The iMac That Couldn’t
If you’ve been searching for honest, real-world results on running a local AI setup on older hardware, specifically installing Ubuntu on a 2017 iMac and running an open-source AI agent locally, this post is for you.
No sponsored results.
No, “It worked great!” YouTube thumbnails.
Just what actually happened when I tried to get OpenClaw running on a 500 GB Ubuntu install entirely from the command line on a 2017 iMac and what I’m doing next.
Hardware killed this one.
Not my persistence, and trust me, I tested that theory thoroughly.
The goal was simple enough: get OpenClaw running locally on a 2017 iMac with Ubuntu installed as the primary OS on a 500 GB drive.
No GUI hand-holding.
Everything through the terminal, on the command line, the way it’s supposed to be done.
What followed was 24+ hours spread across two weeks of troubleshooting every obstacle between me and a working local AI setup.
I went down every rabbit hole I could find. If I’m calling something a dead end here, believe it, I earned that opinion.
Don’t waste your time retracing these steps.
Here’s the bottom line: I got OpenClaw running.
It just took over a minute to generate a single reply.
A minute.
Per response.
That’s not a tool.
That’s a very slow pen pal.
So. What’s next?
I chose the iMac route deliberately;
I didn’t want OpenClaw living on the same drive as my main OS and apps.
That’s still the right instinct.
I’m just changing the hardware.
Next up: installing Ubuntu on an external drive connected directly to my laptop.
The laptop’s only a few years old, so the processing headroom should be there.
The internal drive becomes, metaphorically, the thing I’m protecting.
I’ll set hard boundaries so OpenClaw can’t touch, modify, or delete anything on the internal drive without explicit permission to proceed.
Clean separation. Better hardware. Same goal.
I’ll post again once I’ve put OpenClaw through its paces on the external drive setup. If it works, you’ll hear about it. If it doesn’t, well, you’ll hear about that too.