Hacker News Reader

Comment by bilqis | Hacker News Reader

My favourite laptop of all time is Macbook Pro mid-2015, with Debian GNU/Linux. It works flawlessly and almost out of box, SSD can still be easily replaced, and the screen is amazing.

View on HN

Also it’s equipped with plain old HDMI and USB-A ports, still so useful.

TBF and much to my dismay HDMI was returned with the ARM mbps (the real ones not the 13”).

Why would having an HDMI port be a bad thing?

Because it removes a thunderbolt port which I could use, whereas I don't need an HDMI port. In the ~18 months I've had it, I've used the HDMI port a grand total of 0 times.

The hardware is a joy to use, i used several years a macair 2011 snd now upgraded to a macair 2015 with ubuntu. Only had ti fix the wifi. Such a nice machine. Looking forward to get my hands on an M1 when they start to be old :D

The M1 Macbook Air is such a good machine, even several years after its introduction. So nice, in fact, that the M2 version really isn't all that enticing.

The M1 MBP is the best machine I’ve ever owned. Fast, ridiculous battery life, etc. I can use it all day without worrying about plugging it in. I actually built a Linux workstation with 16 cores and a state of the art 12th gen Intel chip etc and on a core-for-core performance, the M1 is actually a little faster.

How easy is it to keep a version of MacOS alongside? How long could I expect a new battery to last on a charge? I was thinking of buying a new MacBook M1 but I can’t afford the crazy price, and it’s been a nightmare to manage the OS updates.

Re: battery; don't know for a new battery, but my original lasts 4-5 hours running linux - which is very good (IMO) given that it was bought at the start of 2016.

Don't know about having a MacOS alongside but if the disk is small, you might not want that anyway. And I presume you could always go back to MacOS later.

I recently tried a dual-boot configuration with my iMac 27" with both macOS and Ubuntu and after a short while the boot system got messed up. Couldn't fix it.

I read this is also an experience many Windows users have had when setting up dual booting systems with Linux.

At this point I think it's generally a bad idea to setup a dual-boot system with Linux, better to use it exclusively.

It's not the "with Linux" but that's the bad idea though, is it? It seems this is an area where Microsoft (I don't know about Apple) are getting away with anticompetitive practice in the guise of security.

Hm, I disagree. I have two desktops that I dualboot with windows 10 and various linux distros, currently ubuntu lts. If you install windows first then linux, it should work ok.

I wonder what happen, in my experience updates sometimes make that OS take over booting from each other, you should check rEFInd and the info on the website. He is the guy dealing with this

There are battery replacements, but some are sub-par and won't hold as much charge as they report. I returned a battery I bought from Amazon and bought another from a Duracell license holder, it worked better.

Mac hardware is really good at booting MacOS from external devices. That’s how I would dual boot if I cared for such a set up.

Note that some firmware upgrades will only be applied if MacOS is booted from the internal drive (NVME support was added this way to some models). I leave MacOS on the machine for as long as it's supported and dual boot other operating systems from external devices. Some can run completely in RAM if there's room, which is nice.

When the model is no longer supported with MacOS updates, I wipe the disk and install Linux. Sometimes I'll keep a copy of MacOS on an external drive if I need to access or troubleshoot specific features of that model (like digital optical audio before support matured on Linux).

Be careful of planned obsolescence in the apple world, it sadly applies to their computers too. A MacBook from 2013-2015 almost certainly can't be upgraded to the latest Mac OS releases and stopped getting security updates long ago. IMHO just go full Linux on it.

But if you do need to dual boot I remember doing it a few times and the refind bootloader was very nice: https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

Ventura (current MacOS release as of April 2023) is the first major version of MacOS that does not run on a 2015 MacBook Pro.

Security updates are still happening.

I might be impressed except I ran Linux for a while and Linux gets updates even longer and the devs writing those patches often don’t get paid

Using OpenCore Legacy Patcher [1] older Macs can run newer versions of MacOS that no longer officially support the hardware.

I'm running MacOS Ventura on a Macbook Air 2013 and Macbook Pro 2015 with it. They work reasonably well and get patch updates via official updates when released.

1. https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/

For now it works, with Opencore Legacy Patcher. Pretty easy, I reinstalled with their boot loader on USB.

Super easy, just need to install rEFInd (http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/) . Some OS upgrades might hide partitions again but you can make it persist trough updates with a script. ALL hhe info is on the page.

You can also hold down the Option key when booting to select bootable partitions or external devices. Different models may require extra steps to enable this, but I've never needed to use rEFInd.

I don’t know, I never kept one. I believe there are some bootloaders that allow that.

At least the restore sector is kept, and if you decide to roll back/sell, you can restore macOS.

Although I used it for years, and also having about 14 years of GNU/Linux experience, I was very comfortable.

I just recently pulled an old one of these out with linux mint installed because I needed a device that uppon receiving power boots up and plays a video loop — my usual goto raspi3 for some damned reason would not negotiate EDIDs above VGA resolution with the projector in use.

I booted the MBP after not having had it on power 4 years and it worked flawlessly. It then took maybe 20 minutes to run vlc on boot and set the propper bits to make it boot automatically when it receives power.

I cannot recall when things worked this flawlessly the last time

The MacBook Pro 2015 (13 and 15) are amazing, but they have glued-in batteries. iFixIt says it would take 45min to 2h to replace, and it is rated "Difficult". It's the only reason why I won't buy them on eBay.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+15-Inch+Retina+Disp...

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+Disp...

It took me a good hour and left me pretty sticky. If you have a little money it's worth having someone else do it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com