Ask HN: What is your experience installing/using Linux on a Mac machine? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is your experience installing/using Linux on a Mac machine?

5 pointshackerm0nkey9 comments

I tried using mklinux on a PPC (a Performa, maybe?). I don't think X worked at the time, so it was strictly text mode. "Text mode" I should say: there was no 80x24 text mode so it was eg, a 640x480 bitmap using pixels to render the characters to draw the console. Which looks nicer and is more flexible but much slower.

I once tried Linux on an old G4 MacBook (Power Chip - before the Intel chips).

It was just as slow using Linux as it was using 'Tiger', and also some peripherals weren't supported.

For what it's worth, Linus used to use a MacBook with Linux. But that was several years ago. I don't know what he uses now.

I used rEFInd to install it on my Mid 2015 MacBook pro last year. It works great. I heard theres some custom configuration needed for the touchbar in the newer ones though.

what are your concerns?

linux runs fine on a mac. given the limited selection of hardware variations, it is less likely to run into surprises. as far as i could tell all peripherals on my mac are working. the boot manager refind also works well.

the only thing you need to do after installation is to configure the touchpad to support 3 mouse buttons. once that's done, linux on a mac is a great experience.

That is absolutely not true. Current Macbook Pros since 2016 have a whole variety of issues that are dealbreakers for day to day use. There's even a Github repo with checklists and kernel patches.

iMac Generations have been hit or miss depending on the AMD GPU that was included. I also think it'll get only harder from here on out with the T2 chips etc.

Agreed. I was given a macbook last year for working upon. At the time I couldn't install Debian because the provided kernel didn't recognize the onboard disk-driver.

Installed Ubuntu, which recognized the drive, but which didn't give me working WiFi. It would detect the NIC, present a list of networks, but then drop after 1-3 seconds.

It was only recently that I upgraded to a newer kernel and found that I could use the on-board wifi. (Until then I'd been using a USB-based WiFi dongle.)

I don't use touch-pad, bluetooth, etc. But just the basics "install + have wifi" were non-trivial.

Of course it might be easier now as the latest stable releases have new enough kernels that things will work more easily, but I fought and I wish I'd been able to use a generic intel-laptop.

i did forget to add that what i said should only apply to older devices. even in the past i suppose the newest devices weren't always supported until some time later.

whether this trend will hold in the future is anyones guess. you could be right. apple is certainly not out to make it easy.

i should also add that my personal experience is limited to two devices from this decade and a few older ones.

I have never done that in the past and entertaining the idea of resurrecting older macs I have and install a Linux distro on them.

I was concerned that I might run into driver issues and such and thought to see what others have experienced in this as I have seen mixed things doing a basic Google search.

My main concerns are power management and HiDPI support. How long does it run per charge in daily usage?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com