[Ourgon]

While I agree to most of the glued/soldered/planned obsolescence criticisms related to applethings I do feel the need to point out those "obsolete" macthings tend to run Linux just fine. I should know, writing this on a 'late 2009 27" iMac' which I got for free due to its video card being broken (which it is no longer, 8 minutes in the oven at 195°C is all it takes) running Debian. While it is also possible to get more recent versions of macOS to run on these things this is not nearly as easy nor useful as running Linux which just supports the hardware without any qualms. Apple does not want you to use older hardware so they don't build macOS for machines which are perfectly capable of running it. Installing unsupported versions is made possible by monkey-patching the release in a rather hit-and-miss fashion, often leaving parts of the hardware (bluetooth, sound, wifi) without or with sub-standard support. All this while Linux runs flawlessly on the same hardware.

[yencabulator]

> Linux runs flawlessly

Uhh, nope. NVidia and Broadcom all over.

[Ourgon]

Depends on which one you're using, mine contains a Radeon HD 4670. There is a lot of NVIDIA on the PCI bus but this does not seem to be an obstacle to the thing running flawlessly:

   00:00.0 Host bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 Host Bridge (rev b1)
   00:00.1 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 Memory Controller (rev b1)
   00:03.0 ISA bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 LPC Bridge (rev b3)
   00:03.1 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 Memory Controller (rev b1)
   00:03.2 SMBus: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 SMBus (rev b1)
   00:03.3 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 Memory Controller (rev b1)
   00:03.4 RAM memory: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 Memory Controller (rev b1)
   00:03.5 Co-processor: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 Co-processor (rev b1)
   00:04.0 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev b1)
   00:04.1 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev b1)
   00:06.0 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 OHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev b1)
   00:06.1 USB controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 EHCI USB 2.0 Controller (rev b1)
   00:08.0 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 High Definition Audio (rev b1)
   00:09.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 PCI Bridge (rev b1)
   00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 Ethernet (rev b1)
   00:0b.0 SATA controller: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 AHCI Controller (rev b1)
   00:0c.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 PCI Express Bridge (rev b1)
   00:15.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 PCI Express Bridge (rev b1)
   00:16.0 PCI bridge: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 PCI Express Bridge (rev b1)
   02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV730/M96-XT [Mobility Radeon HD 4670]
   02:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RV710/730 HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 4000 series]
   03:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
   04:00.0 PCI bridge: Texas Instruments XIO2213A/B/XIO2221 PCI Express to PCI Bridge [Cheetah Express] (rev 01)
   05:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments XIO2213A/B/XIO2221 IEEE-1394b OHCI Controller [Cheetah Express] (rev 01)

There is some Broadcom as well - the Bluetooth controller, which works fine - as well as some Qualcomm - the wifi controller which, again, works fine.

This is a 'Late 2009 27" iMac', running the internal display as well as an external 1920*1200 24" monitor through a DP->HDMI cable. Everything works, including the silly IR remote control thingy (tested using the IR blaster on my phone).