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Comment by jbj | Hacker News Reader

I upgraded my MBP (late 2013 edition) 10 weeks ago. I have experienced more forced software (mac news and some siri stuff) Additionally the Microsoft office installation I had with a valid license is no longer functional, and was "upgraded" to MS office 365, which is a subscription based model that seems to run online rather than locally.

I refuse to pay for the upgrade, and just use Libre Office now.

Further more I am looking into best compatible linux system to run on the hardware.

So far I have read that the cinnamon based manjaro linux should be reasonable.

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Do you have software that needs Catalina to run? Why not downgrade back to Mojave?

I have the late 2013 MacBook Pro as well, and I've only just upgraded to Mojave a few months ago (and did an SSD upgrade to a NVMe+adapter [1] while at it).

[1] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/upgrading-2013-2014-mac...

I'm sorry. I have a late 2013 mbpro too with Linux on it. Frankly, it's terrible. It doesn't sleep. Connecting thunderbolt monitors can only be done before booting. The os has needed to be reinstalled at least once when it ran out of battery. Nowadays, no external monitors work at all, not even display port. Brightness cannot be controlled. Lately redshift has stopped working. It's been a nightmare.

Linux on laptops is like osx on any machine. It only runs on Linux hardware well from what I hear. I'm quite skeptical of that even given my previous experiences running it.

I'm currently considering an xps 15 as I had ordered a Lenovo p1 and after almost two months they still haven't shipped it. Cancelled that garbage. The laptop space in 2020 is frankly shit, way worse than it was in 2014. It's devolved. Microsoft doesn't even make an os anymore, just malware that goes by the name "Windows" so there is literally no alternative for people who refuse to use such malware. Apple, Lenovo, Dell, or some crappy (hw wise) clevo Linux laptop like the system 76s. Maybe it's time to go back to a desktop as technology keeps devolving.

may I ask which distros you have tried? From investigating the arch wiki, there is a bit info on the graphics: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBookPro11,x#Graphics

I have too considered system76 as well as lenovo t480, so far the mac can still do the work I need.

(K)ubuntu, mint, manjaro, and a few others I don't remember. I went through a whole slew of them and didn't find one that was stable, not even mint. One of the issues is that problems are intermittent and start without any obvious cause. One day the external monitor works, the next day it doesn't. Etc. This is a huge issue when the problem hits six months after purchase and the only solution is to reinstall. I do remember kubuntu used to be stable back around 2007 or so but that was a different era. In 2010, it made it to about six months before the x wouldn't boot anymore after I changed the title bar color or something like that. On my current iteration on the mbpro, I've gotten about 4 months of use out of it after it failed within the first week. Often just changing something minor like the display manager's wallpaper will kill the entire desktop environment. In no case was there an actual kernel crash. It's always the gui. And it doesn't seem to matter what desktop environment runs. None that I've tried have been stable.

Why not use Arch which is Manjaro is based off? The Arch community is larger so support should be better. I have the 2013 mbp running Arch with Gnome and I really like it.

Oh, thanks for the idea! I actually want to migrate to arch a little bit at the time since I am not completely fluent in all the processes, and I would like to understand what each setting does. At the same time I want to have something that is functional from day one. Maybe I am overestimating the time needed to get arch running, I am a ubuntu/debian user through 11 years.

You can still get local versions of Office it's just the version you had (2011 I assume, older possibly?) was 32 bit only.

I previously looked for this without luck, but it seems there is a manual upgrade here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office/troubleshoot/office-... I will check it out.

Office 2019 for Mac would be the version to target for longest support. The reason 2011 didn't have an upgrade path is its support ended in 2017.

the one I used to have before catalina was Office 2016, I am not sure if my license is compatible with 2019.

I just tried the packagefile from the link, and after installing I am still stuck with MS office 365.

At this point, libreoffice does the job, and I cant be bothered to invest more time to get MS office, 2016 edition 64 bit, or whatever would be applicable in my case, to work like before catalina.

thanks for the tips though.

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