Advice on an early-2015 Macbook Air (8GB)
2d 22h ago by lemmy.world/u/wjrii in linux
I am planning to use this as a lightweight travel machine, smaller than my ThinkPad P15v and better than the Chrome-Tab I frankensteined into a linux tablet. I got the Macbook (in great physical condition), a new battery, and a USB-C to magsafe2 adapter for about USD 85. I'm currently calibrating the new battery, which I'm doing in EoL MacOS Monterey, but right now the plan is to replace it with MX Linux, which on the Live USB already had the Broadcom Wifi drivers. I also like Snapless distros using apt and KDE Plasma. Then, finally, I used to daily Mepis Linux years and years ago, so part of me was pleased it sort of lives on. I run Tuxedo OS on a couple of other machines, so if there's some very good reason to, I would be willing to take my chances that getting the Wifi up and running would go smoothly. Any very strong thoughts about distros on this hardware?
Beyond that, from what I've been reading, Gnome and KDE aren't really the hogs they used to be, and at 8GB this laptop should be okayish for browsing, text editing, Youtube at 720p or maybe 1080p (1440x900 screen), and the most casual of games. You know, basic stuff when you aren't doing "serious" work. Still, what would y'all recommend for making KDE itself slip into the background and use as less CPU, RAM, and GPU (particularly concerned here, given the weak onboard and shared VRAM). I don't think I need to drop down to XFCE, Fluxbox, etc., but I would like to turn off eye candy and other non-essentials.
Beyond distro, optimization, and managing expectations, is there anything I'm missing? I have a cricut and basic Inkscape skills, so I'm also open to decals. After all, what is the point of buying a decade-old laptop if I can't make it look slightly stupid?
I've used MX with KDE Plasma on a Celeron with 4GB RAM and no real GPU.
Generally speaking, as long as you have reasonable expectations, it'll work fine. And the things you describe sound pretty simple.
Try it with the default settings, see how you like it. If it feels sluggish you can always turn the settings down later.
The laser engraver in my garage runs via a battery-ectomied laptop with a Celeron and 4gb. I have Tuxedo on it, and it does struggle to do anything more than "copy gcode, hit send," but by that same token its only other job is to avoid making me sad and not catch fire if it dies, so I haven't put much effort into optimizing it. This one I have modest but non-zero expectations for, but good to know I'm above the floor.
I regularly take former Chromebooks with 2GB RAM and non-upgradable 16GB eMMCs, and turn them into functional Linux laptops. Usually with MX.
You are WAY above the floor :)
My wife has a 2015 MacBook that was too slow/old with MacOs. I installed Fedora Kinoite, choosing an immutable distro because I wanted to make sure the base system always works. The only issue I had was (as always) with wifi drivers, but done that it was smooth sailing for the last year. She is not Linux savvy but every week says how much she loves the KDE interface. The system is quicker than MacOS and battery runs for much longer than before. It's a work PC so I cannot vouch for gaming.
In used Bazzite for a bit on a desktop, which mostly worked great, until I tried to set up a small dev environment (for QMK keyboard firmware), and found that I fell into a rare doughnut hole where I’m advanced enough to want dev tools, but too dumb to readily work with the way immutable distros handle that, LOL.
For this machine, it may be an even better choice. I’ll certainly keep it in mind.
Before Fedora I was using Bazzite and fell on the same problem. I can see the use case of an immutable distro, but it's not mine ¯\(ツ)/¯
I've been running Mint Cinnamon on one for years, and it does just fine. I can't imagine you'd have any trouble.
Good to know. I actually didn't have a bad time when I took a short trip with the upjumped Chrome-tab with a trackball and small mechanical keyboard, since I completely nuked ChromeOS and have Debian running native, but I've been told it's a "sadness machine," LOL.
well, you got it right. you want either gnome or plasma as they're wayland based and that's a prerequisite for a seamless laptop experience nowadays, wrt llibinput and HiDPI (like, if you use an external monitor). try out both, see which you like better. good job on scoring the 8 GB version. those are also the last models produced (2017 are identical, save for 5% faster CPUs). you can use a lot of used parts, 2013-2017 are parts-compatible, and also some things from the 2011/2012.
with those airs you need to sort out the closed-source wifi drivers, the method varies from distro to distro. also, they won't go to sleep with the screen open, so you either remember to close them when you're done or disable LID0 wakeup events (wakes on keypress then).
they are also very tolerant to undervolts, -100 mV is about standard, more if you're lucky. doesn't sound like much, but that's 10+% less power consumption, cooler and quieter laptop, etc. is plenty noticeable.
finally, as long as you got it open, stick some heat pads on the cooling pipe so it makes contact with the cover; you increase your thermal mass which nets you even less fanspin and longer boosts.
Awesome info. Thank you. I think I have some heat pads around for RPi passive sinks, so I might at least stick a couple of them on. Can’t hurt.
Without asking you to chase things down for an internet stranger, is undervolting one of these fairly straightforward?
I'm sure you've looked it up by now, but in broad strokes: install intel-undervolt, edit the corresponding config file in /etc, start with something conservative, like -50 and bump it up about 25 mV at a time until it starts freezing/breaking, then back off a step and make it permanent by enabling the service.
you should hold off on that for the first week or so, until you're sure you got everything set up and working correctly.
I have MX on my 2013 macbook. It even found me the right nvidia drivers. Something I had to do so it booted beyond grub was choose nomodeset in the advance options.
Thanks. I’d skimmed over mentions of that a couple of times. I’ll keep it in mind if I hit any trouble.