this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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A friend of mine has an old macbook air. It still works, more or less, but the OS isn't getting any updates anymore, and updating to the latest OS seems dicey.

Has anyone had experience installing linux on an old macbook? From a quick internet search it looks like you can just make a bootable USB and have at it. Thinking mint because it's popular and my friend is a pretty basic user. The laptop will be mostly used for like youtube/netflix and basic web browsing.

Edit: a little extra context: I am moderately comfortable with Linux. I ran mint for a while on my desktop, and I've done software development for a job. I can install docker and start a python project fine, but I'd use a GUI for like partitioning a hard drive.

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[–] data1701d@startrek.website 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

It's pre-T2, so it should be very easy to install a Linux distro on it. The only bit of misery you're going to encounter, as others have said, is the Broadcom drivers. Except for a select few distros, you'll probably need a USB Ethernet adapter for installing the operating system and adding the drivers.

Also, I'd rather put my hand in the circle saw than try running a rolling release on this laptop because the driver uses DKMS, meaning that kernel updates sometimes break it.

I only know this because the desktop I'm typing this on has a Broadcom Wi-Fi card from when I used to bare metal Hackintosh this machine. I've since moved to a nice house with an Ethernet port in every room; also, I just use macOS in a VM these days anyways.

As others have said, OCLP is a thing and a well-oiled machine from what I hear, but also, the oath I have made to the Church of Linuxology demands that I at least recommend Linux. Wink

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I have not had a problem with the WiFi on EOS. It installs fine out of the box.

If you are worried about it breaking, just install both an current and an LTS kernel. If current ever breaks, just boot into LTS. After a couple of days, boot into current again because it is probably fixed.

I have had the FaceTimeHD camera break for a few days before. That is why I run two kernels.

[–] data1701d@startrek.website 1 points 1 day ago

I always just booted the old kernel when I ran into the issue, but it was less than ideal, which is why I would prefer to run a stable distro in this case.

Also, isn't ElementaryOS a stable distro anyway due to being Ubuntu-based?