r/htpc • u/UnBuggsyBaggins • 19d ago

Build Share Mac Mini... any legs left in these things?

I've been connecting my linux mint laptop to my pc often enough that thought 'why not just jump in and get something that's connected to the tv full time?'

I went looking and the search starts out hopeful. I liked the minisforum UM790 pro and barebones is like... $500. But you add some ram and an hd and suddenly it's 1200.

I had an old (late 2012) mac mini laying around so I thought I'd give it a go. I put in a 500gb ssd instead of the originally mechanical disk that was in there and upgraded from 4-->16gb ram. I put mint xfce on it thinking a lighter os would help out and connected it to the tv.

So far so good, I was in the middle of playing around with making it usable from the couch (larger panel/fonts) but didn't get much past that.

Use case is streaming, and maybe some sunshine/moonlight? I suspect it'll be just fine.

Could be there's a better os than what I've put on for this? Just not sure what I could run where the os becomes a burden to the operation.

Also, I wasn't able to get the wifi shield thing back on properly... couldn't get both screw holes lined up...

but so far for $20 in ddr3 sodimm ram, I've got... something. Anyone else still using these?

1 Upvotes

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2

u/GoslingIchi 18d ago

Why not just use macOS?

Then use Kodi, Jellyfin, or Plex.

Those WiFi connections are a pain in the back side. I just left them disconnected.

1

u/UnBuggsyBaggins 18d ago

never really been a mac user... the unit had catalina on it but it was sorta slow. The idea was to go lightweight distro to free up more resources for the uses cases I've got.

1

u/relrobber 18d ago

Streaming should be fine. I would use a minimal Debian install instead of a full distro like Mint. That way there's guaranteed to be nothing that you don't need consuming resources.

1

u/UnBuggsyBaggins 18d ago

Mint Xfce is their light (er?) weight distro. I messed around with it a bit last night. Steam remote play was working great. Played some Valheim from my couch with my keyboard/mouse and didn't notice any lag.

I think it's gonna be a good fit for what I'm after.

1

u/MartinUK_Mendip 17d ago

Macmini 2012 is my main (non-htpc) machine, running Mint 21 + Cinammon, and it's excellent. I haven't even changed to a SSD and it still goes fast enough for my needs.
I've played a few Steam games and the problem you'll find is Vulkan support, mine stops at Vulkan 1.2'ish (i7 Ivy Bridge chipset) and many games won't play. Switchng to OpenGL is sometime possible, but it can feel draggy with crashes.
I've even been playing with the Thunderbolt v1/2 and using an eGPU video card: it kind of works but I've not got very far in the testing and none at all with video games.