A friend of mine has an old macbook air. It still works, more or less, but the OS isn’t getting any updates anymore, and updating to the latest OS seems dicey.

Has anyone had experience installing linux on an old macbook? From a quick internet search it looks like you can just make a bootable USB and have at it. Thinking mint because it’s popular and my friend is a pretty basic user. The laptop will be mostly used for like youtube/netflix and basic web browsing.

Edit: a little extra context: I am moderately comfortable with Linux. I ran mint for a while on my desktop, and I’ve done software development for a job. I can install docker and start a python project fine, but I’d use a GUI for like partitioning a hard drive.

  • LeFantome@programming.dev
    1·
    2 days ago

    I have not had a problem with the WiFi on EOS. It installs fine out of the box.

    If you are worried about it breaking, just install both an current and an LTS kernel. If current ever breaks, just boot into LTS. After a couple of days, boot into current again because it is probably fixed.

    I have had the FaceTimeHD camera break for a few days before. That is why I run two kernels.

    • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      I always just booted the old kernel when I ran into the issue, but it was less than ideal, which is why I would prefer to run a stable distro in this case.

      Also, isn’t ElementaryOS a stable distro anyway due to being Ubuntu-based?

      • LeFantome@programming.dev
        1·
        11 hours ago

        I have not used Elementary in a long time. More “static” than stable though I would say. And you may have a problem with app selection.

        It is less of a problem these days with things like Distrobox and Flatpak that you can use to expand your application selection.

        • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteEnglish
          1·
          9 hours ago

          I mean, I think static is stable.

          I feel like stability in some contexts means more than just the software not crashing often (although that is the big part); it means being able to expect the behavior to stay the same until you’re ready to upgrade to the next release and confront the new behavior all at once, sort of like upgrading Windows XP to Windows 7.

          There’s certainly a place for rolling release - I use Debian Testing on my desktop - but I certainly appreciate being able to go a month without opening my laptop without getting a daunting notification like “There are 1578 updates available “ (on my Debian 12 Thinkpad, it’s usually only double digit, very minor updates).