The only Apple platform to go out of your way to avoid is the early Intel Macs with 32-bit EFI. Even Mac stalwart sites like Other world computing have run out their parts stocks for this platform. I'd regard the Firefox situation as a harbinger of the end times for this platform. I'd do a reality check before upgrading the RAM or hard disk - normally I'd recommend both of those as a easy performance win for older hardware - but the reality is that you might get only a year of the platform even with 1GB RAM (USD32) and a small PATA-bus SSD (USD99). But understand that you could get a better result for less effort with a Chromebook or cheap Windows laptop repurposed to run Linux. If you are doing it for a hobby, then fine. The days of a satisfactory user experience with that CPU and 512MB or 1GB of RAM are coming to an end. I really suggest that you don't follow me down this path. After my experience being thrown overboard by Ubuntu I'm not sure I'd suggest Mint - as soon as one or two people lose interest then your support stops. Debian is pretty much the sole remaining operating system you can boot on those machines which is maintained (ie, won't have major security holes). It's a well-understood platform, so hardware support is good. The other week someone asked me if it was a new Apple model. I love my PowerBook G4 because it's almost the ideal form factor for a laptop.
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