Ask HN: What do you do with your old Intel MacBooks? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What do you do with your old Intel MacBooks?

#21

Post by ilt » Thu, May 16, 2024, 10:08 AM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #2

Linux should work well on it, so, if that's your thing, go for it. You can, however, keep the machine running unsupported newer version of macOS. That's what OpenCore Legacy Patcher does - it patches a newer macOS to recognise and run on an older Mac. YMMV, of course, and there will be a point when there are no Intel versions of macOS whatsoever.

Which linux flavor will work well with Macbook Air Early 2015 version with most drivers taken care of for essentials like wifi, bluetooth, graphics, trackpad, etc?

Re: Ask HN: What do you do with your old Intel MacBooks?

#22

Post by sircastor » Fri, May 17, 2024, 2:33 PM UTC

Look into open core legacy patcher. It’s imperfect (my 2014 MBP is hosed atm because of a bad update) but it’ll let you run the latest macOS.

Re: Ask HN: What do you do with your old Intel MacBooks?

#23

Post by belthesar » Sat, May 18, 2024, 4:08 PM UTC

i_don_t_know wrote: post #8

I'm using this example project from Apple to create and run linux virtual machines on macOS: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/virtualization/run... (Download the example project, build it in Xcode and run it. Point it to a linux .iso and you're good.) I can stay in macOS for the stuff macOS is good at, and I can use linux for the stuff it's good at.

Is this largely for the exercise? Totally cool if you’re using it to get a better understanding of understanding of macOS’s Virtualization framework, but if your goal is that you were looking for a way to run VMs without Parallels, VMWare or VirtualBox, UTM [1] would be the direction I’d point you in.

[1] https://mac.getutm.app/