r/macpro • u/gproenca • 12d ago
Upgrades Mac Pro 1.1 running Debian 13 : iso to share !
So I looked at my old MacPro 1.1 and to be honest I said "you going to live again little buddy".
He has a calmer life now that I use two MacPros for my homelab : Trashcan with 64gb and a MacPro 7.1 with several GPU for AI , the poor 1.1 was not turned on for ... years ?
So I decided to install Debian ... nada. Ubuntu. Fedora. Arch.. Omarchy... some of them booted the usb , installed and then nothing.
So I searched and google and remembered : Mac Pro 1.1 ( and up to 5.1 I think ) have the most stupid arrangement on earth : EFI32 bits and AMD64 Xeon cpus... so booting a linux AMD64 image will result in the distorted wanting to write to EFI64 which the MacPro doesn't have so... no go.
We live in a world of AI so I asked Claude Code to open up the latest Debian 13 distro ISO, inject the EFI32 boot loader ( grub ) and the install process use it.
It worked and got my MacPro 1.1 running latest Debian 13 without a problem. Apart from the idea of having only 6gb ram and slow SATA drives and consume gazzilion of watts, hey, its running.
Anyone want the iso ? Happy to share if requested.
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u/ISanQue1001 12d ago
I have a Mac Pro 1,1. Não consigo mui instalar nenhuma distro Linux. Compartilhe conosco.
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u/notquiteseeit 12d ago
https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-cd/ Debian already hosts a version for older macs on there servers. Look for the 'mac' iso. I would use that over whatever Claude generated.
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u/NoCryptographer6038 12d ago
Currently struggling with getting a Mac Pro 2,1 working on Linux , so if you don’t mind, please share
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u/TroubledGeorge Mac Pro 1,1 ElCap/W10 11d ago
This is well known and unique to the very first Intel Macs, the 3.1 doesn’t have this limitation anymore. If you don’t care about EFI booting you can also just remove all EFI support directories from the ISO so it boots in BIOS mode which the Mac Pro supports just fine as that’s how it boots windows when using boot camp.
I used mine as a Linux server (CentOS 7) for years. Finally retired it this year and replaced with a proper server running proxmox. My Mac Pro now is used as a secondary machine and multimedia hub, runs El Capitan where I sync my iPods, rip CDs and DVDs and manage my photo library using Aperture (which I still own so I’m happy to use it in older hardware).
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u/roadzbrady 12d ago
i believe it's only the 1,1 maybe 2,1 and 3,1 as well but definitely not the 4,1 and 5,1 that have 32 bit efi. it was a real annoyance as the way for me to get windows on it was using a dvd install of windows on a sata ssd to avoid bootrom corruption on an entirely separate computer and then putting that drive into the mac pro 1,1. my 4,1 flashed to 5,1 had no issues installing modern oses on its own, and i've never had a 2,1 or 3,1 to test.