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Can a Cheap Mac Mini Out-Pi a Raspberry Pi 4?
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- Опубликовано: 4 сен 2024
- Thanks PCBWay.com - Now that the Mac Yak PowerPC Challenge is over, it's time to take our community Minecraft server off of the loud and power-hungry PowerMac G5 tower and on to a machine that's a little more reasonable.
Is a 12 year old 2ghz Mac Mini up for the challenge? Or, is a new Raspberry Pi 4 actually a stronger computer now?
Let's install Debian Linux on these two machines, pit them head-to-head with some benchmarks, and transplant our server into a new home!
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#MacMini #RaspberryPi #Minecraft
The Geekbench score was 2x higher on the Raspberry because it has 2x cores, and a Minecraft server is a single core task. Basically a Mac Mini might be a better option if you only want to run a Minecraft server, but Raspberry can run more tasks at the same time so yeah
Minecraft servers nowadays use multi-core for chunk generation and loading, so the couple extra cores would help prevent lag spikes when people move around or log in!
Looked like the Pi had way higher FP performance. I think that would translate to Minecraft as well.
@@seshpenguin They really dont actually on vanilla Minecraft. That's why 2b2t for example is using an overclocked i9 so the server is somewhat playable.
@@Piipperi800 Vanilla 1.13 and above does, but PaperSpigot implemented it for some older versions too (though in the case of ActionMC) it doesn't matter since its such an old version.
@@seshpenguin I don't think Spigot does that multicore thing by default unless you have multiple worlds. Also, 1.13 and above suck for servers anyway so those are out of the question here
Great video!
Two or Three years ago a co-worker rescued two surplussed mac mini's at work and I installed Xubuntu 18.04 on one and Lubuntu 18.04 on the other.
We still use them for productivity. We use one for iridium satellite transmission testing and the other for random equipment testing.
I love to see people squeeze more juice out of older tech!
Nice! Me too!
Hi - i in 2015 i purchased a fair few @2005-2007 early core2duo apple macs / minis and imacs from a school, i cleaned them out and changed the thermal paste
Installed 10.6 snow leopard on all of them and they ran great, as most people wanted modern broswer and good youtube playback i used refind to multiboot and installed linux mint ( the current version at the time possibly 17 )
Result is very cheap computers under $100 Australian, very stable and dual boot, they should run another 10 years, 1 sold about 4 or5 of them and gave away to family and friends 4 or 5, i just have 1 x imac and 1 x macbook, the imac runs 24/7 as a local file server for movies and music
Regards
George
I'm still using an iBook G4 as my daily driver laptop. I'm typing on it right now!
Also, the raspberry pi 4’s Ethernet is gigabit, not 100 megabit like the raspberry pi 3. Maybe start a separate server to test it and see how it works
well, I tried it and the cpu does not have enough performance and absolutely dies when generating chunks.
The Pi4 has fake gigabit ethernet. No idea why, maybe because it runs over USB, but it is hot as heck, and not delivering the expected speed, at best half a gig. The Mini does offer full blown gigabit with full duplex, jumbo frames and all.
I'm still amazed at how cheap you got that mac mini for.
Over here in France they are still worth 100s of €
At this rate, you might be better off buying an actual used server. It's not going to be the most powerful thing in hte universe, but my old Dell server from 2012 is still great for messing arround and I haven't had any issues running a minecraft server off of it, though I think it has never seen more than 5 people at a time...
@@user-le8ul4nr5t x58 is great dude, I just got a server for 230€, double xeon, 24gb of ram, fantastic!
In the US, the majority of Macs are cheaper because there are so many of them over there. Here, I can sell a 2009 Mac Pro with an NVME SSD for almost £1000 whereas I’d get the equivalent of about £600-£700 in the US.
@@pietrocavicchioli6128 x79 and x99 are pretty cool too since they can take xeon e5's which are decently cheap right now.
@@user-le8ul4nr5t the main reason for taking the minecaft server off the G5 was power consumption.
While a vintage sever is ‘better’ hardware, a Mac mini or a raspberry Pi is much more power efficient.
ProTip: A putty knife makes a great spudger for these minis with clipitis.
The mini case was designed by sadists. Keep your putty knife and patience handy during reassembly.
Plastic putty knife can't stress that enough
Wtf are you chatting
So I hosted a minecraft server using an old macbook air with broken screen and it's really capable.
that's not a bad idea actually 👍
@@goeland4585 yea, and I installed Manjaro in it (some says it's unstable lol) and have been running 24/7 for months
How did you set it up with a broken screen?
@@FuzekiXD external monitor lol
@@pnnytx 👍
Yeah, I wouldn't use a box cutter like that anymore. I've seen some nasty accidents involving box cutters in the past. Guitar picks are too thick and so are metal spudgers. I like to fix game consoles, especially the PlayStation 3. When I "de-lid" the CPU and GPU so change the thermal paste under the integrated heat spreaders, I use painters knives. They're very thin and have a nice wooden handle. They're thin enough to slip in under the IHS to cut the adhesive without damaging the chip's substrate. They're also perfect for popping those plastic clips when disassembling stuff. You can get a cheap set for $12 on Amazon.
Thank you! I'm going to pick up one of those
Old Chromeboxes are also great for this purpose. You just need to remove the write protect screw, install custom coreboot firmware from Mr. Chromebox in developer mode, and then install a linux distro of choice
I have actually tried both Mojave and Catalina on my 09' Mac Mini through the "Unsupported Mac" patches by Dosdude and it works surprisingly well for its age! It being a small device that can run as far back as Snow Leopard for the PPC and older Intel support, having Windows XP compatibility, and it being able to unofficially run versions of Mac as recent as Catalina (and Big Sur without GPU acceleration) for the more recent apps was something that I thought was really neat and a big reason as to why I snagged one last year!
I run all macs on 10.14, including the newer ones with official Ventura support. Still the best OSX ever.
Apples to apples? More like raspberries to apples!
This is why I should never work on a farm! 😂
Maybe even Apples to Acorns...
omg i was not expecting the pi to be basically double the benchmark score, wow!! we have come so far with silicon it’s insane
Yet it is dickless when it comes to usability. Somehow OSX is so much smoother at half the raw processor power. The Mini on Mojave is a very easy to use and well performing machine capable of very broad tasks. The Pi not so much.
I mean, you don't need the SD Card. The Pi 4 supports both USB booting, and PXE booting.
Dude thanks for being so consistent in dropping these Saturday morning vids. Really makes my weekend looking forward to them
Where has your channel been all my life. This is all my JAM right here.
Hahaha thanks Dave!
Something to keep in mind is that up until recently (1.14+) minecraft's server was extremely single threaded and still is to a lesser degree so when running minecraft servers it's usually more about single core performance than number of cores available since barring world generation on newer versions everything still runs on a single thread.
Anyway, love the content keep up the good work!
You need a spudger tool. I got 2 out of a cheap kit on Amazon. They look like Guitar picks but have tapered edges. Sorry you got me triggered using a box cutter.
Too thick, I tried a spudger and the plastic just bent so I ended up using a spreading knife. Whatever gets the job done.
I learned a lot about linux trying to install new Linux software on an old Dell laptop. It was more annoying than I thought it would be but it does teach you a lot.
What a coincidence....just today I pulled out my 2009 Mac mini, cleaned it and I'm now watching this on it :)
Now I'm tempted to subscribe to that magazine. Not that I need to, but if they are throwing in free DVDs then it might be worth the nostalgia.
You're still technically paying for the DVD since it costs more than a normal magazine, but it's still the easiest possible way to dip your feet into Linux since it also includes a load of utilities and games on the disc ready to run, no need to dig around a software repository or install them permanently.
Maybe see about getting a hold of a modern POWER architecture system and seeing if you can get Minecraft going there. :p
Try using a metal paint scraper! They are fairly wide and can get down in there without really messing up the aluminum!
This video would have came in handy awhile ago! I got one of these in a trade for a Watch I don't use anymore. I eventually gave up on trying and failing Linux and just installed Windows. It now resides on my desk all pretty-like living as my new Emulation Station, which it does wonderfully. Not to mention, the nostalgia of getting to revisit Win 7 on period-accurate hardware, All in a small corner of my desk!
I run a Mini on Linux Mint Debian Edition 4 as a home music library server. Everything worked, out of the box, apart from having to add the wifi driver after the install. It'easy, because the option is given in a graphical window after install. Check the option and install the driver. And it can dual boot to OS X if desired.
The 2009 Mac mini will fly on 10.15 Using the DosDude patcher and an SSD, just saying :)
14:50 - ok, I didn't expect that!
Did this a year ago. Debian Buster, two SSDs, etc. and a Minecraft server patched with PaperMC using a setup script originally designed for use with a RasPi 4. Set it for 7000MB of RAM allowed to be used, text mode only, and you're set. but I was running 1.14/15/16, not anything older. Last September I set up a Wyse 5020 DX0Q thin client with a AMD G-series quadcore embedded APU and never looked back. cut the power usage down to a third and it's more than powerful enough to run a PaperMC-patched Minecraft 1.16.x server, my website, and even a Half Life 2 Deathmatch server instance with a bunch of custom maps.
While it's still single-channel for the RAM, it's much faster than the Core 2 in the Mac Mini, and the fact I can use up to 32GB of DDR3 (which would be silly) is a game-changer for me. Add in that it has SATA III and USB3 onboard, and I'm sold. Did I also mention it does all this but is fanless? meaning you can REALLY shove it anywhere you want, and so long as you redo the thermal compound, it shouldn't ever overheat, it sticks around 46-53C depending on how hard you're pushing it.
You could probably get Big Sur onto that Mac mini with the BenSova patcher. You’d have to get Catalina on it first with the dosdude patcher, but I’ve had Big Sur running on an iMac of the same age. I know it’s probably not suitable for this project and wouldn’t be particularly fast, but it’s perfectly possible👍
Have you had luck getting big sur on older macs? I got catalina running on my 4,1 cheesegrater, but every time I try to get big sur using the big mac patcher on it gets stuck in a boot loop.
Where is the fun in replacing a G5 with a C2D mac mini? Its freakin cold out, I thought you would appreciate having a nice space heater in your house! :).
😂
I used to work at a place where I was admin over 650 macs. The official Apple tool to open those mini's is basically just a thin putty knife. Just a few bucks at the hardware store. Works great!
Oh nice thanks for the tip!
To make that minecraft server easier to manage, install MineOS. it is available as a docker image or as a turnkey iso. Once installed, it will create a web interface for management allowing you to run the mac mini headless (without a monitor attached). MineOS also has some nice features like auto backups, and general user friendliness. The turnkey version runs over-top of Debian without installing a desktop environment, this would create less overhead and no driver issues for the mac mini. I highly recommend especially for resource limited servers, like the mac mini.
Anyway, thank you for the great content.
Oh nice thanks for this!
Holy cow! I did the same thing with the same Mac Mini back in 2013, running on linux to be a minecraft server! Although, I ended up buying it for $100 from a co-worker. Anyhow, I had the same problem with the video and came to the same solution back in the day, but unfortunately there was very little on the internet as to why I'd get a black screen. I spent about two weeks debugging the issue, and found that when grub and the OS ask the bios/efi for supported resolutions, the Mac returns with absolutely nothing. This leads to a black screen, as no supported mode, no visuals. It make sense, considering Mac OS already knows what resolutions are supported due to the restricted hardware set. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
I mean, as a project or opportunity to tinker, use what you have! If you don't have any old computers lying around, then hardware like this could be an excellent opportunity to mess with things, especially after some research, but Raspberry Pi is definitely more beginner friendly, given the sheer amount of documentation available, and the fact that they were designed from the ground up with education in mind!
What are the comparative power draws while running the respective servers? That could be another consideration, especially if you live in an area with higher energy costs.
Raspberry Pi 4 by itself uses maybe 15W max, usually 5W or less, especially if you run it headless with nothing plugged into it
Very interesting duel! Raspberry Pi’s are nifty, but I’ll take an old Mac Mini any day.
Hah me too
The pi 4 actually has full speed gigabit eithernet so aside from the mac mini having an Intel chipset for the mac mini there is zero difference actually given the cpu the mac mini might be slower. I also think trying to run a minecraft server on like a tablet would be interesting, but not mac relevant unless you could maybe jailbreak a ipad pro 2 or higher and then some how install the server there.
Oh thanks for that!
@@ActionRetro The gigabit in the Pi is weird: 1) it does not match the Mini speed, 2) the controller gets to pancade baking temperatures. Also on the Mac you have SATA 3, not the best from a modern perspective, but it is superior to USB drives on the Pi, not to mention the performance of the micro-SD card. And you can even go RAID0 with 2 SSD's.
On should also note that for $99 you could get a refurb mini desktop (Dell, HP, Lenovo...) usually with 3rd Gen Core Pentium and 8gb ram.
‘Apples to apples’ or ‘Apples to arms’? 😂😂😂
I was thinking the same thing the other day when I was trying to fix up an old Core 2 Duo laptop into a cheap retro gaming/media box... yeah, I could spend $100 to max out the RAM and storage and processor and put in a USB 3.0 ExpressCard so transferring files isn't such a hassle... but a Raspberry Pi does all the stuff I want this thing to do, and it's faster, has native HDMI, doesn't spin its fans up like a Harrier jet when under load, and uses way less power... it's amazing how much technology has advanced in the last 15 years.
If I'm reading this correctly, the P7350 Core 2 Duo gets a passmark score of 707. The BCM2711 gets a score of 809. Just wait a few months and the late 2009 mac mini with the P8700 core 2 duo chip gets a passmark score of 956! Also, comparing geekbench 4 scores puts the Pi4 & Core 2 Duo processors in a much closer race. Of course it's all too easy to get hung up on these simple benchmarks and the true value might be somewhere else entirely.
Pi has; lower power consumption, usb-3 (much more useful), more cores, bluetooth, smaller form factor, reliable price, modern codec support for video playback, DDR4 vs DDR2. I'd go with the pi every time.
I've been running a 1.16 server using PaperMC on my Raspberry Pi 4B with 4 GB of RAM. It runs pretty smoothly surprisingly.
Oh yeah, we've been doing to same on a Pi 4 4GB for our family and friends Minecraft server. How many people do you have on yours at a given time?
@@ActionRetro We have just under 30 players, with the peak players online being around 20.
I never knew there was a 2.0 Entry level 2009 mini. I always see them 2,26Ghz or 2,53Ghz. Today the 2,26 is like 25€, and I don't mind it being a little slower than a Pi. OSX is just smooth as heck. Try 4K montage on the Raspberry Pi. The Mini 2009 will just do that with FCP. I'm also amazed that it can still pull off HEVC 1080p decodes. Sure the Pi has more modern video decode instructions, but hey this is a all-in-one package at 1/4th the price. If you do match the Pi pricepoint, nowadays you get a 2012 2,3 ghz quadcore i7 for the price of a complete 4GB Pi package, and that destroys Pi performance, and has very nice idle/load power use.
In order to push this to the limit: download the Batocera Image for Macs and write it to a stick. Then boot from that and then install this on the SSD. Then reboot with Gparted-CD and shrink the SHARE partition to a reasonable size.
After that boot an Linux install DVD (Ubuntu, PopOS, Mint .. you name it!). When installing, choose "Try something different" and create a EFI, Swap and Root partition manually and then install Linux on it.
After finishing Linux install, reboot with the rEFInd CD and install rEFInd onto the system.
And voila: you got an elegant Linux and Batocera dualboot machine ready for work and retrogaming.
It would be interesting to see how the Mac mini runs sustained under load.
Great. The only thing that drives it nuts is when the 9400M goes full speed.
I wince looking at Sean opening this thing with a box knife. One of my most beloved iFixit tools is the Jimmy, which is exactly what you need for this. I've also got cheaper flat tools, but the Jimmy is so nice to use…
(They don't pay me. They did send me one of their tool kits at some point, but I've bought most others.)
Honestly having played around with the Pi 4 (I have 2, 4 & 8GB models) extensively, it is quite usable for daily tasks. RUclips still lags a bit every now and then (few frames in 1000), with a decent case (Like the Argon One M.2 or FLIRC) it's totally silent and usable as is. The only thing I'm a bit bummed about is the GPU performance and the Pi 4's hardware acceleration is spotty it times.
But since Flash is being dropped and Java applet usage is going down consistently, it's only getting better for daily usage, since the new technologies are usually already embedded into Chromium or Firefox.
The biggest issue I have with the Pi for daily use is that services like Spotify won't be able to run, unless you manually insert in Chrome OS libraries to enable the DRM support. With x86, you can easily run most services fine since the DRM packages are included with those builds. Chromebooks use Chrome OS, basically linux on x86 with a skin, so I'm quite puzzled why it ARM variants aren't getting it by default.
Apple music runs in firefox ESR! just thought it was interesting when I found out I could use it on the pi
The raspberry Pi 4 score is basically 2x higher than the Mac mini. And what does the Pi 4 have twice more than the Mac mini? The number of CPU core, and that's part of the reason why.
What's the single core score?
Also geekbench is not necessarily great to compare system with different instruction set and real use cases...
Very true. I don't recall there being a quad 'Core 2' Mac Mini. In this instance, the Pi also has half the RAM, but it does have two USB 3 ports and uses a fraction of the power that the Mac Mini draws. It costs peanuts, comes with a warranty, is one fifth the size and has lots of interesting DIY projects available. But I still want a Mac Mini to go with my G4 and dual G5 Powermacs. 😁
If you buy an SSD from somewhere like Crucial, they come with a spacer to make installation into a Mini much simpler.
There are inexpensive adapters that will let you swap out that CD drive for another SSD. They were made originally for older laptops with CD drives. Less than $20 online.
Haha I still have an early 2009 Mini in use, with 8GB RAM + 500 GB SSD . At 60 bucks is a bargain.
putty knifes work well to open a mac mini
So would the difference in scores be that it is a quad core, verses a dual core. But isn't the Pi optimized and the mini is not. I also wonder if it helps that the connections are so much closer for each item, (memory, etc) as I heard that unless the leads are a certain idea length the memory speed is cut in half. As it is the Mini has DDR2 ram, the Pi has DR4. A core 2 duo is very slow compared to Quad core and you even overclocked it. My thought is why can a board not be make that is just like the Pi, but with a M1 chip or even an A14 chip to be used in the community like the pi. It would have a lot of uses.
The Mini also draws about 5 times the current... 110W vs the pi's typical 15-20W. Capable or not, and that's a concern, too. Increasing the cost by $70 a year in Oregon for 788.4 kWH difference. Your emphasis on cost fails when the first year's savings on electricity for the Pi exceeds the cost difference for hardware.
Makes sense!
That is nonsense. The Mini does 15-20W in typical use, for example when doing a HEVC DVB-T playback in 1080p. NEVER look at the power rating on a power supply. Same with CRT's. I've tubes that say they can go up to 200W, but that is at full brightness with a full white image. In reality they do 40-50W. And there is something going for Apple PSU's, they are the best in the industry. Especially if you take a 2012 mini, they idle at 10W from the socket, where Pi power use is usually measured at the 5V level.
I installed POP!OS onto a MacBook Pro 2013 and it was not fun - but it was a learning experience. Love this video - I had one of the earlier 1G Mac Minis and it was a lot of fun to mess with.
I'm not really surprised that the mac mini ran the minecraft server just fine. For a while I've used my old Lenovo G550 laptop from about 2009, with extremely similar specs (a Core 2 Duo T6600 @ 2.2 GHz) as a host for a minecraft server for me and my friends to play on.
Hey, I know that is out of scope for the video, but you can really have any application in the PI on distros like Gentoo or Slackware where you can compile the binaries. It would also be possible to install Chicago95 in Xfce4 there. Is not as logical as the classic look, but sure it's going to confuse a ton of people!
You should have just installed Ubuntu Server as the GUI eats up a lot of CPU and RAM. I'm a 26 year IT Admin and did that very thing to run a Minecraft server for students. Otherwise great video.
Try running a minecraft server on a Mac Pro 5,1. Mine is a fantastic machine👍
No idea if there's even Java available or where you'd even acquire a machine from but I reckon a Minecraft server on an Intel Itanium or Sun SPARC machine would be a pretty funny (but probably expensive) complete waste of time... :P
While the Mini isn't as fast a compelling feature of the Mini is the support for Apple Remote. They can be had for less that 20 and many Minis even come with them.
1st Gen Mac Mini OS Limits:
G4+DDR1 (Single Slot; Desktop Size)+IDE (2.5"): Leopard
Intel Core (Solo Or Duo; 32-bit)+DDR2 (Dual Slot; Laptop Size)+SATA (2.5"): Snow Leopard
Intel Core 2 (Duo Only; 64-bit)+DDR2 (Dual Slot; Laptop Size)+SATA (2.5"): Lion
Intel Core 2 (Duo; 64-bit)+DDR3 (Dual Slot: Laptop Size)+SATA (2.5"; Single Or Dual): El Capitan
2nd Gen Mac Mini OS Limits:
Intel Core 2 (Duo; 64-bit)+DDR3 (Dual Slot: Laptop Size)+SATA (2.5"; Single Or Dual): High Sierra
Intel Core (2nd Gen; I5 Or I7; Dual Core; 64-bit)+DDR3 (Dual Slot: Laptop Size)+SATA (2.5"; Single Or Dual): High Sierra
Intel Core (3rd Gen; I5 Or I7; Dual Or Quad Core)+DDR3 (Dual Slot: Laptop Size)+SATA (2.5"; Single Or Dual): Catalina
Intel Core (4th Gen; I5 Or I7; Dual Core Only)+DDR3 (Soldered)+SATA (2.5"; Single Only): Monterey
Hi, just registered for access to the server! Long time follower, first time commenting. Love old macs and own quite a few including a B&W G3 converted to Yikes G4!
Thanks man!
Run the server on an old netbook, I would love to see that!
Those atoms really don't have any power whatsoever
My NetBurst xeon has more power than useless atom ñ27p
@@virtualtools_3021 woah there were xeons in the netburst architecture? I see my old xeon collection is incomplete after all >:)
I'm surprised Linux format is still a thing and it does even exist in the USA, as fasr as I remember PC format has been around and it was I think a German magazine translated to all the other languages (I mean some software on the bundles discs would still be in german, mostly the ones they actually made themselves)
16:00 except if you live in the EU - the used Apple Screens Here are so expensive while you can get an old TV cheaply
Wouldn't the Pi also be more energy efficient? :)
Yea 30 watt max
@@EfficientTrout 7 watts, for the Pi 4
The next thing that'll happen is that he'll start water cooling a Mac Mini and begin to overclock his router
🤣
I use a mac mini hooked up to my TV and I am able to play a lot of different video game systems on it. Mines a 2.4ghz Duo Core, 8gb ram, 128gb SSD and this thing is awesome. Better than the PI, but ya gotta make sure the thing has good air flow or these minis can run slow. I just put a CD case under it and problem was solved.
Also be careful with the wifi antennas !!
I Run BATOCERA like a Champ on Multiple Mid-2011's & Late 2012's!
The pcbway link in the description has a typo and isn't working. At least on a pc on the chrome browser.
Oh thanks!
Good for you, installing your own packages on base Debian. I too like stable operating systems.
I had no problem putting linux mint 19.1 on a 2009 macbook pro. software update there is a section for additional drivers which linux handles within it self. When my macbook pro boots I get an nvidia screen. I needed broadband wifi drivers so it was connected to the ethernet.
i absolutely love that theme on the mac mini
I have been curious if somehow we could get better optimization for Minecraft. There's surely some more things that can be done to optimize it. I'm no Java expert but considering that modern versions of Minecraft having more modern Optifine features as well as the Fabric mod Sodium getting some users over the 1000FPS mark now, I wonder if optimizations are still possible for PPC Minecraft.
I love the Mac mini G4s. Some may want to stay away from Leopard and use Tiger due to the ATI Radeon 9200's lack of Core Image support, but I'm running Leopard and OS 9 (unsupported, patch from MacOS9Lives) right now. These machines can also be overclocked by removing/soldering a few resistors on the logic board. My 1.42GHz mini is currently at 1.5, and I've seen some get as far as 1.83.
Core2Duo is a dual core. Pi4 is a quadcore. Spot the difference? Double the numbers ? Sounds about right.
Current quad core vs 12 year old dual core? 12 years is a LONG time and I'm more surprised how close it was. Basically the difference between having 2 vs 4 cores rather than arm vs x86.
I do love getting more use out of old tech like this. Reminds me I have one of those in a box next to me not doing anything...
It likely has to do with the videocard bios. It has to support a uefi host. I've had many videocards that would just refuse to work at all. The last one I had that I can remember was the Fury X. I had to update the bios on the card to support uefi because I needed it for vfio. The video card bios is, in many ways, a lot like an option rom. There's a world of difference using something like an Adaptec 71605 raid card in bios mode vs uefi mode.
As a long time Linux user these days I just avoid Nvidia GPUs and systems with integrated Nvidia chipsets, and go for AMD, and Intel, as they are well supported in the latest 5.x kernel updates with the open source kernel modules(drivers) being coded by teams at AMD, and Intel themselves, and I usually have few issues except some old AMD APUs end up with screen tearing on MATE DE, but it was a simple google search for the fix. here is the link for anyone who needs it.
learnubuntumate.weebly.com/screen-tearing-on-amd-graphics.html (just replace Intel in the link for the fix for intel, and it will work on Manjaro Mate, and Arch based distros with Mate).
run the minecraft server on a sun workstation :)
I would love to see more mac vs pi 4 (preferably 8gb) content
I was looking into getting a mac mini recently and saw the $699 price tag for the M1 and thought 'Hey I can afford that!'... but then I realised I was on the American Apple site and it was actually $1100 Australian! Hopes shattered I bought an upgraded Mac mini from 2011 for $300 Australian (about $200 US) postage included. It's still in the mail. I bought an 8 gb raspberry pi 4 for about $200 Australian earlier this year.
Great theme for XFCE. What's the name of the wallpaper?, thanks.
You should try running a Minecraft server on a 486 or Pentium I machine!
I've run a Rapberry Pi 1.16.5 server for me and 7 other people before on the Pi 4 4gb model, and it worked perfectly. If anyone wants to know, I used the Balena OS method to make the server, and there were no hitches aside from me having to mess with my router settings to get it to work, it should work well with any new or MC version as long as you have the correct .jar. I'd highly recommend a Pi 4 for that use case, though if you decide to go down that route, get some good cooling for the Pi, as a stock Pi 4 runs fairly hot.
RPi OS use LXDE.
Twister OS, which is based from RPi OS uses XFCE.
First-time viewer here and I really enjoyed this! When you upgraded the hard drive on the Mini, I didn’t see you replace the thermal sensor cable. Just curious if that was overlooked, not necessary, or just got edited out of video.
Ah yes I did replace it off camera :)
I believe I did vote for the Pi but that's a bigger difference than I expected. I thought they would be closer.
Gotta consider the power consumption too -- while the Mini is going to be lower than the G5, I imagine the Pi will be even less.
Maybe an iMac g3 (maybe even with a custom case shell that's Minecraft themed?)
If the Pi already outperforms it, why not just use it as the server? I would think the Pi has the lowest power requirements, and it certainly has less space requirements. Neat stuff tho, I'm loving everything about "just doing it" haha!
Wow, when I had one of the original G4 Mini (back when it first came out) the best-known way of opening them up was by grinding down a putty knife or doing weird things with rubber bands and paper clips. If I’d know all it took was a box cutter I’d have been a lot happier maintaining mine.
I believe they simplified the situation with the first Intel revision, and this was even a later one with miniDP, which were slightly easier again. NB this is just going from vague memories of how-to and mod diary videos from 2008-2011, but I distinctly remember mentions of the G4s being the hardest. The part about it getting slightly easier as Intel revisions went-along could just be the community getting more experienced with it though. But there were still twice as many guitar picks shoved-in at weird angles than seen here - perhaps this has been opened before and made more pliable!
I run a Pixelmon server on my 2,1 Mac Mmi, it works really well
Maybe Host a minecraft server on a emac or a xserve
Pop_OS is designed for more modern computers, so even if it did work I wouldn't recommend it for anything older than 10 years old. It even struggles a teeny bit on my 2020 laptop (though, it's nowhere close to as bloated and laggy as windows 10)
Geekbench is not a Minecraft server, so I recommend benchmarking it with Minecraft to really test them. I think even if thought the PI won in geekbench, the mac mini still might have a chance to be better when it comes to Minecraft. As some others have noted, a Minecraft server is pretty much entirely single-threaded so any more than 2 cores is useless
To be clear though, you could have gotten a far far far more powerful small form factor PC (for example think centers) for that money on ebay. For the performance, these are still ridiculously expensive because they are apple. If you have a reasonably well ventilated area, you could have also gotten a laptop with an early i5. Also you can get (at least in europe) desktops with core 2 duos essentially for free and upgrade them with "powerful" quad core xeons and ddr2 memory for that money (but granted that wouldn't be as small).
I think it doesn’t work in UEFI mode because the graphics drivers for the GeForce 9400 (Linux or Windows) don’t implement any support for the graphics EFI bios. Other PCs have these same graphics but are all BIOS systems so the drivers only have to implement legacy BIOS support for graphics
Pop!OS maintains a version of Pop! specifically for computers with Nvidia gpus, as the default Noveau Driver tends to break on a lot of older machines. I have a feeling that the version on the CD wasn't the Nvidia version. You might be able to get Pop! working if you try the Nvidia version.
Oh thanks I'll check that out!
@@ActionRetro It's one of the few that does, as Nivida has kind of given the middle finger to the Linux community, and it's been a pain in the ass to get the open source Novu drivers working. Personally I avoid systems with Nvidia, and Nvidia GPUs because of it, and go with AMD, and Intel which are very well supported with official open source drivers from AMD, and Intel baked right into the latest 5.x kernel updates.
I should invest in some old macs.
Dont down on el cap, it is awesome.
If that is a mid-2007 or earlier Mac Mini you maybe able to drop in a $30 or so 2.33 GHz Core 2 Duo which should bump the geekbench to 3150 or so.
13:40 actually, it was pi to apple
I installed Neptune OS which is a debain distro on my MacBook 6,1 off a USB and it worked just fine (same specs as a mini 3,1)