I recently purchased a Mac Studio to replace my ancient Trashcan Mac (work in post audio, it’s a Pro Tools world, so no Linux options unfortunately).

The Trashcan has basically no resale value, and is already capped out on OS updates.

Specs are:

-10 core E5 Xenon (I forget the clock speed, and it’s unplugged atm)

-64GB ram

-512GB SSD (NVMe PCIe 3.1 x4)

-Dual D500 (whatever that is) graphics card(s)

https://www.apple.com/ae/mac-pro-2013/specs/

My thought is to repurpose it either as a hardware firewall since it has two enet ports, or NAS - ideally running headless, and would be able to be admin’d by the other Macs in the house.

My last Linux experience was Gentoo in 2004, and Slackware before that. I’m not afraid of CLI, but it’s been 20 years, so what little I remember is probably completely outmoded in 2023.

Any advice for distros that would work for this use case?

Thanks!

  • db2English
    54•1 year ago

    You’re going to use a 10 core 64GB machine as a firewall? Do you mow your lawn with dynamite also? 🤣

    • @[email protected]English
      10•1 year ago

      Probably too much LTT. Also considering the ankommt of power that would draw, even if basically idling

  • @[email protected]English
    20•1 year ago

    Obligatory: Debian.

    But I’d be tempted to put Proxmox on it and then run containers for each function. Then you get purpose-crafted solutions for each use case, but can easily plug new functions in or shut them down based on what you decide later.

    • 6xpipe_English
      11•1 year ago

      I agree with Proxmox. I know it’s 10 years old, but it seems a waste to use a 10 core, 64GB machine as a firewall.

      Actually…put Proxmox on it and put the firewall in a LXC container.

    • @[email protected]English
      4•1 year ago

      I’d second this. I’ve installed Proxmox installed on some Mac Minis and they do a credible job of it. A beefy Max Pro would be all the better.

      I’ll add that if the main purpose is to be a NAS something like TrueNAS will be much more set-and-forget.

      This is grossly overpowered for a firewall, so I wouldn’t go that route unless you want to do a virtual firewall on top of a general purpose hypervisor.

  • @rayman30English
    13•1 year ago

    I see you say ‘no resale value’, but specs like that do 650,- to 700,- here in The Netherlands. Are you sure there is no value here? It seems as a firewall, it will consume lots of electricity. (Too much for 24/7?)

    • melroy
      6•1 year ago

      I fully agree. This is still a very high specced computer to be honest. Even for today standards.

  • Mint_Raccoon
    9•1 year ago

    Debian is always a safe choice for almost everything. It’s also worth checking DistroWatch. They have a search that can filter which distros are developed for a specific task (it’s under “distribution category”).

  • @[email protected]English
    2•1 year ago

    Open Media Vault. It’s Debian, but with a nice web UI on top to manage the system. It allows you to setup NAS-shares visually, so you don’t have to rely on your ancient and possibly a bit rusty terminal knowledge. It also gives you the option to easily install portainer, a way to manage docker containers, like a firewall

  • christosEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    mxlinux? Debian based, works fine in an old mac I have

  • @[email protected]
    1•1 year ago

    Let me know what you settle on and how it works. I just picked one of these up myself.

    I was thinking of putting Promox on it. Using it as a NAS was an idea too but I not sure how to get enough storage on it.

    It seems like overkill for a firewall.