I read this on my 2013 MacBook Air 2013 running EndeavourOS. It runs amazingly well including video meetings.
I have 2016 MB Pro with EndeavourOS as well. I can’t say I don’t like it, but I tend to have quite poor luck with my installs. Each time I get to the customization stage, sth breaks a little. Probably should go pure Arch.
Nevertheless, on MacBooks up to 2014 it should be much easier and require less effort.
My mid 2013 MacBook air sees more use than any of my other devices.
I bought it for £100 a few years back and haven’t looked back.
Out of interest, what kind of battery life do you get out of it?
Depends - average would probably be about 2-3 hours? Not great but not awful for my use.
I could replace the battery and improve this - ifixit sell the kits - but currently I have no need.
Ahh right, I’m getting about 4ish hours on my quite healthy battery on Mint, which felt short. I just fiddled about with TLP and dropped the discharge rate by half-ish. Otherwise it’s a great little low-cost device!
Running Ubuntu on my 2015 air I struggle to get 2 hours out of it. I was able to get TLP to bring it close to 4, But it was at the cost of being borderline unusable.
I really wish I could install Linux on my old iPad :(
I played around with old iPads for a bit and then gave up. successful vendor lock for sure. I just wanted a home assistant front end without having to sign in to apple or use safari
Yeah I won’t be buying an iPad ever again haha
I’ve been running Mint and Debian on old hardware too. A Macbook Air 2011 and one from 2015, and a Mac Mini 2014. Mint works great on them AS LONG AS you have at least 4 GB of RAM, especially since it can install the broadcomm wifi driver. Lots of screenshots and images from them here: https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/media
old hardware […] at least 4 GB of RAM,
Not that old then…
The oldest I have is from 2009. It’s quite old. It came with 4 GB of RAM. That’s how I was buying computers back then, with enough ram. We have to go back to 2006 to find me buying a computer with 2 GB of RAM. I got my lesson in 1995, shortly after having bought my first PC, a 486DX/40 with 4 MB of RAM. 6 months later Windows95 came out, and I couldn’t run it, it needed a minimum of 8 MB. It was swapping like hell. So I got my lesson early on. Now, I buy new laptops or computers with minimum of 32 GB of RAM.
It is more important what it can be upgraded to. RAM will be cheaper tomorrow ( historically ).
The problem is the non-upgradable trend in laptops. Ironically I have MacBooks from 2012 with 16 GB in them but much never ones that are stuck at 8.
Picked up some ‘busted’ laptops from a mate’s work clearout (they were decommissioning a building. I also got nine pine64’s and two r202s, mate got a full rack cabinet lol)
One new nvme and one disk repair later and i have a pair of vaios
MacBook Air club represent!
Can I join this club even though I don’t have an Air?
I’ll allow it.
Not sure if it’s e-waste. The CPU should be decent enough for movies and office tasks.
if you wanted to run macOS on this then yes, it would definitely be ewaste
I personally don’t share the same definition of e-waste. Having to install Linux, a custom ROM or modded software to make the machine fully usable doesn’t make it complete e-waste imo. Conputer users should have technical knowledge to do stuff like that.
That’s the point. Most users don’t know how to do that, can’t be bothered to learn, so this laptop would have been e-waste under most other circumstances.
I think their confusion comes from OPs title.
Why is it “e-waste go brrrrrrr” when OP is presumably saying they’re keeping this laptop out of the machine? _ machine go brr is a dumb meme in the first place, people using it the wrong way makes it even dumberer.
Oh man I cannot stand it, it’s a tolerable meme format at best when used correctly, but I find it insufferable when it’s applied mindlessly like this
I just replaced the battery in my wife’s 2013 mbp. macos runs like absolute shit on it, so i’m excited to flash linux. I like fedora but thinking i’ll start with LDME
Fedora might run well but LMDE will 100%
Debian will run on anything
You have a lot of incredible Macs waiting to be grabbed for cheap after Apple discontinued support.
Before converting my girlfriend’s MacBook Pro to Linux, I never thought it would be possible. I don’t know why but I thought they were some special inaccessible computers.
It’s just a shame the latest ones aren’t upgradeable. Apparently the last easily upgradeable one was the 2012 MacBook and the 2019 MacPro…not sure though…
