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@randulo@mastodon.social

Post #1410677

2026-04-18 15:32 UTC

Apple's planned obsolesence is infuriating. I have a perfectly good 13 year old Macbook Air, new SSD and battery. I'm wondering if it's possible to install #Linux on it? Linux versions must be more tolerant of hardware, but I'm not sure it's possible to install it. EDIT: I keep replying to share status (mute me if you must), but a big thanks to all of those who gave a shout, I've read each one and appreciate. But then, that's Mastodon!

Replies (6)

  • @Brendan@twit.social 2026-04-18 15:35

    @randulo I have a 2012 MacBook Pro that I ran Fedora on many years ago. I haven't used it lately but it ran fine.

    Open ##2104904

  • @Minetosh@ieji.de 2026-04-18 15:59

    @randulo I have a multiboot late 2008 #Macbook running #LinuxMint 21.3 Mate as principal system. Runs well (WLAN, Bluetooth, etc). The only problem is that there's no more compatible #NVIDIA video driver. So I have to use the Nouveau open source driver. Which is okay, though. Good luck!

    Open ##2104905

  • @randulo long shot, but would #BSD meet your Macbook needs? MacOS originated from BSD, I believe. #FreeBSD is probably the most popular of the BSDs, but #OpenBSD is probably the most lightweight/secure (if you can forgo Bluetooth). It sounds like 4yrs ago it mostly worked: https://www.reddit.com/r/openbsd/comments/y3020e/still_looking_at_laptops_for_openbsd/ https://joshua.hu/FreeBSD-on-MacbookPro-114-A1398

    Open ##2104907

  • @randulo I have a 2015 Macbook Air with an Intel chipset, and I have been running Linux on it for the past couple years. The biggest issue I've had is finding distros that come with the Broadcom wifi drivers out of the box. So far, MX is working the best for me.

    Open ##2104908

  • @macronaut@mas.to 2026-04-18 16:36

    @randulo I have Debian 13 GNOME running on my MacBook Pro late 2015. The only thing that’s not working is the Camera and I have not had any luck in getting it to work. There are some minor hiccups (not deal breakers for me) like closing the lid without explicitly suspending the OS out it in an odd state where the fan start and the machine does not go to sleep. And sometimes when it does sleep and I open the lid nothing happens and I have do a hard restart.

    Open ##2104909

  • @johndgriffith@twit.social 2026-04-18 17:23

    @randulo FWIW I've been running Mint Linux on A 2011 MacBook Pro for the last 4 years. It's an older LTS version with a 5.x kernel. Everything works fine.

    Open ##2104911