Which Distro Suits Me Best (on an iMac)

[Brickwizard]

Welcome
Macs traditional are not the easiest to install Linux on, but it can be done, depending on the Linux you decide to use the wireless keypad and mouse should work out of the box, I have no Idea about Wacom. Most Linux builds include an update manager which is quite safe to use as it will draw updates from the distribution approved repositories, If you add any outside applications you can set them for manual update if you do not trust the download source.
As I said before the best Linux distribution , is the one you like the look and feel of and runs best on your equipment, Avoid POP as it is often a pain in the butt to get working, other than that keep well away from Kali it is not newbie friendly at all,

 

[NewInLinux]

@NewInLinux -- please use English as said before. That will ensure more helpful comments and more users inclined to help. I am from Spain and I understand what you posted, but it's not right to leave messages in Spanish when you see that all the forum messages (every one of them) are in English.

I had a Macbook Pro Retina 13", mid 2014, which I think it would be more or less the same era as your iMac.

I used with success Elementary and Ubuntu (use x86-64 variants) on that Mac, and either of them will work for you. However, I had the following issues, that I believe you will have, and you will have to troubleshoot them:

• Have a wired network connection handy. Do not rely on the wifi to work at first attempt --it didn't work for me back then. You will have to research a bit what driver you need, and then locate what package the driver is provided by, and then install it for the WiFi to work.
• The Facetime? camera didn't work by default. I remember I had to compile a driver from source, but don't have any notes from that one.
• You will need the nvidia drivers for your card.

The above means that you will need a DVD ISO image with all non-free drivers included, but that doesn't mean everything will be already there for you except maybe the NVidia drivers.

Regarding the wireless devices, I have never had issues with bluetooth mice, but also, never tried the apple wireless devices. I bet they will work, but don't know.

Regarding the secure downloads for the software, yes, all (decent) distributions secure their package repositories not only by HTTPS connections, but also digitally signing all the packages. On the other hand, if you download a package from other sources, you must verify the signature and the checksums yourself.

Have you seen this? I'm afraid it's in Spanish https://www.kdeblog.com/no-me-va-el-wifi-en-mi-mac-con-linux-solucion.html

 

[gvisoc]

That is probably something along the lines of what I read back then. I think it was some rtlxxxx driver from realtek. Anyway, I no longer have Macs --a couple of years ago I got a thinkpad as a replacement.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Could we start again?

We certainly can, and folks please refrain from bickering (arguing) it does not set a good example for our Linux and Forum Community.

@NewInLinux welcome to linux.org. You could note in how I posted a little from one of your Posts that you can highlight a bit of text that someone else has used, and at the right end "Reply" will appear. You can use that to post the text and it will show who said it. Better than having their entire Post copied.

Could I have the ISO image in a pendrive?

Certainly. You do not just copy the .iso to the pendrive, you must burn it.

Solutions which will work on a Mac include

Balena Etcher

UNetbootin

Rosa Image Writer

I have also translated the Thread title, hope it is appropriate.

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

 

[NewInLinux]

We certainly can, and folks please refrain from bickering (arguing) it does not set a good example for our Linux and Forum Community.

@NewInLinux welcome to linux.org. You could note in how I posted a little from one of your Posts that you can highlight a bit of text that someone else has used, and at the right end "Reply" will appear. You can use that to post the text and it will show who said it. Better than having their entire Post copied.



Certainly. You do not just copy the .iso to the pendrive, you must burn it.

Solutions which will work on a Mac include

Balena Etcher

UNetbootin

Rosa Image Writer

I have also translated the Thread title, hope it is appropriate.

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz

Thank you very much. I Apreciate very much all your help. I wanted to translate the thread as well, but I didn't know how to do it.

 

[NewInLinux]

you must burn it

Ok. Could you explain the process using Balena, for instance? Thanks in advance.

 

[Brickwizard]

As you have a Mac at the moment, you could use that to make your bootable iso by using the command line and dd or by using the disk utility application,https://www.macinstruct.com/tutorials/how-to-burn-an-iso-disc-image-on-your-mac/

you cannot use Etcher on a Mac with OS older than 10.10 [Yosemite]

 

[KGIII]

Ok. Could you explain the process using Balena, for instance? Thanks in advance.

balenaEtcher: A Tool To Turn Linux .ISO Files Into Bootable USB Drives • Linux Tips

balenaEtcher is a free software tool to write .ISO files to USBs so that you can boot from them and install Linux. balenaEtcher is just one of many tools to do this.

linux-tips.us

 

[wizardfromoz]

Just an emphasis to the above that @KGIII has at his website - he has a picture there with the words below it

Select the right flash drive. Be very careful at this stage! This step can go horribly wrong!

I have reproduced the picture here with two arrows, to indicate areas to check to make sure that you are choosing the correct target drive to burn the iso to.

Cheers

Wizard