Repurposing a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1

[mikef]

I have an old used Mac Pro with a decent spec (given its age)

2x X5690 hex-core 3.46 GHz CPUs
Radion R9-280X GPU
128 GB DDR3 ECC RAM
PCIe SSD card
Shed load of (SATA2) SSD and HDD storage
PCIe USB-C card

I’ve looked at selling on eBay either as a working PC or as parts, but there are lots on sale and no takers

I can keep updating the MacOS using OpenCore Legacy Patcher, but frankly it’s a pain to keep doing that and fewer features work on older kit with each new release of MacOS, I’m happier using my Apple Silicon mac mini and MacBook

So looking for ideas. Have any of you successfully repurposed a Mac Pro of this generation, using Linux, or something else?

[tog]

I have one that spec too (but only 64GB RAM) and am keeping it. My old Minolta film scanner won't work reliably on my Mac Studio. The 5,1 was wiped and ready for sale until I discovered the scanner issue, so it has been pressed back into occasional service.

I ran a 4,1 Mac Pro for many years as a music server, but only when it got replaced by an old Mac mini did I realise how much heat it was giving out. No wonder my office was never cold in the winter! That went on eBay a year or two ago, so there is some demand still.

[mikef]

I suspect that demand may have dropped of a cliff in the last year or so as Mac Silicon is now on M5 revision and less Mac software is still supporting Intel

[tog]

True, but there are people still using old stuff out there though - I just ebayed a boxed copy of Adobe Lightroom v1.0 on CD, complete with a v4.0 upgrade DVD!

[mikef]

Update, just in case any cares . Downloaded and installed Fedora 43 on the Mac Pro 5,1 this evening. Install time around 30 minutes including updates and configuration, and it booted first time. Took another 30 minutes to find and install drivers for the PCIe Broadcom wifi card I use (Asus AC68), but that now works fine too

The UI response is a bit sluggish considering the hardware spec, but I’ve installed MySQL and Jetbrains and that is all performing well

Tomorrow's job is to install the drivers needed to read the other Mac APFS disks and SSDs

[JoshSm]

mikef said:

The UI response is a bit sluggish considering the hardware spec

Are you sure it has loaded a GPU driver, and that it's the right one that it chose? Seems that isn't always 100% guaranteed.

[mikef]

I’ll check that tomorrow