It’s #BlueFriday and let’s celebrate by doing something good for the planet. The most eco-friendly device is still the one you already own!
Install GNU/Linux and run new & old HW more efficiently and for longer, reducing the disproportionate #carbon footprint from device production.
Donate the savings to #KDE and #FOSS projects to show your love for all the amazing things we achieve when we work together:
hell yeah! I just bought a Macbook Pro 15 2011, Core i7 for a whopping $10! according to the seller, “it just died”, so I got it to transplant the screen to a MBP 15 2010 i5; way cheaper than the $30-40 ask for a replacement screen.
turns out the fucker is fully functional, the keyboard is shorted somewhere and that’s causing the problem. replacement keyboards are like $10, so I’m presently installing and tweaking Fedora 41 and this old boy (fully kitted out - SSD, 8 GB, Radeon works, 90% battery health) is getting dragged into 2024 kicking and screaming.
edit: is there a lemmy community that’s into repurposing, fixing and upgrading old laptops, phones, etc.?
How did you identify the issue?
ETA: There are some permacomputing communities that might fit your bill. !permacomputing@slrpnk.net for instance
macbook boards are ultra-resilient, if you get continuous fan spin you can almost always get them to a useable state. in this particular case, the machine powered on, spun the fans, turned on the screen, displayed the white loader screen for a second and immediately powered off.
never heard of such a thing, their quirks and failures are pretty well documented (logi.wiki, r/macbookrepair, etc.), so I unplugged everything from the board (battery, keyboard, touchpad, HDD, ODD, wifi, camera, display, etc.) and connected it to power and - continuous fan spin!
then started reattaching one by one until it failed again and it was the keyboard. so, ran it with an external keyboard and checked everything and it’s in excellent working condition. I used the opportunity to change the decade old paste on CPU & GPU and cleaned it from dust, insects, hair and other crap. I’m getting a new keyboard on monday ($13 new, $15 used) and assembling everything. maybe do a write-up.
added, never heard of the term, gracias.
Thanks for the explanation!
Lovely.
Ok, so I’m trying to get into this and have two laptops and a desktop I just Frankenstein’d together. How do I go about making a thumb drive installer? I have access to the interwebs from my phone… both laptops have busted wifi cards and the desktop will likely freak if turned on cause it’s windows 8.1 or something and totally new hardware not to mention I think both hard drives I hooked up probably have windows on them but likely not the same versions.
Connect your phone via USB and share the connection, on Android that’s the USB Tethering setting. That’ll allow you to download balena and the ISO of your choice.
https://youtu.be/_BoqSxHTTNs?si=olLzHXrPzYNsW9sf
You’ll need some kind of internet to download the ISOs for whatever version of Linux you chose though.
Think I’m out of devices to reasonably install GNU/Linux on 🙁 (or 🙂 depending on how you look at it)
I want to! I have a 2019 MBP that had a corporate image on it, I mistakenly wiped the drive before pulling driver stuff off of it.
Wanted to install something like Mint but saw all the driver issues without having access to the original OSX files. Haven’t looked into many other distros yet
Suggestions welcome, any Linux distro is worth trying since it’s still a solid piece of hardware.
Work system, have to return it next year for the new cycle but they just wipe it - which I already did (oops) and to reinstall I’d need a reinstall key (and don’t want the hassle, already tried).
Thanks, I’ll check that out! I’ll take finicky over bricked, at this point it’s just to see if I can get it to work for a couple months ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
I don’t have experience with post-2015 models, so don’t know what your issues with that model are. Wireless is easily solved with 3rd party drivers, don’t know the state of more exotic stuff (touch bar?). The base functionality shouldn’t be a problem. Have you tried booting it off the live USB?
Mint isn’t appropriate for relatively new hardware, although you can certainty make it work and your laptop is right on the cusp. A bigger issue is that it’s X11 as opposed to the default Wayland and not very up to date on modern laptop paradigms, like gestures, seamless transitions between states, etc., especially if you have macOS muscle memory.
I’d recommend Ubuntu as a first distro and once you have everything working, look into other options, like Fedora.
If you choose btrfs as your file system, you can install multiple OS with the same home so you can experiment away.
That all helps, thanks! I didn’t realize it with Mint - I’m more in line with Linux muscle memory 😁
Mac for work, Windows for my last role (15+ years IT), Linux was my daily driver for home (Ubuntu on desktop, Xubuntu on laptop) until my Win10 desktop (which is next in line for an OS replacement)
then you got no problem, Jules.
as to wireless, that’s solved with 3rd party drivers getting enabled in Ubuntu-like distros (which Mint is) and installing the driver from the drivers control panel pane. how do you install it without internet? you tether your phone to the laptop via USB and allow it to access the wifi. on Android that’s done via the USB Tethering menu.
on fedora you enable rpmfusion and install
broadcom-wlafter you’ve done the full system upgrade post install and rebooted; otherwise you won’t be able to boot.it’s possible you’ll need firmware for the webcam; 2011-2015 models don’t need it, no idea what the deal is for yours. and especially no idea for the abomination that’s the touch bar.
after install, install and enable
mbpfanormacfanctld(just one of those, depending on the distro) so your laptop don’t explode.
@dropcase
I’m running @EndeavourOS on my 2011 MBP without any issues. Have you tried running any lived distro to see what hardware works and doesn’t work?
@be4fossOh nice! Yeah, I tried the Mint (Cinnamon) live distro and couldn’t get the wireless to show, for starters. There seemed to be a lot of hoops to jump through, and I used to just throw a distro on HW and figure it out. Apple is a different beast, and since I wiped it I couldn’t pull anything.
I’ll try Endeavour next - not tied to any distro, just familiar with (X/K)Ubuntu most recently (I’m an older bearded Unix/Linux fan, ha). Much appreciated!
This thread rocks. You folks are getting into recycling hardware deep. This is so encouraging. Keep you advice and experiences coming.
