Old is new again
I started working on getting this iMac setup while I'm waiting on my storage solution to get here and man oh man how I forgot what it's like to setup a Linux desktop environment. I have to say, its funny how the problems I ran into ages ago with Ubuntu still aren't solved without a bunch of arcane nonsense like finding the drivers for an ancient Broadcom chip so I can get wifi working as a backup.
To be fair, Ubuntu does try to install the proprietary driver when asked, but for me that only enabled bluetooth for some reason. It took me about 5 hours total to get the install done, about 4 of those hours were tracking down this wifi issue. After numerous installs, uninstalls, reboots, etc. I finally tracked down this answer that seemed to finally solve the problem. No idea why other than I guess I was missing something in those headers that was necessary for this hardware.
Anyways, at the end of the day, no harm done and I could have lived without wifi for this deployment but that's how my brain works. Now back to waiting by my front door for more hardware.