A friend wants to gift me an old macbook pro he no longer uses. Specs follow:
MacBook Pro, Core i5, 2.8 GHz (I5-4308U), model A1502 (EMC 2875), Retina Mid-2014 13", MacBookPro11,1, RAM 8 GB, VRAM 1.5 GB, Storage 512 GB SSD
Out of principle I don’t use anything made by that brand and the only way I see myself using the hardware is if I can nuke the software and install any linux distro, ubuntu is the distro I know best.
Can it be done?
Any drawbacks?
It’s a model with a screwed aluminum case, meaning I cannot unplug the battery when I don’t need it. How long does it last?
Alternatively, what could I use this notebook for? Is there anything apple does better than linux that deserves I don’t nuke it?
I had Fedora and Arch on a 2012 Intel MacBook pro, it’s running well, I think macos manages power consumption better, either way I believe if you have no dGPU you should be good to go, also you probably must check the Arch wiki Mac page (regardless of what disro you choose)
I had Arch on my trusty 2012 MBP too, right up until my SSD gave out 😓
It ran great while it was alive tho and I’d definitely recommend it.
Linux is the best thing to revive an old beast. I used on my wife 2012 MacBook Pro with upgraded SSD and Ram and it’s now a monster.
I only had to enable RPM fusion for WiFi to work, otherwise everything worked perfectly out of the box.
would you write what flavor you use?
Fedora Workstation with Gnome. Forgot to mention it 😇
It’s a model with a screwed aluminum case, meaning I cannot unplug the battery when I don’t need it. How long does it last?
Considering that it’s a 10-year old battery, it would’ve already degraded significantly, even if it wasn’t being actively used. If battery life is important to you, you should first consider getting a replacement battery.
As to how long it’ll last, that can only be answered by you as it depends on which distro you’re going to use, what DE/apps you’ll run, and your actual usage patterns/workload.
Is there anything apple does better than linux that deserves I don’t nuke it?
Adobe CC, or multimedia stuff in general. And the fact that you can run MS Office natively. But if you don’t care about that, then just nuke it.
I’ve seen an Apple battery or two puff up at that age. Highly recommend getting that old battery swapped out.
Battery replacement will also boost your CPU performance, it’s worth spending a bit of money on it.
Linux fan here. I run Linux on and old 2008 iMac, a 2009 MacBook Pro, a 2012 MacBook Pro, and a 2017 MacBook Pro. EndeavourOS mostly.
Linux works amazingly on this hardware. Old Apple stuff is great gear and still looks pretty good too.
I have upgraded RAM and storage as much as possible which makes a huge difference. I actually found the 2009 unit sitting on the intake shelf at my local recycling centre. It needed a new battery but has been awesome. I keep it downstairs at home as my other computers are upstairs. I take it with me on trips where I would worry about wrecking a computer ( camping road trips for example ). I can access my Proxmox server to hit a few remote desktops and the beautiful screen and awesome keyboard make it a joy to use.
Where is macOS bette? If we are being honest, any serious macOS user will have accumulated use cases that are not as well met by Linux. Media related especially like photo and video editing. I cannot even find programs like “subler” for Linux which you would think Linux would have. Niche proprietary tools as more common on macOS. So even reading a PDF signed with a certificate can be annoying on Linux ( without Adobe Acrobat or Reader ).
If you are a developer, I would argue Linux is better.
I am a Linux user though so I am the opposite. If you give me a machine running macOS, I want to get Linux on it. For me, Linux is so much better and 10 minutes on a Mac and I will be frustrated with what it cannot do.
Even for a Mac user, Mac hardware becomes much less usable after it falls of support for thee latest macOS as so many apps will quickly become incompatible after. As I run Arch on my 2009 Mac, it has all the software I use totally up-to-date and current with the latest releases available. You just cannot compete with Linux for that.
The first hit is a reddit thread asking about the I7 version of the same vintage. Sounds like Pop!OS works better than Ubuntu for that machine at least.
It’s works fine with lots of different Linux. There’s another person a week or so ago who asked just this very question. The battery lifetime is directly correlated to how many times it’s been drained and recharged, not age.
If you don’t already have a mac, I’d keep a version of macos on there. It’s useful for running native applications and you can use it to download and create boot media for old versions of the operating system to fix other macs you stumble across.
A very neat thing for multibooting different versions of macos that support the apfs file system is that they can be volumes contained inside an apfs partition. That means that if your new version and old version are each 10gb then your apfs partition only has 20gb used and both the versions will see all the free space and be able to use it.
One thing that macos inarguably does better than linux or windows is color management.
I’m speaking as a 25 year linux user: at least take the chance to learn macos. It’s a useful skill to have and it’s good operating system especially on the target hardware.
I am running arch on a 2011 MacBook pro. so, probably. Even if you don’t plan on using arch, the wiki has all the info to get you started.
Checking in with a 2014 27” iMac. It’s still running the original 3TB Fusion Drive, and I stuffed 32gb ram in there too.
I’ve been doing a bit of distro hopping with it. Have run Ubuntu and Linux Mint with no issues and currently running the latest Kde Neon beautifully.
Recently I followed this guide on my late 2013 retina MBP and ended up with a fully working system. Used the latest Ubuntu [edit: 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish] at the time. No hiccups that I recall. I’m not a Linux expert but I am familiar with installing and configuring Debian and Ubuntu. YMMV.
After letting the poor thing gather dust for several years, now I use it most every day.
Edit 2024-03-08 to clarify the release that I used
Ubuntu worked out of the box for me on my mid 2015 Macbook Pro. Don’t remember any specific drawbacks, but it does take a bit of getting used to the differences. Also dual booting is possible, if you want to consider having both systems on the same laptop, good if you need Facetime or something
I have a 2013 MacBook Air. No issues. I have open core legacy patcher on the Mac OS side to push me well past the cut off for the OS, but it’s slow. The Ubuntu side works great still. Good battery life and the battery is still the original, I believe. I don’t remember ever changing it out. Been meaning to switch to LMDE or something, but I had a number of false starts dual booting back when I did it and have been busy.
I have LDME on an 2012 Air and, oh boy, it is flawless. Works straight out of the box
I have an A1502 Macbook that I have been using for work since it was new in 2014. It triple boots Windows, Linux and OSX, but I only really use Linux.
Mine has the same CPU, a i5-4308U but 16GB of memory, I think it was a custom order at the time.
If I recall I did the regular bootcamp process you would do to install Windows, installed Windows on a subset of the free space and Linux on the rest.
I’ve got Linux mint 21 on it currently, but I have had vanilla Ubuntu at different times. I can’t think of anything on it that doesn’t just work off hand.
You could use it for iMessage/other apple hardware locked apple software
The latest macOs likely does not support hardware that old any more.
I didn’t realise that those apps only worked on the latest version of macOS.
Well, the older versions are unsupported, I for one wouldn’t buy hardware just to run an unsupported OS version to run software that might break with any update on that OS version if the developers think they need some feature only available on later versions or will only support installation with some mechanism that changed over time.
I have a 2013 “air” that was updated to 10.15 (so 64bits) ; I bought it dirt cheap secondhand for one specific app, and out of the box it did update itself when I connected it not so long ago. I changed the battery, too - most resellers include the impossible screwdrivers needed to open the strange tri-lobe screws.
If OP has a use for it, it’s not bad hardware with backlit keyboard, a decent screen, lightweight. With a new battery it’s a decent all-day workhorse. My main machines are 5th gen Intel, and I remember nothing wrong with 4th gen.
Any distro will run on it, or should. I’d bet you’ll get the spinning cube & wobbly windows easy peasy. If it’s free, just try it out.
Have fun!
I didn’t say they shouldn’t buy it to run Linux on it, just that I wouldn’t buy some old hardware just to run an already unsupported OS on it.
By ‘the developers’, do you mean Apple?
I installed Linux Mint last night on a 2011 Macbook Air. Unfortunately Debian (which was my first choice) was reproducibly crashing during downloading updates, during the installation. It also was not supporting the touchpad during installation, had to use a mouse (I’m sure it would work after installation though as it would use a newer kernel then). Mint worked without a hitch in all levels.
You should have tried LMDE. That is the best way to get Debian and also ease of install
I’ve tried LMDE in the past, it had the same bugs as Debian, as it’s based on it.
Yeah but the current version is based on Bookworm. In other words a lot of drivers are included on it and it is really plug and play. I have I installed it on a 2012 Air and everything just worked out of the box
I have a 2010 running Mint LMDE, and it runs so much better than the Mac os x that it had did. The i5 is an Intel CPU, so it should be fully possible. Download a live image and boot from it. Test it out. If it works as expected, I stall. The 2010 has a screw off bottom, so I switched out the drive to preserve the original OS X, since the installation may not be available for much longer.
Edit: sorry I didn’t answer the “Is there anything apple does better than linux that deserves I don’t nuke it?” question. I like to answer these types of posts as impartial as possible. Since I don’t actually like Mac OS X’s UI and UX, I didn’t feel I could do that. I can only recommend that you as I did, and preserve the original drive if possible, so you can go back to Mac OS X if you want.
Debian on a base model 2013 MacBook air checking in. Runs better than it ever did on Mac OS. Battery life is still fine. I did have to use proprietary drivers for some things (wifi and webcam) but other than that it was pretty much plug and play.
Lots of replacement parts are on ebay for cheap, and there are a lot of repair tutorials on YouTube (and piped.video) I replaced keyboard and trackpad cheaply, and some of the internal cables.
As far as drawbacks, if you have to replace the storage or or logic board, those are expensive. I have a sound issue which I haven’t been able to fix and from searching around it looks like a logic board would be required. Bluetooth headphones work fine though so I’m just dealing with it.
