Roon, Linux & MAC Mini

Guys, can any one advise or supply useful info about setting up Roon server and Linux on a 2010 Mac Mini. (8Gb ram and SSD) The Mini has enough grunt to run Roon through OSX High Sierra without showing any signs of distress but I was thinking of trying linux as there is (reportedly) much less overhead.
Help, thoughts would be appreciated

Not sure if you’re looking for an improvement or just a simplification, but moving to Linux should be pretty straightforward if you want a full fat OS and might be impossible for older hardware if you want Roon ROCK. If the latter, cruise over to the Roon forum to see what folks have had success with. If the former, the Ubuntu site has a nice “try first to see if everything works” option, after which you can download and reformat and install. I’ve had good luck on older laptops by swapping in a small inexpensive SDD and treating it as a fresh machine.

With all that said, unless you’re in it for the fun of updating a box that has reached end-of-life for MacOS updates, my feeling is that it would be better to just leave the Roon Core running as you seem to indicate it’s not having any issues…

For completeness, I’m running Roon Core on a Synology 918+ NAS, no fancy processing or DSP but it is issue free for my local content and Tidal (my primary use). I moved it over from my late 2012 mini and didn’t really feel I had made a compromise on usability… but I’m not a heavy user…

Either way, have fun!

Regards alan

ROCK is the easiest way to run Roon Core as it turns the pc effectively into a device that just runs Roon. It can run fine on non NUC hardware and even older hardware as I ran it on gen4 i3 for a year and a bit and currently it’s on an i7 non NuC silent pc. As long as it’s intel and has nothing to funky it tends to work but no guarantees.

Before ROCK I used Vortexbox Os on the same hardware it worked well and added the bonus of being able to rip CDs as well. If you familiar with Linux then setting up Roon should be simple for you, but for a novice and for least maintenance I would choose ROCK m, try it on your current hardware and see.

Thanks guys. Been doing some reading and there seems to be issues with using Rock on a Mac. Not too sure of the exact details but it seems the Mac bios is not compatible. I will read some more and try and find out what the problem is.
Alan, I think I may just go with your 2nd paragraph solution and leave it at that until Roon updates start to cause problems.

1 Like

I’d just stick with the Server using OS X. Worked fine for me before buying a Nucleus.

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.