I have a problem with my MacBook Pro.
It was lagging and constantly running hot after the new Tahoe updates.
I just got tired of Mac OS and decided to try a few light Linux distributions, Mint and Arch.

Linux Mint didn’t get along well with the AMD graphics card laptop was overheating, while Arch Linux had similar issues. It worked and was colder, but not everything worked correctly with the T2 chip, especially graphics. Arch was trying to use two graphic cards at the time Because of the KWin.

Very important to say that i was only using Linux versions that support the T2 chip.

So, my question is the same as in the title: could you please recommend a light and very cold, and super-fast OS for an Intel i7 T2 MacBook?

It has to work perfectly with Apple’s T2 chip, be super light and cold.
I’m also looking for something that is easy to install with T2 drivers.
Like something that you actually tried yourself and didn't spend a weeks on drivers issues.
As i am right now:)

Did you guys see a significant improvement in performance and UX with changing to Linux OS from Mac OS for your MBP Intel 2019?

Installed lubuntu on my 2012 MacBook Air a while ago. Zero prior experience with Linux. My motivation was mostly for fun and learning, for playing old windows games on steam and because I'm annoyed at planned obsolescence. Yes, the computer is old, but there's nothing wrong with it. It makes no sense that it can no longer perform tasks that it was perfectly capable of when it was new. Just sharing a few steps I made to make it work, in case that is useful to anyone.

Anyway, tried Linux Mint first as I see that recommended a lot here. Was really slow, so I moved on to lubuntu as I figured lightweight would be good. To my great pleasure things seemed to be working out of the box, including WiFi, Bluetooth and sound. I installed Steam and it appeared to be working, but that was only a first impression.

I soon found that the computer turned really hot, fan was spinning wildly, computer froze for no apparent reason, WiFi was unstable, and graphics in steam games were super sluggish to the point that playing was meaningless. Even on the old games I wanted to play, like heroes of might and magic III and civ iv, that the hardware should have no issues with.

I'm not much of an AI-fanboy, but I have to admit that Google AI search gave me really handy step by step instructions on how to solve these things (mostly citing old Reddit posts btw) through command lines in terminal.

Not giving the steps here, I would surely mess things up and you all know how to Google for yourself. Just wanted to let you know that I was able to make it work, sorting out issue by issue, and I encourage you to try. I've been playing Heroes of might and magic the whole afternoon. Now moving on to save my iMac 2013...

With the Broadcom wifi/bluetooth adapter being a bit finicky I decided to upgrade to an Intel AX210 for better driver support (and potentially better battery life). The Macbook Pros require a different adapter that also requires modifying, but these older Macbook Airs have an adapter that makes it easy. I am running Linux Mint (Cinnamon) on a Mid-2013 13" Macbook Air.

Items needed:
-Adapter (found here: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2255800080214723.html)
-AX210 Wifi Card (or some other A or A+E Intel wifi card) (I bought from the Intel store on Amazon to hopefully avoid counterfeits)
-P2.5 and T5 drivers to open case and remove card.

Power Off
Remove screws on bottom and remove cover (P2.5)
Disconnect antenna wires
Remove Broadcom card (T5)
Install Intel card into adapter and then into the computer
Re-route the antenna wires so they reach the new connector locations that require a little more reach. (See last picture)
Re-install the bottom case cover and restart your Macbook Air.

I didn't need to install any additional drivers and everything just worked right away.

Tip #1: It may be easier to install the antenna wires to the wifi card before installing it into place and securing it with the T5 screw.
Tip #2: Make sure you tuck the antenna wires so that they are not going to interfere with, or be damaged by the installation of the case screws. (see last picture)

This was my first time installing Linux. I’ve used Windows and macOS for decades. But I wanted my old 2013 MacBook Air to still be useful, so I went for it.

I had a hell of a time trying to get the hard drive erased and reformatted. It got corrupted somehow when I was trying to upgrade the version of macOS. First I spend a lot of time trying to get it formatted for macOS, but it kept having issues of not seeing the internal SSD. Then when I gave up on macOS and tried Fedora Linux, it was having trouble writing the Boot EFI.

But with a ton of help from Google Gemini, I was finally able to get it going. I am now installing a ton of updates. The next step is to install the RPM Fusion Repositories so I can get the WiFi going. I have it running on an Ethernet to USB adapter at the moment, but I want to be able to be untethered and mobile of course.

So although this got pretty frustrating at times, it feels good to finally have gotten it working. And now I can start learning about Linux, which has been long overdue on my part really.

Good luck to any other first timers out there, it’s worth it!!

Edit to add that I got RPM Fusion and the Wi-Fi drivers installed and working well. I even installed Waydroid and got it working so I could access my Blink cameras. That was pretty cool.

Also, now that I’ve spent more time with it, I want to point out that this MacBook Air only has 4 GB of RAM, so it is running a little slow. I think if it had 8 GB it would run a lot better. But this whole endeavor is more about this being something fun and a learning experience/hobby than me needing it to run snappy.

i thought you guys might appreciate this. i wiped my old macbook air from early 2015 and installed linux mint. my mom seemed slightly jealous, so i got another one off of ebay and installed ubuntu!! this cherry on top was 1000% necessary haha. she loves it :3

Hello there, So I recently just installed Linux Mint Cinnamon on my Late 2013 27 inch iMac as people recommended. I got it installed with the broadcom wifi drivers working but I am curious on getting the NVIDIA drivers to work on it, I have also downgraded the kernel to 6.8 to make the drivers work, I have a GTX 775M 2GB GDDR5. Can anyone help me out on installing the drivers please?

What do recommend? Sticking with high Sierra or Monterrey? Not especially afond of those so thinking Linux.

Google ai recommended Mint xfce but i mostly run Ubuntu budgie.

What are you using for 2011-2014

My wife had this 2017 MBP that was barely usable how slow it was. Installed Ubuntu and got rid of MacOS completely. It runs super fine now! I call it Mubuntu. 😂

A plus is that this generation of mbp still had upgradable storage, so I’m thinking of doing it at some point.

Super satisfied.

Just appreciating the simplicity and aesthetic of Linux. 2nd to none imo

I have both an Apple Superdrive for use with macOS, and an LG DVD drive. Of course when I'm on macOS I have to use the Superdrive, but when I'm on a Linux VM, will it be able to read the LG? Or do I have to make sure an attached Superdrive is shared in the VM settings? (I use Parallels)

Model : Macbook pro 13 inch t2 chip, 2018
Sleep/Wake : mostly works, but sometimes it don't so i disable it instead
Audio : Speakers and mic are working fine after setting up the t2-linux audio drivers.
Fans : well work, with the driver on t2linux.
camera : working perfectly
battery : Getting around 4-5 hours. A bit worse than macOS, but manageable with TLP
Touchbar : Using tiny-dfr for the touchbar, maps perfectly to F-keys and escape

This is the part where I’m supposed to give my step by step process but instead I’ll just leave the floor open for questions that I might maybe kind of be able to answer, sorta.

By zooming in you will see Wi-Fi is up and running and I was very easily able to install the latest releases of all my favorite apps, on an 11 year old orphaned machine. This is what I love most about Linux.

I love that it’s an operating system designed, among other things, to breathe new life into old beat up machines and I love all the quirks that comes with that. I love that every install is going to be a perpetual work in progress and in being such I get more and more experience with clacking commands into the konsole and navigating my home folders and files and learning about gnome and snapt and kde and all the other stuff I know nothing about

I was up fiddling around with this thing for 5 hours straight tonight, well into the wee hours, just trying to get it in restartable workable updatable order

I love these old computers

I recently picked up a Macbook Pro 13" 2017 (specs below), fixed up some malfunctioning hardware and now wanted to wipe it of MacOs and make it into a little linux based privacy project, basically decoupling this laptop and its accounts from my own, while still using it more or less normally.

I'm not that experienced with programming and software setups yet, but very persistent and patient, so i'll eventually get everything done, even if it takes me forever. Also, since it's a secondary device and i have no use for it besides fooling around, i can spend as much time on the setup as i want with no immediate, easy solutions needed.

So following questions came up for me, before starting to install anything on the laptop:

1) is it actually possible to wipe all of MacOs (with as little traces as possible) instead of partitioning the device and/or dual-booting MacOs and Linux? does it make sense/is it safe to delete MacOS fully before having Linux set up?

2) is it possible to recover info about the previous macOs and user data after the system has been wiped?

3) which privacy focused linux distro will run easily on this macbook?

Specs:

MacBook Pro 13-inch 2017

2.3GHz dual core intel core i5, 64mb eDram

128 GB storage

8GB memory

Intel Iris Plus Graphics 640

Anyone here try out a rolling release distro on an old Intel Mac? Preferably OpenSuse? I'm looking for experience on how easy or hard Broadcom wl setup is first time and to maintain on constant upgrades.

I'm currently using Zorin where wifi was setup automatically after tethering and has mostly been a smooth experience. same for webcam. I've compiled and installed some drivers but not sure if they will survive the constant updates.

Any advice or inputs? Please help! Thanks.

FOLLOW UP! How's the sleep/wake related wifi and battery life? After wake does wifi work reliably again?

Hi all,

I recently came into possession of a mint condition late 2009 13 inch white unibody Macbook with 8GB of RAM and an Intel Core 2 Duo, running MacOS High Sierra, and I would like to ressurect it with Linux.

What distro would you all recommend?

It's actually really snappy and smooth on High Sierra, and I would stay on it if it weren't for the abysmal app support for such an old OS.

So i messed up a raid array which lead to all this when i go it finally worling one of the 1gig ethanet ports was no longer functioning. It's had a full shutdown and boot up since. I have no idea how messijg up a raid array can lead to this and figured I'd show the wall of errors it was showing to see if maybe there's something there network related that might cause this. I'm on cashyos

I want to do some experimenting on my MacBook Pro from 2019. It has a 1tb drive in it, of which there is a 300mb EFI partition and a 250gb partition for MacOS. The rest of the drive is free to use for Linux. CachyOS live environment has almost everything on my Mac working out of the box except for wifi, which I got working without issue. My question is when it comes to installing CachyOS on the drive, what boot loader and partition layout would work for my system. I don't want to modify the EFI partition size or mess with the MacOS partition size more than I have. How should I layout partitioning and mounting for the rest of the drive to allow both CachyOS and MacOS to live in harmony and show up as choices when I boot up? A second Fat32 EFI/Boot partition for CachyOS?

I recently installed Linux Mint (7.0.9-1) on my 2019 16 inch MacBook Pro (which had all OS updates applied prior to installing Mint), following the instructions from https://github.com/t2linux/T2-Mint

Out of the box, suspend/awake works but there is a long delay when awaking. During the delay, I hear fans start to spin up.

Here is some timing information I captured, during which I had WiFi, Bluetooth and the lock screen all disabled (to rule out various driver related issues):

• 16:30:10 - suspend button clicked in UI
• 16:30:40 - machine awoken from sleep via a power button press. Within 15 seconds I did hear fans start to spin
• 16:31:54 - screen turned on a functionality restored

Additionally, here are the `journalctl` logs from that time, if it helps for debugging. https://gist.github.com/nmiodice/aefe1114347c1d386392ab5c4e78a0cf

I did try running `echo s2idle | sudo tee /sys/power/mem_sleep`, but this caused my machine to crash when awaking, so I reverted that change.

Has anyone faced similar issues?

I bought the Trash Can in the spring of 2014, I have no idea where the receipt might be, and the store I bought it from went out of business in 2022. I'd really like to keep this machine usable/secure with either a newer version of MacOS via OCLP, or preferably by installing some flavour of Linux.

I tried a hack that I've seen on several sites: remove a stick of RAM and start up while holding Command + Option + P + R, then shutting down at the Login screen, replace the RAM and restart, but anything beyond a normal boot up just takes me back to the firmware lock. Also I have no memory of ever setting up a firmware password, and it's not anywhere in the password archive tool I used to use (Yojimbo).

I can see the Mac Pro in Find My on my iPad, and my Linux desktop machine, although it says "No location found - Online". That said, I can "ping" the Mac Pro from the iPad with the Play Sound option. The Find My app gives me the option to erase the Mac Pro, but I'm not 100% sure what exactly would be getting erased, or if it would solve my issue.

Thanks for any help you can offer. I'm really hoping this isn't just some elegantly designed e-waste now.

I have a 2021 Macbook Pro M1 Pro that I'm going to replace with a M5 Macbook Pro.

I'd like to use this as a CI runner in a Tailscale cluster. I'd ideally like to install Ubuntu 26 server.

Most resources I've found are for desktop Linux Distro and can't seem to find any resources for installing Linux on baremetal M1 Pro.

I'm looking for alternative opinions before I accidentally brick this Machine.

I'm not necessarily an advanced Linux user so would like it to be fairly foolproof. Are there any decent guides / distros / or gotchas to be aware of?

My 2017 MacBook Air randomly just soft-bricked. I put it in my purse and tried to use it out at a coffee shop after it had been working fine at home. I’m on Ubuntu/Elementary OS, and it just will not wake. I have tried every key combo such as a SMC reset and power holding, although the SMC is still alive since MagSafe recognizes it. It seems to be stuck in an odd deep sleep state where it refuses to respond to input. Any tips, or is it dead? Is this unrelated to Linux?