Very happy with this! Linux Mint looks beautiful on more "modern" software. I say that because before I had installed Ubuntu on a MacBook Air from 2015. But the difference in screen resolution and overall build between that model and this laptop is night and day.

Title basically says it all, but I'd love to know what Linux distro a works best with an Intel Macbook Air 2015 (i5-5250u) that only has 4gb of 1600mhz DDR3 RAM and 128gb of storage.

I use it mostly for school and office work, laptop struggles when I have multiple tabs open in Firefox (averaging 10-20 tabs open, sometimes more) and would occassionally stutter when working with MS Office.

I don't plan on upgrading any parts, and it's currently my only working laptop since my 2021 Lenovo Ideapad stopped booting up.

Thanks in advance for all suggestions!

MacBook Air2013 11inch A1465のバッテリー交換をしようと思うんだけどバッテリー新品にしたらどのくらい持つようになる？経験者の人教えて！

Hi team!

I’ve tried installing Ubuntu on it, and can get it installed but crashes out with a black/static screen.

Internet seems to think its a graphics driver issue.

Is there a linux distro thats easy to install and a bit more compatible with these older macs?

Due to the great Companies no longer giving updates to our "legacy" computers is why I put Linux on it, or else it would have been a huge paper weight! Unfortunately, an update destroyed my Kernel that gave me a blue screen of death, that would not accept any code to fix it. I have to lose everything and reflash that drive. I also did a partition on my desktop to put Linux on, you can also use the Hyperdrive to virtually run Linux within Windows or Apple systems. But I strongly recommend NetworkChuck on FB, he has taught me so much about Linux and Twingate.

I borrowed from my dad a MBP 15' 2017 with a T1 chip/kernel. I've followed a guide from github on installing Ubuntu on this specific model of Macbook (This one). When I tried running the first command in the guide, it told me:

curl: option --dearmor: is unknown
curl: try 'curl --help' or 'curl --manual' for more information

Is there another way to upgrade to the T2 kernel? Is there a guide for T1 models that doesn't sacrifice much or anything? Should I use a different distro or guide? Should I run a different command? Thanks in advance.

Does anyone have recent experience with this model or the 2017 10,1? Keep in mind this is the 12 INCH Retina Macbook, NOT a MBP or an Air. I am a loyal Mint user, not currently interested in Fedora, Arch etc. I have found the Git based Audio and BT patches. Any pointers would be appreciated

I use Arch btw

Uma das coisas que gostaria de ver funcionando nessa questão de engenharia reversa que estão fazendo para vários softwares é o driver de video da Nvidia e Bluetooth funcionando perfeitamente no Linux. Testei várias distros e nenhuma delas dá suporte completo. No vídeo só funciona o Noveau e o Bluetooth muito problemático.

Thanks to the efforts of the Asahi Linux project, slack on silicon hardware is already pretty achievable, a working system can be cobbled together by someone with enough experience or just access to Claude and a bunch of persistence.

After walking a path somewhere in the middle, I wanted to bring something more broadly accessible to the table for anyone else with an interest.

ph0racious/slackware-aarch64-mac: Slackware AArch64-current installer with hardware support for M1/M2 Macs

- Slackware's own installer and kernel
- Build tree with Slackware AArch64-current & Asahi Linux Project upstream
- Human-at-console tested install/build runbooks, documented porting traps

This should run on any M1/M2 mac/book/mini/studio, but as of this moment only an A2686 is fully tested. If you'd like to submit some testing results from an M1/2(/3*) machine you have access to, docs/TESTING.md can explain all of the needful.

*Asahi's M3 support has increased a lot since I began messing with this, so possibly that class of machines can be added to the list with some work, but functionality is presumed broken/missing.

I won't claim that every decision made during development was absolutely the right one, but the premise followed was to 'do it the Slackware way' throughout; follow Patrick V/Stuart W's approach anywhere there was a relevant example, then use best effort to emulate slack's style for anything else this project had to ship to support the target hardware.

Disclaimer:
Though my field is adjacent, it is not software engineering; Opus did tons of heavy lifting.
Many rounds of auditing and manual corrections were done but surely errors/omissions remain.
Any doc content not handwritten was at least worked over to minimize AI rambling, the worst being mostly confined to the historical traps in docs/PORTING.md.

-ph0

TLDR: Is doing a clean Linux Install best for getting rid of MacOS or can I just delete the MacOS partition and shuffle my existing Linux install to the front of the disc? Are there risks of bricking the laptop with SIP being a thing.

So I've been working on a 2017 Intel Macbook air in Kubuntu and it's great, lots of tweaking to get it just how I like and now it's pretty much flawless, never want to go back.

The issue I'm having is I saved the MacOS partition just in case for dependencies etc, but it keeps messing up the EFI and locking me out of GRUB. I think it's something to do with that System Integrity Protection thing, but can't work out how to nuke that for good either. The only fix I've found is installing Kubuntu again on a spare partition so it can reset GRUB as the default boot and then going back into my old install. Not ideal, huge time sink and I'm always worried about my files, even with regular backups. rEFInd was no help, unfortunately. I've thought of making another boot partition as a backup but that kind of seems like more of a headache.

I'm done with MacOS at this point, just want a single boot system. My question is how do I go about doing that without bricking my lappy? Can I just delete the MacOS partition and shuffle my Kubuntu stuff to the front, or should I do a clean install of the whole drive and start from scratch? Would be nice to not have to re-tweak Kubuntu, but very do-able if it'll mean not risking a brick. Current partitions below, sda2 is the problem child, all my good stuff is on sda4.

Thoughts?

I just spent 2-3 days collecting and modifying existing patches that makes running Linux on a MacBook Pro 2017 usable. This includes 5GHz wifi, sound, touchbar and sleep all working. This was only ever tested on Arch so use with caution on other distros.

Disclaimers:

The GPU does work but it does not work with hibernation so if you dont need or want hybernation just skip the Sleep and Graphics section.

AI was used to collect and write parts of the code but I have reviewed it and tested it all myself.

Macbook Pro 14,3 (2017) Starter Kit Github repo

I'm mainly posting it here so other people dont have to redo the same work again.

I hope any of you have any use for it!

I got this from a customer that did not wish to pay a board replacement, this MacBook Pro mid-2012 13 inch with 4 GB RAM 128 GB SSD was having problems loading the OS. It only loaded in Safe Mode. One Cachy OS installation later it runs great just by configuring GRUB with nomodeset and booting onto the LTS kernel.

This is a reply to the post https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_on_mac/s/e9whusdzzb by u/tornado99_

Currently devs at t2linux have been receiving reports of people asking about the post above where the OP frames t2linux for vibe coding and are concerned about the usage of AI in our project.

I would like to clarify that usage of AI is allowed as a tool in development of t2linux, strictly in the same manner as the AI policy of the Linux kernel (https://docs.kernel.org/process/coding-assistants.html). Vibe coding and slop code is strictly prohibited.

Recently KaiT2en (https://github.com/kaiT2en/KaiT2en-Fedora), a recent organisation has also attempted to work on T2 Macs and develop drivers, especially when t2linux is short on devs and has also contributed to t2linux. It is clear that AI assisted coding is being used in KaiT2en, and upon review, it has not been found as vibe coding, and rather been found strictly within the AI policy of the Linux kernel.

We would also like to appreciate the fact that kernel patches developed by KaiT2en devs have also made into the main Linux kernel after strict review from seasoned upstreamed maintainers.

Unfortunately, both organisations are being framed by the post I have replied to. Upon investigating the cause, the issue on one of the t2linux repo seems to have been the trigger: https://github.com/t2linux/kernel/issues/35

In this issue OP wants us to work with their patch they claim to have written manually. But it was found that the patch was actually taken (allegedly stolen) from another repo. On top of that, the original patch was actually coded with the help of Claude! Update: The original patch actual credits OP so I retract this allegation. The details of this can been seen in this issue comment: https://github.com/t2linux/kernel/issues/35#issuecomment-6252240426

Upon confrontation, OP blocked us and KaiT2en devs on GitHub as well as Reddit, and refuses to engage in discussion if something is proven against their interest. They even deleted all their comments on the GitHub issue, which I have reinstated to ensure proper records are kept. This is strictly unprofessional and against the spirit of Linux development where all conversations are open to all. OP has even accused the commit history of our repos while their own repo has a commit history with zero summary (https://github.com/taprobane99/iMac5KLinux/commits/main/). Clearly OP didn't put efforts in documenting their changes and expects people to work with them.

In their post OP claims to be a seasoned dev, and also says this in their post:

"My recommendation if you want a stable system is just to use a recent mainstream distro like Ubuntu 26.10. A lot of their previous good patches are now in Kernel 7.3 anyway."

Being the maintainer of Ubuntu at t2linux, I would like to say that:

1. Ubuntu 26.10 uses Linux kernel 7.3-rc6 which has a regression that crashes the kernel on T2 Macs (Reported: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-pci/CABZrw2HcaOh3DHTJtxU5dXrb3Vg19scr6+qR-xe_+R7rME35_Q@mail.gmail.com/). A fix is upstreamed and is expected to land when 7.3 stable is released.
2. Many patches still are not in mainline kernel, including t2bce (needed for keyboard and trackpad), hybrid graphics, SMC drivers (needed for fan and battery control) and trackpad gestures. I suggest people to research properly before believing in such claims as made by OP.

I would like to reinforce that organisations like T2linux and KaiT2en are strictly working for interests of Linux and the open source community and we have no personal benefits. All softwares are open source, free to use and free to be audited with sane facts rather than random accusations.

Cheers!

Update: based on the comment (https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_on_mac/comments/1x99y47/comment/phx0r92/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button), OP seems to have had similar attitude towards other open source projects.

Hi,

So a new SMC driver has been released for macs, called macsmc-acpi for t2linux

its offers new features such as:

1. Interrupts

2. Actual information about keys, instead of TA0P or TC0c

3. Power Sensors

4. Voltage Sensors

5. New battery driver

6. Watchdog driver

and much more, and i want people to test this driver so it can be upstreamed as soon as possible

especially if you have a macbook older than 2012 (non-retina), as motion sensor is only present in 2012 or older macs.

if you have any issues, or you want credit for ur testing, or just inform me that its been tested on X device. please dm me on discord (@byte), in t2linux/kait2en server, or you can dm me on reddit.

NOTE: fan daemons like macfand or t2fanrd will stop working as this new driver uses different paths, but you can switch to any other standard fan daemon as this driver uses standard paths.

you can find patches here (all patch starting with 30):

https://github.com/t2linux/linux-t2-patches/tree/7.3

Got this bad boy working, plays minecraft, plays HD video, and does everything I need for this! Side note for anyone wanting cosmic, if you try to use btop on the cosmic terminal to monitor temps and usage there is a bug that causes cpu usage to skyrocket and heat up way too hot from even just watching HD youtube videos (even after some fresh thermal paste) . Swapping to alacritty terminal fixed that issue!

I've tried balena etcher and rufus with zorin and mint. No matter what I do the USB comes up as not bootable on a 2020 intel macbook air retina. I've allowed booting from external media cause of the T2 settings and have scrawled through however many forum posts. I keep getting the same issue: when selecting what drive to boot from and picking EFI boot (the usb) I get a black screen and nothing happens. The usb is readable when using rufus but not balena etcher, but they both come up as not bootable in disk utility. On startup it will show the SSD MacOS is on and the EFI boot option, but when restarting with Command+R it only shows the ssd as an option. I've tried multiple USBs and tried them on my pc and they work there. About the only thing I haven't done is bought a usb-c to hdmi adaptor (one forum guy said he plugged his macbook into another monitor and that worked). Please help. I've put zorin on my 2015 macbook no problem but this just isn't working on this one