And how will you put Linux on a MAC, as if your he ent yet tried, let me tell you it’s pretty much impossible without issues….I tried and it would not work, it glitched all the time…

I've run Ubuntu on one of my 2012 i7 Mac Mini's and I don't recall having any issues. Windows as well. A problem with the newer ones is they have replaced the 4 USB A ports with either 2 or 4 USB C / Thunderbolt ports, so external adapters or a docking station are required in order to get enough USB A ports for my gear. If you can live with that, it may work. I've not tested the newer ones with Linux, and I didn't use the Thunderbolt port on mine, so no guarantees.
You know, Kstars/Ekos/Indi all run on the Mac. Until I picked up a Raspberry Pi last year, I was running it on the Mac Mini.

I actually would be happier leaving it as OSX but I don’t know how to get the nightly builds on the Mac. The RPI 4B 8GB takes over 15 seconds to download a frame from my Sony A7R4 and my MBP does this in around 5 seconds.

Brew loads an older version of Kstars. I found an old script on GitHub for building for Mac from source but it failed about 30 minutes into the build.

I plan to mount the mini on the dec axis and see if I can connect to the CEM70 using a Bluetooth adapter so I can have no cables across the mount.

Kurt

@rlancaste has some scripts for building KStars on a mac, if you want to go that route.
github.com/rlancaste/kstars-on-osx-craft.
I haven't used it in a while, but I know they exist.

Also, you can run ubuntu on a VM on the mac. You could then get the nightly builds, or build them yourself.
I do that all the time (I use VMWare Fusion, but free alternatives also work).
I use that for development and don't attach to physical devices, but you could try that too.

Hy

Hy

That is an outstanding idea. Thanks for that. I already have Parallels for the Mac.

Kurt

Circling back a little bit Hy. On your idea of running a VM how about a VM version of StellarMate. I bought StellarMate OS a few days ago because I wanted to see how it was to drive from a tablet. Quite a few guys using ASIAIR and live stacking seemed attractive. I started out with Astroberry and then moved to the Mac but thought fewer wires across the mount were attractive. I guess I forgot about the 15 to 20 seconds to download a camera image. The Mac mini would solve that. A StellarMate install iso might be a great idea.

Kurt

I don't know, I suppose it's possible to run Raspberry Pi OS on the VM, but I haven't heard of anyone doing it. Let us know. Perhaps Jasem has heard?

It would need to be compiled to run on an x86 CPU. The VM can't emulate an Arm processor as far as I know. Raspberry Pi org has a Debian distro for PC and Mac whcih features the RPi desktop and "most" of the programs that come with Raspberry pi OS.

Hi, I am using a  Mac Mini 1.66 Core DUO with an hacked firmware and a replaced T7600 2.33ghz Mobile CPU, 3GB RAM and a 500GB hard disk drive.
It's a common hack for this model. VGA was also hacked externaly (DVI->VGA adapter with resistors) so it can be used without a monitor.
It has 120mmm external FAN to keep it very cool, it's not a need but... it's cooler
It holds Lubuntu 20.04.02 (LxQt)  hands on without any problems at all. I am using it as a INDI Server (With VNC/SSH access) but it can be used as Server/Client.
It works way better than the RPi 3 I had and I dont have any USB problems. 4 USB ports also, very handy and it's a cheaper Mac Mini model.I have acquired this model only for this.

Details on the firmware hack if someone is interested:
mac mini 1.66 Ghz upgrade | MacRumors Forums
macmini 1,1 to 2,1 EFI firmware update · GitHub  

 

I installed Raspberry Pi Desktop on the Mac Mini i7 with 16gb RAM to little success. I could get the OS to work, but Kstars was 3.0.0 and Debian is not as friendly as I had hoped. I wiped it and installed Ubuntu 20.04 and the Jasem PPAs, and it is up and running grabbing frames off of my camera. I had trouble with the PPA timing out halfway through the upgrade, but it eventually gave up and worked. The one thing I have left to do is fine-tune the VNC so I get higher quality screen data. It is noticibly more perky than the MacOS Catalina that I had on it. So I spent about two hours on Ubuntu, mainly because I didn't know that 20.04 comes with Vino already installed and running.

I should get my Mac Mini 2008 Monday. Today I installed Kubuntu on Parallels 17 trial on my MBP 2018. (Parallels Tools can't load on Ubuntu using 15.) I installed Kstars/Indi Nightly and ran as test on my Sony A7R4. Image download took 1.49 seconds compared to 18-20+ seconds on the RPI 4B 8GB and something around 5 sec running Kstars on the MBP. Go figure that. I was impressed. Kunbuntu was from the .iso on their site. Spent less than a hour on all of this. Thanks again to Hy for this suggestion. When I get my Mini I will only need to copy the VM there.

I still would like to try live stacking on a tablet.

Kurt

It would be great actually if we could install the Stellarmate OS on other Linux units (mini pc) and be able to use it through the Stellarmate IOS app. That would be just awesome. 
I love RPIs but even a cheap mini pc has better performance.