I’m trying to get Rocky on a mid-2010 MacMini, upgraded to 16G of ram and a new 1T SSD.
I’ve tried all three of the 10 downloads and at least 1 of the 9.7 downloads and they all fail the same way.
With the install media inserted, boot the Mac while holding down the Alt key. That brings up the boot selector with the USB disk with the install media as an option. I click on that and the MacMini completely freezes immediately–no mouse or keyboard input recognized.
After multiple attempts I downloaded the Ubuntu 24.04 install and it boots and installs just fine so the Mac itself does not seem to be an issue.
I really do not want to run Ubuntu though.
Would it be possible to pull the new 1T SSD I put in the MacMini, hook it up via a USB/SATA connector and install Rocky on an mounted external drive plugged into another computer? Or is there a way to update the boot loader from the Ubuntu media to get the Rocky media to actually boot?
Most x86 motherboards are UEFI compatible, and thus you can install any linux distro as you like, but Apple does something different, which need some tweeks to work. Asahi Linux did the hard work, and tried to commit these changes to mainstream Linux kernel, but these merge requests were dismissed. How about maintaining a another tree of linux kernel? but that need continuous time and work. Asahi linux founders are voluntary, which means they didn’t have that much time and are not paid to keep up that work.
When it comes to Ubuntu, things are different. Business companies like Canonical or Red Hat can pay engineers to maintain another branch of Linux kernel just to fulfill their business purpose.
If I were you, I would not use Apple.
@jross_mt First, before you go any further, does the MacMini support x86-64-v2 (for Rocky Linux 9) or x86-64-v3 (for Rocky Linux 10)? You can find this out with Ubuntu running (as it is now) and running:
Rocky 8 will work on it. Or something newer and similar, Fedora will or should work as it doesn’t have the CPU limits like EL9 or EL10. Fedora would be the closest you could get to EL.
To explain why Rocky 10 and 9 both fail on the MacMini4,1: the Core 2 Duo (Penryn) in that machine only supports x86_64-v1. Starting with RHEL 9 (and therefore Rocky 9+), the minimum CPU requirement was raised to x86_64-v2 which needs SSE4.2 and POPCNT instructions that the Core 2 Duo does not have.
The kernel literally will not boot on that CPU. You will see either a hang during early boot or a “SIGILL” (illegal instruction) crash, which matches what you are experiencing.
Your options:
Rocky 8 (supported until May 2029): This is the newest Rocky version that still supports x86_64-v1. It will install and run fine on the Core 2 Duo. Download from Download - Rocky Linux - make sure to pick the 8.x release.
Fedora (as iwalker mentioned): Current Fedora still supports x86_64-v1 and gets the latest packages. The downside is Fedora has a shorter support cycle (roughly 13 months per release).
AlmaLinux 8: Same as Rocky 8 in terms of CPU support, if you want an alternative RHEL rebuild.
The 16GB RAM and new SSD are more than enough for Rocky 8. The hardware is perfectly capable, it is purely the CPU instruction set requirement that changed in the newer releases.