Ah, some still think it's an interesting thing to run linux in mb. It's ordinary. Soo ordinary and is a must to do
Running Linux on My MacBook
11–20 of 179 posts
Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#12Every post like these, the TODO list is super long. This reminds me again why I don't want Linux in the first place.
Linux is fine and nearly zero effort to set up in general.
Unless you run it on very customized special built systems like what Apple tends to produce. Same might apply to some other vendors as well.
Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#13Thank you for writing this! Whenever I see people using Linux as their main laptop OS, I'm struck by remembering the amount of tinkering needed circa 1999 which was the last time I did it. Having read this -- the custom scripts, the "suspend still doesn't work properly" -- it feels like that's still the case.
do you think computers should just go to sleep when you close the lid? how naive...
Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#14Converting a machine that works well out of the box into a machine that requires custom scripts and constant tinkering to handle simple tasks seems like a waste of time.
Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#15Ah, some still think it's an interesting thing to run linux in mb. It's ordinary. Soo ordinary and is a must to do
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Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#16Thank you for writing this! Whenever I see people using Linux as their main laptop OS, I'm struck by remembering the amount of tinkering needed circa 1999 which was the last time I did it. Having read this -- the custom scripts, the "suspend still doesn't work properly" -- it feels like that's still the case.
> it feels like that's still the case.
It isn’t. But it still has some rough edges for sure. It highly depends on the hardware you are using. MacBooks are not manufactured to make it easy for alternative OSes.
OP is also trying to use the i3 window manager. It’s barebones, labor intensive and meant for tinkerers and advanced users. If you want an easy plug and play experience you should use a desktop environment.
Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#17Every post like these, the TODO list is super long. This reminds me again why I don't want Linux in the first place.
I think the real answer is buy a laptop that just works and don't bother with Apple devices. However it's nice to be able to re-purpose old hardware, even if it's a bit of a hill to climb :)
Yes, a much easier path would have been to eBay the MacBook and spend the money on a second hand ThinkPad. You would get more bang for your buck and less headaches.
Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#18Thank you for writing this! Whenever I see people using Linux as their main laptop OS, I'm struck by remembering the amount of tinkering needed circa 1999 which was the last time I did it. Having read this -- the custom scripts, the "suspend still doesn't work properly" -- it feels like that's still the case.
You're seeing an extreme case here. Macbooks are actively breaking other OSes. Better to treat it as: "look how much you can bend Linux to work on a proprietary toaster", rather than "look how hard it is to run Linux on a laptop".
Newer generations of macbooks just won't work at all. There's no workaround for recent sound (unless it gets reverse engineered) or wifi (unless you rewrite Linux stack to work around broken firmware) devices, and it's likely to only get worse. Here's a good collection for hardware support: https://github.com/Dunedan/mbp-2016-linux
This is not representative of non-apple brands.
Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#19Author here. Post is a bit rambling but I just wanted to document somewhere the things I encountered along the way with links to resources, to save someone having to trawl the web for it next time.
About sway, if you don’t mind using Firefox, that works natively under Wayland. On another note though, the reason I don’t use sway, is that I couldn’t figure out how to get inertial scrolling working... Did you manage this, or just not bother with inertial scrolling?
I use the chromium ozone packages from the AUR with sway on Wayland and they work fine.
The real problem with wayland are all the apps that just don't support it. From emacs, to, e.g., all the electron apps built with older versions of chromium, etc. You can use them seamlessly with Xwayland, but then a lot of things work "weirdly", e.g., HiDPI displays blurry Xwayland apps, applications like obs-studio cannot record some apps, etc.
The the Sway ecosystem main drawbacks are the immaturity of the tools (e.g., waybar (i3bar replacement), wofi (rofi replacement), etc.) and the drawbacks of wlroots (e.g. lack of nvidia support in contrast to gnome and kde, etc.).
Many things kind of "just work" under Wayland, but many things also kind of just don't properly work. Using pipewire to, e.g., stream desktop apps via webchat from firefox/chrome works weirdly, streaming one monitor or one sway workspace from firefox/chrome does not work, capturing one workspace from sway using obs studio in another workspace does not work, etc.
Re: Running Linux on My MacBook
#20Every post like these, the TODO list is super long. This reminds me again why I don't want Linux in the first place.
I think the real answer is buy a laptop that just works and don't bother with Apple devices. However it's nice to be able to re-purpose old hardware, even if it's a bit of a hill to climb :)
I agree with your second paragraph and I’m definitely one of those that like to tinker with old hardware. I successfully installed Ubuntu on my Mac without too much fuss however Apple devices and MacBooks especially are already laptops that just work. I’m not a fanboy myself but the amount of time I spend configuring a Linux/Windows PC as compared to a Mac is almost always double.