iMac as a Linux Workstation

Whatever you may think about Macs and OS X, Apple hardware is very nice. Take the 5 year-old iMac (2008 model) with 24″ LED screen – a bit slow now for Mountain Lion but nevertheless the screen is vibrant, all the hardware is in one box with a 2.8ghz dual core CPU, camera, speakers, DVD, 256mb Radeon video card, 6gb of RAM, lots of ports (USB and Firewre 800) and all. I picked one up for a song with a view of turning it into my new Linux workstation. For a start I had a need for speed so decided to replace the existing old and slow hard drive with a fast SSD. Total cost $150 for the iMac and $179 for the SSD. For that price you would be hard-pressed to get just a screen like that.