4 ms·

How well does Linux works on a MacBook air these days? I have a mid-2013 one and thinking completely making the switch to Linux.

ChristianBundy 11y ago
I can only speak for myself personally, but I tried Ubuntu, Mint, and Arch, and they were all horribly glitchy (especially the graphics) and had awful battery life. I've been watching this project for a while, but I'm not sure that webcam support could be enough to make up for the other issues.
- fit2rule 11y ago
  I'm using Ubuntu on my 2014 rMBP and its not glitchy in the slightest .. in fact, its delightful!
TD-Linux 11y ago
The Air should be pretty decent as it has Intel graphics. Hopefully you also got one with Intel WiFi. You can just get a Live USB and try it out for yourself.
zxcvcxz 11y ago
Last I heard Torvalds was running Linux on an MBA so I imagine it can't be horrible.
- jotm 11y ago
  Yeah, but he's a Master Builder :-)
openstack_guru1 11y ago
I've been running Fedora on a mid-2013 MBA (i7-4650U) since April last year, and I love it. I grew up on RedHat, switched to Ubuntu around 2010, but after Unity I've switched back to the other camp, and Fedora has been really stable for me. I used this as a guide to get the install going: http://mattoncloud.org/2014/02/05/fedora-20-on-a-macbook-air/ http://mattoncloud.org/2014/02/05/fedora-20-on-a-macbook-air... Although, I don't use the custom packages, because most things worked out of the box. The only thing I have to do manually is update the display backlight driver after every kernel upgrade, but I do updates once a month, and it's a simple "make;make install" and an extra reboot. I gave OS X a shot for about 2 years, but could never quite get used to some of the quirks. Fedora on this MBA has been super stable.
- user1234666 11y ago
  I had some issues with the usb bus triggering the system to wake form suspend on fedora22 but it was easy enough to fix .. and random HDPI issues but nothing to bad
m1keil 11y ago
As far as I know there's at least two problems with the latest retina MBP - the webcam driver and the new force touchpad driver (introduced in 2015). Looking on the forums I saw someone saying he can't make the touchpad to work.
- thescriptkiddie 11y ago
  I just got one of these. If you install kernel 4.2 (currently a release candidate) the keyboard and trackpad work great. The backlights and other things you would expect to be broken work too. What doesn't work is the webcam, light sensor, suspend/hibernate, bluetooth, and hotplugging thunderbolt devices. It does everything I need for work though.
  - m1keil 11y ago
    thanks for the details! i bet it's possible to fix most the things by following along arch wiki. but I'm happy to know the trackpad is working.
cbetz 11y ago
Everything works but the webcam. Unfortunately I had to do some unsavory things like disabling NCQ and write barriers to prevent errors and extreme slowness with disk operations. This was a couple months ago so maybe the issues have since been fixed. I was using CentOS 7 and whole installation process is described here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GlMtdLLYgoTFs1ZNWsYU4SBf4S7ySvGED403rU55F4Q/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GlMtdLLYgoTFs1ZNWsYU4SBf...

ChristianBundy 11y ago

I can only speak for myself personally, but I tried Ubuntu, Mint, and Arch, and they were all horribly glitchy (especially the graphics) and had awful battery life. I've been watching this project for a while, but I'm not sure that webcam support could be enough to make up for the other issues.

fit2rule 11y ago
I'm using Ubuntu on my 2014 rMBP and its not glitchy in the slightest .. in fact, its delightful!

TD-Linux 11y ago

The Air should be pretty decent as it has Intel graphics. Hopefully you also got one with Intel WiFi. You can just get a Live USB and try it out for yourself.

zxcvcxz 11y ago

Last I heard Torvalds was running Linux on an MBA so I imagine it can't be horrible.

jotm 11y ago
Yeah, but he's a Master Builder :-)

openstack_guru1 11y ago

I've been running Fedora on a mid-2013 MBA (i7-4650U) since April last year, and I love it. I grew up on RedHat, switched to Ubuntu around 2010, but after Unity I've switched back to the other camp, and Fedora has been really stable for me. I used this as a guide to get the install going: http://mattoncloud.org/2014/02/05/fedora-20-on-a-macbook-air/ http://mattoncloud.org/2014/02/05/fedora-20-on-a-macbook-air... Although, I don't use the custom packages, because most things worked out of the box. The only thing I have to do manually is update the display backlight driver after every kernel upgrade, but I do updates once a month, and it's a simple "make;make install" and an extra reboot. I gave OS X a shot for about 2 years, but could never quite get used to some of the quirks. Fedora on this MBA has been super stable.

user1234666 11y ago
I had some issues with the usb bus triggering the system to wake form suspend on fedora22 but it was easy enough to fix .. and random HDPI issues but nothing to bad

m1keil 11y ago

As far as I know there's at least two problems with the latest retina MBP - the webcam driver and the new force touchpad driver (introduced in 2015). Looking on the forums I saw someone saying he can't make the touchpad to work.

thescriptkiddie 11y ago
I just got one of these. If you install kernel 4.2 (currently a release candidate) the keyboard and trackpad work great. The backlights and other things you would expect to be broken work too. What doesn't work is the webcam, light sensor, suspend/hibernate, bluetooth, and hotplugging thunderbolt devices. It does everything I need for work though.
- m1keil 11y ago
  thanks for the details! i bet it's possible to fix most the things by following along arch wiki. but I'm happy to know the trackpad is working.

cbetz 11y ago

Everything works but the webcam. Unfortunately I had to do some unsavory things like disabling NCQ and write barriers to prevent errors and extreme slowness with disk operations. This was a couple months ago so maybe the issues have since been fixed. I was using CentOS 7 and whole installation process is described here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GlMtdLLYgoTFs1ZNWsYU4SBf4S7ySvGED403rU55F4Q/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GlMtdLLYgoTFs1ZNWsYU4SBf...