Linux And Hope For The "Obsolete" Mac

kionon · January 22, 2021, 2:19am

Have successfully set the Apple JP keyboard keys for Japanese input switching work as they do on macOS. I’m nearly to the point where, while some things look slightly different (such as launchpad vs Whisker), the workflow is identical in both macOS and in XFCE with my modifications.

I’ve started a not-for-profit org called Mac Kimi (kimi is Japanese for “you”) in order to start getting older donated and repaired MacBooks into the hands of those in need. With these modifications, it should mean that the recipients (mostly children/teens) will have an Apple device which will allow them to transition to actual macOS on a newer device or on school/work devices and not stick out too much with their peers–they’ll have a MacBook with a visually appropriate, secure and up-to-date OS.

EDIT: now with an answer to Mission Control set to F3!

kionon · July 26, 2021, 1:51am

More donations, more projects (MacBook Air with the octopus is the client’s computer, I am servicing it here, he donated the others):

Like successfully shoehorning 2008 MacBook White internals into a 2006 MacBook Black case (some fabrication, done poorly, required):

The twins, alive and back together again. This finally completes the “Project Oreo” even though, like four years after it started, strictly speaking, two completed machines were made–there is no oreo. But it would be easy enough to swap the front bezel and keyboard to make the Oreo. The difficulty of the transplant has been done.

Also next up to complete is this big boy monster:

All machines running my custom combination of macOS themed items over Linux Mint XFCE 20.2.

Soon will be necessary to take another trip to the Apple store to drop off a bag of old parts for responsible recycling…

cosmichobo · July 26, 2021, 10:41am

Love love love the pic of the Black Macbook with all the screws n stuff scattered around.

Seeing that machine still makes me nostalgic for the one that I never purchased but spent about 2 years asking about at David Jones Carindale… by the time they finally called me with a half descent offer, I wasn’t interested.

kionon · July 26, 2021, 10:04pm

This one was given to me (well plus about $75) in 2011. It had been purchased refurbished and was already failing on the owner. I didn’t know much about fixing computers at the time. Figured if I could fix it, it would be worth it. But then I left it in a closet until my parents sent it to me in early 2018, hence the Project Oreo thread here on AppleTalk.

It worked for a little while on Linux Mint 19, but it was not very useful as a 32bit machine. And slowly but surely ports started failing. Then it finally stopped booting at all. So I knew the logic board was toast, but the case is in really good condition. With this donation of a 2008 MacBook White with a case in terrible condition, and having used three different parts machines to restore my original 2008 MacBook White (the MacBook White of Theseus!), I felt pretty comfortable thinking I could do the swap, despite it not being 1:1. And I was correct! So now I have:

2008 MacBook Black 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GBs of RAM (expandable to 6GB) and a 2008 MacBook White 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2/4GBs of RAM (the 4 is currently residing in the 2007 17" MacBook Pro monster). They run pretty smoothly. The MBW has an SSD, the MBB has a spinning drive. The difference is noticeable, but usable. SSD + 4GB seems to be the sweet spot, given the prices of 4GB sticks of DDR2 SODIMM.

It’s not like they get a lot of use.

jaysee · October 24, 2021, 12:58pm

@kionon are you still using that Mac Pro 3,1? I stumbled across the “OpenCore Legacy Patcher” over the weekend, and am now running Big Sur with no “OS patching” on my Mac Pro 5,1 which I’d written off as a Windows 10 only machine. With 96GB RAM (cheap) and an RX580 I already had, it’s astoundingly fast.

Incredible what OSS communities can achieve!

kionon · April 30, 2022, 1:49am

Logic board started acting wonky. I still have it. But a 5,1 is very different from a 3,1 as you well know…

kionon · May 30, 2022, 10:37am

I have finally gotten around to trying OpenCore Legacy Patcher on a 2011. Will report as to the success.

I only just upgraded to Monterey on the 2015 I bought from you, @jaysee.

jaysee · May 30, 2022, 7:57pm

Nice. I’m really enjoying Monterey I must say (on a 16-inch M1 Pro). The spiritual successor to the 2015 MacBook Pro thanks to it’s MagSafe and HDMI!

kionon · May 31, 2022, 12:26am

I am considering it, but I really like Framework, which goes the total opposite direction. I’m going to try to make this 2015 last until 2025. This was a huge purchase for me. Now, if you’re willing to part with that 16-inch M1 Pro in 2025… Call me? We’ll do it again!

I would be fully linux if not for work, where full access to all the Office 365 desktop apps is necessary.

After four years as an IT professional for the big blue world flag organisation (y’all know the one), I know exactly why Microsoft refuses to release linux versions of office: most of my coworkers, if they had access to office could immediately have their OSs swapped out for “windows style” interface on a mainstream Linux distro on their work computers and never notice the difference.

Our comms people could the same, if the Adobe suite ever moved over the linux.

Here are the results so far with the 2011 (shockingly good):

Webcams working (internal and external), which they did not on dosdude1’s patchers for previous OSs:

Can only drive the 4K monitor at 1080p at 30hz though, but I assume this is a problem with the Intel HD 3000 graphics. Temps and fan are about normal. Clamshell mode isn’t recognised for some odd reason. Other than that… It works just fine.

I’m going to take it to Europe with me on a work trip in July, so I don’t risk my 2015.

Wobbly · June 4, 2022, 12:15am

What a monster thread. Just wishing I could say something relevant but I have just come from Linux Mint as a “central” machine. I say central because I have six computers scattered around here that are always on and running different OS’s - and then there is the seventh which is handed to me by the company. The company machine comes very close to being a serious candidate to run Mint using Kdenlive as the video editing software. Apart from that, the office software (365) I actually prefer to use via a web browser.

As for my hobbies, Linux really cannot be used for ham radio, mainly due to all the different connections to the computer from outboard hardware. There is lots of software for that field but the installation and configuration of those programs is mostly unfriendly. What does interest me is being able to re-spin distros that target a particular audience such as video editors or ham radio operators, so that the process of getting up and running is not so difficult. But even though there is lots of different Linux distros out there, authoring my own is something I cannot seem to grasp. Essentially though, I agree that Linux Mint is the most delicious bistro for the general computer user to dine out on. (Auto-correct chose bistro rather than distro so I ran with it.) The reason I have moved away from Mint recently though is because I had to repurpose the Mint machine for Windows when another of my six machines died and the rotation of hardware I have available ended up making me decide to buy a mac mini, so that existing screens and input devices could be plugged into it.

The next order of business is backing up, which for me has been Clonezilla booted from a USB stick. Bare metal restoring partitions to an exact previous state is currently very easy on Linux and Windows. I cannot for the life of me understand why since Big Sur, Apple makes it fairly impossible. But that’s another story and an ongoing one for me at the moment.

kyte · June 4, 2022, 6:38am

Really??? No Time Machine? Cant use CCC or SuperDuper?
I don’t want to upgrade if all that goes away

Wobbly · June 4, 2022, 7:06am

Without wishing to hijack the thread, it appears that the only way to properly back up a late or current MacOS is to wipe that partition, do a clean reinstall of the OS and then migrate the data or merge it back into the freshly installed OS using Time Machine, leaving areas of the OS still requiring tidying up. Someone please please tell me I’m wrong. I reckon @kionon has done this many many times judging by the work he’s demonstrated above.

kionon · June 7, 2022, 5:36am

She. And I haven’t tried CCC post-Catalina.

richard · June 7, 2022, 7:01am

I have gone back to using Time Machine on my M1 Mac mini & my MacBook Pro but I still also do a CCC backup…

Oldmacs · June 7, 2022, 12:01pm

This is gonna be an important thread given Apple’s latest round of arbitrary dropping of support for Macs - not happy that my Mum’s 3 year old MacBook Air isn’t get Ventura. Would have bought the Retina MacBook Air back in 2019, however she needed a new machine suddenly and there was no way I was saddling her with a faulty design keyboard.

zbaron · July 11, 2022, 5:53am

I dragged out a mid-2007 iMac on the weekend and spent a few hours trying to get Mac OS onto it. Documents claim that it can run up to 10.11 and I even managed to download 10.10 via an Apple support article but no luck.

It’s now running Xubuntu 22.04 quite well. It’s going to be a light work desktop for the kids to muck around with.

Just had a few issues getting Wi-Fi working (Broadcom!) but it was a case of removing the “proprietary” driver that Xubuntu installed by default and installing a better supported (b43) one.

kyte · July 11, 2022, 5:59pm

REally? Seems like Apple just wants everyone to upgrade hardware more often. It may end up being to their detriment if they are going to continue behaving like that. There are probably hardware issues… Maybe no Ventura if you aren’t on Apple Silicon, but geez…3 yr old tech should not be so lightly dismissed. Very disappointing.

Oldmacs · July 12, 2022, 6:40am

It is very disappointing and there is no technical reason for it. They’re absouelty racing to drop support for Intel machines.

The fact that people in their spare time can get Monterey running on hardware back to 2012 says something.

Apple has the resources and money to make good on their supposed environmental friendliness and stop arbitrary dropping of hardware.

iOS is the same - they’re supporting the A9/2GB ram iPad 5 with iOS 16/iPad OS16 but not the A9/2GB 6S and SE or A10/2GB iPhone 7 - if anything it should be the phones getting the support from a technical standpoint given they’ve got far fewer pixels to push.

Even worse is the Apple Watch Series 3 - Apple are still selling it now brand new and it won’t get Watch OS9.

And yes, iOS devices do far better than Android devices, but given how much Apple charges for devices - you’d expect that as a minimum.

kyte · July 12, 2022, 7:20pm

Speaking of which, I am seriously considering selling off most of my Apple stuff and mostly making do with a single iPad, and my iPhone 11 pro… and Linux on my 2012 Mini to serve up media. I haven’t seriously been using mac for anything much for years. Must get Price Check in the relevant forum.

soulman · July 14, 2022, 9:06am

That’s an unusually click-bait-y headline for Ars and the article basically says the opposite:

For all Mac models tracked, the average Mac receives almost exactly seven years of new macOS updates from the time it is introduced, plus another two years of security-only updates that fix vulnerabilities but don’t add new features.

The average Mac receives updates for about 5.5 years after Apple stops selling it. Buying a Mac toward the end of its life cycle means getting significantly fewer updates.

The support period tends to diminish around the time of an architecture change too - the last PowerPC Macs got less time in the sun than their predecessors and less than the machines that followed - and this is likely to be true for the last Intel machines. This is at least partly to do with third party support according to the article.

I’m sure Apple could support stuff for longer, but 9 years average software support (from introduction, including security updates) for such a future focused company isn’t too shabby. Doesn’t mean it’s not a real hassle when you’re dealing with an outlier though.

I can understand your frustration with this. I bought one of those first retina Airs in early 2019, having not heard about the keyboards, and had to deal with them replacing that model with something much better after just a couple of months. Sometimes we pick the wrong horse. Still, my business partner uses it as his daily driver now. He takes it onto building sites most days and never cleans it. Keyboard’s been fine and he likes using it.

I’m sure your Mum’s Air will happily run Linux for many years to come though. Would that be an option for her?