Chris Mackie

Apple Mac appreciation

In contrast to my other post, I have had some positive experience using Apple computers recently…

I decided to set up a small, low-power server in one of our offices at AdvoCard.  It’s not our main server (that’s a PowerMac G5 on the other site), it simply has to serve files to an office comprising eight PCs and one printer.

I hit upon the idea of using an old Apple Mac Mini G4.  As I say, they are small, quiet, have low power consumption, and can be picked up cheaply on Ebay.  Debian GNU/Linux is an available distribution which is still supports the PowerPC processor (unlike Apple itself, which stopped supporting PowerPC on its last but one release of OS X (10.5 – Leopard) – see rant.

There’s even a site dedicated to this kind of set-up:

http://sowerbutts.com/linux-mac-mini/

I set up the server 50 days ago and according to the logs on the system, it’s been running smoothly ever since.  Here’s to the next 500 days!