Question is title.

In the past I’ve installed many distros on many older PCs, but never used linux properly (although slowly moving over to avoid win11). I’ve also had a heap of history with windows installs.

A family member has been testing Mint on an old laptop and is going well. This is a trial run before I update their iMac laptop (not sure what one but no longer supposed by OS updates).

I’ve never booted to an iMac BIOS or installed over top of apple.

  • Is this going to be like installing over windows?
  • What issues can I expect?
  • Should I consider another distro?

Asking here as searching results in AI bullshit websites.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
    1·
    2 months ago

    Sounds like definitely Intel. Macs have EFI (Extensible Firmware Interface) rather than BIOS. Attach the install media and hold Option when powering up. This will take you to the EFI boot loader, where you should see icons for each potential startup disk. Select the Linux installer and hit Return or click the button to advance.

    I don’t know which distros have the best support for different generations of Apple hardware. You should be able to get some sense of whether the distro is a good candidate from observing whether the mouse and kbd are functional before you commit to the install.