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Author 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 broke…
On the one hand, yes, Apple is generally extremely hostile towards users tinkering with their platforms, be it iOS or macOS, so it theoretically should be harder. On the other hand, on the pre-2016 models, the components in use are largely off-the-shelf components, much like other manufacturers. The major difference between Apple laptops and other vendors laptops is that the variation of components in use is signific…
Please notice that OP is trying to run the i3 tiling window manager which is very minimal (as all TWMs) and expressly targets tinkerers and advanced users. A beginner friendly distribution with a complete desktop environment usually provides a much easier plug and play experience.
Converting 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.
Author 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.
For automatically switching screen layouts when plugging/unplugging, look at autorandr.
Every post like these, the TODO list is super long. This reminds me again why I don't want Linux in the first place.
The list to get macOS working on other laptops is even longer - I thought it would be obvious to all of you that it would be hard to make a machine designed to run a proprietary OS. Just like you buy an Apple machine to run MacOS well, you can easily buy a machine to run Linux well (Dell, Lenovo, System76 are just a few manufacturers who build MacBoook class hardware with Linux preinstalled).
Debatable. I have had an absolutely terrible experience with Linux on a new ThinkPad. System76 doesn’t have as great a build quality AFAIK. Dell is fine, but they don’t have anything with preinstalled Linux anymore.
Thank 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.
Very much not true these days. Linux on laptops is (in overwhelming majority) a great experience today. I suggest you just try out one of the live images for Ubuntu or Fedora.
On a tangential note I'm surprised that it's still relatively common on HN to see comments like "Linux on desktop doesn't work" or "Java is slow". That was 20 years ago. The world has moved on.
Converting 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.
That may be your experience, but it's not universal. I wanted to do this, regardless of how many hacks it took, but I'm on the new-and-broken model unfortunately.