first but Apple doesn't let users set boot orders ;)
Except the Broadcom WiFi card, everything works just fine - Bluetooth, sound, integrated graphics etc. With a USB WiFi adaptor from Tehnoetic, I can still stay connected to the internet.
Apple or its fans might think the 2014 Mac mini is obsolete. In the free software world, it's still a pretty nice machine.
> With a USB WiFi adaptor from Tehnoetic, I can still stay connected to the internet.
You got scammed.
Other than that, congrats on your freed machine.
> Interestingly, Apple's UEFI boots Trisquel, not macOS! Presumably it attempts to boot from nvme first but Apple doesn't let users set boot orders ;)
Update: After booting macOS manually (pressing Alt key) I accidentally set 'Macintosh HD' as the startup disk and this was never revertible!! From the next time the Mac would automatically boot macOS. As far as I know Apple recognizes either 'Macintosh HD' or Windows installed using the BootCamp utility only, and all other disks (e.g. Trisquel) are not even visible in the settings. Resetting NVRAM (Super+Alt+P+R) didn't resolve this problem, so I just manually booted Trisquel and wiped out the disk where macOS was installed on. This made the boot manager to boot Trisquel automatically, but it took much longer time than before, probably Apple's UEFI was attempting to look for the 'Macintosh HD' disk. I reset the NVRAM again and now it boots Trisquel correctly. The only difference is that the startup chime bell is now gone.
Another update: using efibootmgr everything has been resolved, the Mac startup chime is back as well. Editing boot entries works just as on any modern PC with UEFI.
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