Installing raspberry pi os on old imacs.

[Brian Conway]

Hi all, 

My name is Brian Conway, I'm a secondary teacher of CS. 

I was wondering if anyone here used raspberry pi OS on older macs - 2011 machines in this case. Reduce, reuse, recycle and all that! 

Apologies for the basic nature of these 3 questions - but I'm very much a beginner in this area of operating systems. 

1) What I would be looking to do is download this OS system - make modifications to it then copy this modified system to a series of older machines. Is this possible in the first place?

2) Can you modify the OS to add extra software/update packages on programmes like thonny, then copy this to other machines?

3) Is it possible to create guest user accounts, like the ones that are on a mac where the desktop deletes all changes by the users when they log off. 

I don't expect people to know the specific answers but it would be good to know if my thinking is correct or not. Also anyone who could suggest where I could learn how to do this I'd be grateful 

Thanks for your time.

Brian 

[Chris Reina]

Hi Brian,

I can help you… we do this sort of thing all the time.

In a simple answer… Yes.

• You can run Raspbian Pi OS on a 2011 Mac - I have it running (from time to time) on a 2010 MacBook Pro.

• It is also relatively easy to add other software to the image and then deploy that.

• You can add multiple users to (almost) every OS that exists. (However, note that if you are a Google school - Chrome OS Flex may be a better option of an OS for you)

This is something we demo’ed at the recent CESI conference - we had Raspberry OS Desktop, Chrome OS Flex, Elementary OS, Linux Mint, Mac, Windows, etc… many of which were 10+ year old laptops.

Feel free to give me a ring if you like - my number is below. I recommend this option to make old machines viable for another few years. (Note that this should be mixed with installation of an SSD drive)

Many thanks,

Chris

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[Brian Conway]

Chris, 

Thanks very much. 

Mental week ahead but I'll get in touch in time. 

Great point about Google Flex since we are a google school. 

Brian 

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[Peadar Harvey]

Hi Brian,

I am running RPI 4's for the past few years as coding PCs and they work really well. I really like the simplicity of linux now. 

Currently setting up a PC room with 25 RPIs and 12 old desktops of various vintages :-) I have linux Mint running on all of them at the moment and it runs fine. Going to switch the old PCs to RPI Desktop soon though. I could have splashed out and gotten a few more RPI 400's to replace the old desktops but it seems wasteful. 

I am trying to get PiServer to run on the RPI's..... Not working at the moment but I am persisting. It looks like a great solution as it will do user logins, file storage and store a system image for me. 

One solution that I have to fall back on if the PiServer doesn't work out is simply booting off USBs..... Every student has their own USB and then backs up their files a lot. You could use this for guest logins. 

I had researched LTSP.... It could be useful to you. Link below. 

https://ltsp.org/

Le meas,

Peadar

Linux Terminal Server Project LTSP helps in netbooting LAN clients from a single template installation that resides in a virtual machine image or a chroot on the LTSP server, or the server root (/, chrootless). This way maintaining tens or hundreds of diskless clients is as easy as maintaining a single PC. ltsp.org

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From: cesi...@googlegroups.com <cesi...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Chris Reina <ch...@makermeet.ie>
Sent: 15 May 2023 16:47
To: CESI-list <cesi...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [CESI List] Installing raspberry pi os on old imacs.

 

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