another option that works for me is macast. that's a DLNA sink that you can send youtube (and other) videos to and it plays it via mpv, in full screen if you so desire. it also accepts jellyfin, you can control it remotely (via AllCast).
so I'm browsing videos in newtube on my phone, send them to allcast, and that one sends them to macast. sounds convoluted but its like three taps and an alternative to chromecast.
pre-2010 macbooks can be had for like $10 nowadays. those had the touchpads (and webcam, keyboard, etc) connected via USB to the system. pinouts are available on the net and with a little bit of effort and maybe 3D printing you can have your bespoke rig.
rooting for the guys although I don't want none of them things. I run my device without a modem on (hopefully I disabled it correctly) and I want it to run like my other shit runs - I turn it on when I want it, no doing shit in the background nobody asked it to, syncing to the clown, none of that.
the results are awesome - I get like days of standby out of a severely degraded battery that can't manage a whole day under android. still, I understand that other people need this stuff. for me, SMS and calls utilizing the utterly broken, insecure, and definitely compromised telecom infra shouldn't be a thing in 2025.
get the serial off the bottom case, go to everymac and look it up. if it's a 15" model, that one has the T2 chip and needs a special variant, look up t2linux
"a macbook" is kinda broad, what model you got? no, I'm running linux on discarded macbooks for years and know my way around them.
I have 2010s (nVidia GT330M) and 2011s (Radeon 6xxx) in various states of decay in the double digits, I get them in the sub$10 range. all of them can easily be repurposed as linux workstations, their finnicky broadcom wifi notwithstanding. all of them can have the discrete graphics turned off, whether they work or not - less heat, longer battery life, no driver complications.
this is the first 2012 I've gotten, as they were always unreasonably expensive for their advanced age - coulda gotten ten 2011s for the price of one 2012! so now I got one and it's... meh; yeah it's better (Ivy vs Sandy, HD4000 vs HD3000, USB3.0, etc.) but nothing spectacular. still, for $20 I could do worse.
if you're savvy enough to know about gdm, you're savvy enough to know to include at least some details, like what graphics you're running, X11/Wayland, etc.
on fedora (ain't got iwconfig no more) it's sudo iw wlp3s0 set power_save off or whatever your device is.
boot off a ubuntu usb. connect to wifi prior to install. now install. all the drivers and settings are integrated in your install. this is the easiest and "just works" option out there.
broadcom != broadcom, there are a buncha those in different macbook models and some have lotsa issues, some minor. that's the price you pay for repurposing decade-old hardware. me, I am fine with the tradeoffs (MBP 15 2012 on Fedora ova here). good luck!
I got a Macbook Pro 15" 2012 (i7 Ivy quad-core) with an excellent battery for $20. retrofitted it with 16 GB for $15 and a "damaged" 500 GB SSD for $10. runs Fedora with Plasma like a dream - that kinda deal?
this morning scored a 15" hires 2011 for less than $5 that I'm gonna take the screen off and transplant it ova here. plan to rock this beast for many, many moons.
I've recently upgraded my hard drives used for storage. and because I ain't made of money, I wanted to sell the old drives.
shredding those things took ages (4 TB drives). lesson learned, new drives are btrfs + LUKS that gets unlocked via key file. so when the time comes to sell those, I won't bother with shredding, just sell them as is.