Posted July 26, 2020 I have an old Macbook Pro that I was hoping to repurpose for use with Linux. Any recommendations on where to start? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted July 26, 2020 Edit: welcome to the forum! Pop_OS! seems to be people's go to (its based on Ubuntu, pretty popular Linux OS). I have Linux on my MacBook Air. I forgot where I got the install instructions but I successfully did it as a noob and would recommend Ubuntu. edit: https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac/how-install-linux-on-mac-3637265/ please quote me or tag me @wall03 so i can see your response motherboard buying guide psu buying guide pc building guide privacy guide ltt meme thread folding at home stats pc: RAM: 16GB DDR4-3200 CL-16 CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 @ 3.6GHz SSD: 256GB SP GPU: Radeon RX 570 8GB OC OS: Windows 10 Status: Main PC Cinebench R23 score: 9097 (multi) 1236 (single) don't some things look better when they are lowercase? -wall03 hello dark mode users goodbye light mode users Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted July 26, 2020 Author Thank you so much! I will give it a try! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted July 27, 2020 Author @wall03 and @Grumpy Old Man Thank you so much for the help. When I boot from EFI boot I just get a black screen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted July 30, 2020 I have Fedora 32 running on my 2009 MacBook Pro and 2014 MacBook Pro just fine. Even has a nice Fedora logo on the startup disk menu to select it at EFI boot time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted July 31, 2020 (edited) Macs (Macbook Pro/Air/desktops) are just PCs these days, in principle, there is little special compared to them here. The only (minor thing) is, they don't have a BIOS menu to control what to boot (or enable Legacy etc.). They are completely EFI compliant and will boot any EFI bootable Linux installation media from the USB (at least those I've tried), but Legacy boot is not possible (there's no reason you should use Legacy if you can use EFI in any case). In case you want to dual boot, use Disk Utility in OS X to resize the OS X partition beforehand (IIRC most/all Linux the installers should be able to resize HFS+, but not APFS?). That's the only difference, really. After that, "just install". I've used some form of Linux on my old Macbook Pro for ages. Other problems I've had are similar to what I'd expect with any Laptop (Apple or non-Apple branded). These include the following: The biggest gripes I've had was/is with the touchpad. Apple has made the best multi-gesture implementation on the market, nothing on the Windows or Linuxes user-space software can parallel it, but after tweaking (by command line, searching etc!) a Linux desktop can come close to it. Some of the Wifi drivers for my specific chip were a bit troublesome (cutting off the connection, and the Wifi chip getting stuck); however there are many chips in use on the Macbooks, you may or may not encounter similar problems (EDIT: the chip in the MBP5,5 is BCM4322, and the driver that works best in my case is broadcom-wl. The other drivers are b43 and b43_legacy. However, if you have some other chip, even if it is broadcom branded - this may not be your case.). I had some minor issues with keyboard and display backlight control, however those could be worked around and after some upgrades, the workarounds became obsolete (i.e. it works OOTB now). EDIT: NVidia proprietary driver makes the VCs unusable (black) and Nouveau driver has some issues, too. Specifically: sometimes desktop effects cause some kind of buffer-related artifacts/flickering, which can be worked around by disabling the effects (and re-enabling). Also, connecting another display is ... well, possible but the other one will flicker like crazy (again, looks like some kind of double-buffering issue). However, come to think of it, I haven't had the issues for a few months - but they are rare (I haven't tried another display for a while now). This, too, has nothing to do with Macbooks - it has to do with the specific display adapter they use in this Macbook Pro (5,5)... similar issues are expected on any Laptop using the same display adapter. EDIT: Also, none of these issues can be resolved by choosing a certain distribution, but are Linux/GNU generic. They come down to closed H/W, manufacturers not releasing specifications to their drivers so the support can be added by Linux/Gnu folks, or supporting Linux by themselves. Nothing new here, this problem has been there for ages - and a lot worse on Laptops side than on Desktops. Edited July 31, 2020 by Wild Penquin Many edits and clarifications! Sorry =) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Posted August 1, 2020 I used Parallels 15 to emulate new Ubuntu 20.04 on macOS, works perfectly fine Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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