My grandma just gave me her old MacBook Pro (MacBookPro11,1 A1502) and, after removing a spicy pillow, air dusting everything, and copying off her old photos, I’m ready to do a clean install.

I would like to dual-boot either Linux or BSD (which will be my main partition) alongside macOS (which will be handy for testing and for use with certain peripherals; either Mavericks, High Sierra, or Big Sur).

I am already well-versed in unix-like operating systems, so I’ll only start having trouble if I try to use a source-based distro (e.g. Gentoo, Source Mage, LFS, etc.)

Can I have some recommendations for the Linux and the macOS version, please?

  • @[email protected]English
    2•9 months ago

    What’s your reasoning for the MacOS choices? I generally prefer Catalina for that era machine.

    • Hellfire103OPEnglish
      2•9 months ago

      Catalina could be the one, in that case. Essentially:

      • Mavericks is the only supported version with skeuomorphic icons
      • High Sierra is the earliest version still supported by enough developers for my needs
      • Big Sur is the latest version supported on the MacBook
      • @[email protected]English
        3•9 months ago

        Gotcha. I have a 2015 Air that I tried Big Sur on and I didn’t care for it at all, went back to Catalina and it runs great. Monterey could run on this machine, and I prefer it to Big Sur, but it just doesn’t add anything I want and comes with a performance hit.