Distro for 2012 MacBook Pro Retina (15 inch)
2026-05-16 17:03 UTC
Replies (10)
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@hexagonwin@lemmy.today 2026-05-16 19:12
with that gpu, x11 might work better than wayland. i’ll probably get downvoted for this but keeping macos isn’t a bad choice, there’s a firefox fork that tracks latest while retaining older macos support.
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@DetachablePianist@lemmy.ml 2026-05-16 18:12
I run boring, stable Debian on mine, but I have plentry of experience adding the non-free (not foss) drivers not included in the core distro. For gaming with lots of native hardware support right out of the gate, Bazzite is really popular. No matter which distro you settle on, see if you can install the ‘linux-headers-generic’ package to avoid broadcom wifi issues after every kernel update.
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@just_another_person@lemmy.world 2026-05-16 18:29
Your GPU isn’t getting engaged because you either have to install the proprietary Nvidia driver, or if it is already installed, you need to use the utilities to switch over to the GT from the embedded.
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@Rod_Orm@piefed.world 2026-05-16 22:09
Try solus
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@merde@sh.itjust.works 2026-05-16 23:16
you would have the same problem with any distro you try. you just need to search forums and tweak a little for example: forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=466301 i had the same problem but it’s been years and i don’t remember how i fixed it, sorry
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@whiskers165@hexbear.net 2026-05-17 00:34
Back in the day I used to game hard as fuck on the 650m on my 2012 MBP lol I have Fedora on mine now and it works great once you figure out how to make the wifi and graphics drivers play
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@artyom@piefed.social 2026-05-16 23:37
I had that same laptop but in a 13”. I ran Zorin on it for a while before giving it to a friend. Didn’t have any problems. Did you run the firmware installer?
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@tenebrisnox@feddit.uk 2026-05-17 01:50
I’ve run Ubuntu on a Macbook Air 2012 and also on a Macbook Pro 2015 for about 5 years. Both have worked really well. I found early on that using Xorg made things seem faster (but that may be subjective). I’ve read that Debian (netinst) is meant to be really good on older macs and it’s something I’ll try at some point.
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@yuman@programming.dev 2026-05-17 13:31
had a bunch of those. the best thing you can do is disable the nvidia graphics and run it off the intel graphics, plenty powerful for everyday tasks, lower power consumption, less heat, longer battery life. only downside, you lose display out. after that, any linux distro will suit you just fine. go with fedora for newest and best or debian for safe and boring.
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@lonksawakening@lemmy.ml 2026-05-17 16:32
I have a 2015 with R9 M370X, tried Ubuntu and Arch. The latter worked better out of the box (wi-fi, bluetooth, trackpad, etc. minus webcam) for me so that’s what I’d recommend. You should be able to use gpu-switch to enable or disable discrete graphics: github.com/0xbb/gpu-switch In the end I gave up on trying to run Linux on my specific MacBook. With amdgpu, it would seemingly run fine. Watching videos on Youtube, even with H264ify, the temps would slowly creep up over 90c. I had to bump up the fans quite high with mbpfan. However, the biggest problem was that it would randomly lock up after 20-30 mins of continuous general use. With Intel Iris graphics, even general browsing with firefox was too annoying for me. Even continuously scrolling basic webpages would raise my CPU temps to around 90c with the fans blasting.