• @[email protected]
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    6120 days ago

    I read this on my 2013 MacBook Air 2013 running EndeavourOS. It runs amazingly well including video meetings.

    • ChouxFleur
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      1720 days ago

      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.

      • @atomp
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        219 days ago

        Out of interest, what kind of battery life do you get out of it?

        • ChouxFleur
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          219 days ago

          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.

          • @atomp
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            219 days ago

            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!

            • @linearchaos
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              18 days ago

              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.

    • TwinTusks
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      319 days ago

      I have a mid 2014 Macbook Pro still running Catalina, I wanted to change it into arch, but it saw very use and mainly my wife use it to watch movies so it doesn’t really seems worth the effort.

    • @[email protected]
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      115 days ago

      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.

  • @[email protected]
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    3020 days ago

    i’ve only owned one macbook in my life and it too came from the e-waste bin and it worked well for about 5 years.

    that’s also where i got a lot of hardware that i still use to this day.

      • @[email protected]
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        -1720 days ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
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          5120 days ago

          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.

          • @[email protected]
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            1120 days ago

            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.

            • FippleStone
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              118 days ago

              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

          • @[email protected]
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            -420 days ago

            Yes but if a person uses a computer and doesn’t want to learn stuff, issues that come from it are (at least partially) their fault.

            • @[email protected]
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              720 days ago

              Sure, but that’s kind of a nonsequitur to the question of whether this would have ended up as e-waste.

              A: Would this end up as e-waste?
              
              B: It's the end-users' fault if it does.
              
              A: Okay, so...would this end up as e-waste?
              

              We don’t literally know, because we can’t predict the future, but we can be reasonably certain that old tech like this laptop would have become e-waste in the hands of your average user, regardless of whether they should have been expected to take the time to learn how to prevent that or not.

        • TimeSquirrel
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          1320 days ago

          Conputer users should have technical knowledge to do stuff like that.

          It’s not the 80s anymore. Normies are using computers now.

            • TimeSquirrel
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              820 days ago

              Happens. Cars used to need special skills to even get started and drive around. Now a five year old can start one and drive off if they can reach the pedals. But they won’t have any clue how it actually works.

  • Dariusmiles2123
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    2620 days ago

    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…

    • @[email protected]
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      20 days ago

      I don’t know why but I thought they were some special inaccessible computers.

      It’s their marketing. Marketing, marketing, bullshit and marketing. Macs get viruses, Macs have vulnerabilities, Macs crash. Doesn’t matter how much their indoctrinated fans might claim otherwise, Macs are just weird PCs. In that context, their refusal to allow their owners to control them is all the more jarring and makes owning the older models like you mentioned all the more sensible.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      720 days ago

      even if they cannot be upgraded they are incredibly well built (excluding those with butterfly keyboards, steer away from those) and will likely outlive any PC you might have from the same year

      • Dariusmiles2123
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        420 days ago

        Yeah but since they aren’t upgradeable anymore, you’re often kind of limited by the 8gb of RAM they often come with.

        It’s also difficult to know how much life an SSD still has in it even if one day I could be tempted by a second hand M Mac and Fedora Asahi…

        • @[email protected]OP
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          320 days ago

          i am not expecting any SSD to be worn out unless the previous owner was into heavy workloads, which isn’t the case for a lot of mac users. You can technically write over the whole SSD hundreds of thousands of time before losing some capacity. Assuming the OS runs on BTRS you’ll be fine as the file system will auto flag bad sectors.

          • Dariusmiles2123
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            220 days ago

            Interesting to know, thanks.

            I don’t remember if you can replace the battery though. That would also be big bet getting on of these used M Macs if that’s not the case…

            • @[email protected]OP
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              219 days ago

              The battery is definitely replaceable but in latest models used to be glued on… I haven’t checked on the Apple silicon models… worse case the Apple Store can do it for you for 70/80€$ You can also remove the glue yourself, there must be an iFixit tutorial on YouTube for it

              • Dariusmiles2123
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                119 days ago

                Well then I guess Apple Silicon Macs might be on my list when I’ll need something to replace my Surface Go 1 if one day it dies or if Fedora becomes more resource hungry in the future.

            • @[email protected]
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              119 days ago

              As a FunFact™, you’re more likely to have the SSD controller die than the flash wear out at this point.

              Even really cheap SSDs will do hundreds and hundreds of TB written these days, and on a normal consumer workload we’re talking years and years and years and years of expected lifespan.

              Even the cheap SSDs in my home server have been fine: they’re pushing 5 years on this specific build, and about 200 TBW on the drives and they’re still claiming 90% life left.

              At that rate, I’ll be dead well before those drives fail, lol.

              • Dariusmiles2123
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                119 days ago

                How can you know how much life an SSD still has? Is it a command in the terminal on Linux? Haven’t found anything in the system information.

                • @[email protected]
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                  119 days ago

                  sudo smartctl -a /dev/yourssd

                  You’re looking for the Media_Wearout_Indicator which is a percentage starting at 100% and going to 0%, with 0% being no more spare sectors available and thus “failed”. A very important note here, though, is that a 0% drive isn’t going to always result in data loss.

                  Unless you have the shittiest SSD I’ve ever heard of or seen, it’ll almost certainly just go read-only and all your data will be there, you just won’t be able to write more data to the drive.

                  Also you’ll probably be interested in the Total_LBAs_Written variable, which is (usually) going to be converted to gigabytes and will tell you how much data has been written to the drive.

        • @pressanykeynow
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          119 days ago

          Your SSD will likely live longer than most of the other hardware. 8gb is surely low but quite enough for running Asahi in daily tasks.

    • @[email protected]
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      519 days ago

      You can put an NVME ssd into a 2013-2017 MacBook Air or ‘13-‘15 Pro with a $15 adapter

      RAM can’t be upgraded on any Mac laptop post 2012

  • @[email protected]
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    1919 days ago

    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

  • @sfxrlz
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    20 days ago

    Im running my 2015 mbp on the newest macOS and it’s still quite okay.

    • 𝕾𝖕𝖎𝖈𝖞 𝕿𝖚𝖓𝖆
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      720 days ago

      My wife’s 2019 16" MPB is running pretty great. Probably got another 5 years of life left in it. She uses it to watch YouTube and play Sims 4.

      My 2016 Acer Aspire V3-372T is hanging in there running Debian. 60 FPS YouTube videos are getting to be too much for it anymore. I may have to put the old girl to rest one of these days.

      But hey, it does play Minetest pretty flawlessly.

      • @[email protected]
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        420 days ago

        We have a 2010 laptop that was useless with Windows. Runs NixOS now. Wife uses it for youtube, zoom calls, email etc. It is super responsive.

        • 𝕾𝖕𝖎𝖈𝖞 𝕿𝖚𝖓𝖆
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          219 days ago

          I gave my brother my Sandy Bridge laptop that got me through college. New battery and charger and it’s all set. The 1366x768 resolution doesn’t render pages very nicely anymore, though.

      • @[email protected]
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        119 days ago

        I envy you, because my 2019 MBPro has fans always spinning and it seems slow and bugged, especially with the latest macOS.

        Maybe I should just try formatting, but I don’t know if it’s worth the hassle.

        • @stellargmite
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          119 days ago

          My 2019 mbp is my work daily driver doing fairly heavy design , video, and blender work no problem. Runs well. Probably gets 6-10 hours a day of use. Video rendering a little slow but not egregiously so. It was upgraded to the max though. Its late 2019 intel. Not sure if its on latest OS but shouldn’t be too far behind.

    • @[email protected]
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      720 days ago

      It still runs decently, I often forget it’s a 10 year old machine. I boot Ubuntu on it for work though, and boot Windows on it for the occasional game. It’s a useful machine.

    • joewilliams007
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      620 days ago

      with apple devices, they do have long update periode. But when its over, the device is basically trash.

          • @olympicyes
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            320 days ago

            I think you got downvoted because you put 2021 instead of 2012. Made the comment sound hyperbolic instead of factual.

          • @sfxrlz
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            119 days ago

            Yeah I mean mine isn’t fast but it’s still usable imo. The MacBook air 2012 was already particularly bad in its lifetime, I remember doing it support for the company I was working for at the time and the air 2012 were only used for lightweight stuff but already so slow.

  • Eugenia
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    1020 days ago

    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

      • Eugenia
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        320 days ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
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          218 days ago

          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.

    • @[email protected]
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      120 days ago

      Do you have any insight into getting Linux to play nice with the different components of fusion drives? I have an old iMac and Mac mini both with Fusion Drive and after installing fedora or Ubuntu the SSD is seen and mounts fine but while the HDD is seen it doesn’t mount at startup despite setting it to mount at startup. I’d like to use these machines for some archiving and media hosting but that’s difficult if I can’t reliably access the much higher capacity drives.

  • @[email protected]
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    820 days ago

    Is there anything that doesn’t run linux lol?

    How many hoops (if any) did you have to jump through to install?

  • @[email protected]
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    819 days ago

    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

  • Panos Alevropoulos
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    820 days ago

    I recently flashed Mint on a MacBook Air 2012, but WiFi is really unstable and slow. Probably a driver issue. I had worse luck with Debian and Fedora.

    • @willougr
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      620 days ago

      If you are using an external screen see if wifi improves with it disconnected. This took me far too long to figure out…

    • @[email protected]
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      420 days ago

      Had the same issue on MacBook pro 2012. Solution for me was to use broadcom-wl-dkms in case that might help you as well

  • @[email protected]
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    320 days ago

    Tbh those things are great little thin clients to leave near your couch, despite their age

    • @[email protected]
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      218 days ago

      I just put one down as I walked away from the couch a few minutes ago. :)

      I bought it to carry in my backpack in Europe. Super light. Super handy. And inexpensive enough that I did not worry too much of it being lost, broken, or stolen ( which it never was ).

    • @[email protected]
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      620 days ago

      I still don’t know how people manage to fray those things. I used my 2013 for 10 yrs and the cable is still like new. They’re built pretty well. However, I do appreciate that the new ones are just usbc cables that plug into the brick so you can swap the cable if it does start to wear. Or so you can use MagSafe cables on non-apple power supplies.