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Me too. Interestingly 2 MacBooks from the Intel era were amongst the best machines ever, objectively, for Linux. The MacBook 2,1 is almost unique in being supp
by nextos 6y ago
Me too. Interestingly 2 MacBooks from the Intel era were amongst the best machines ever, objectively, for Linux.
The MacBook 2,1 is almost unique in being supported by Coreboot and Libreboot. Furthermore, because it had an Atheros wireless card, you didn't need any blobs at all. Only two old Thinkpads are comparable, among x86_64 machines.
The MacBook Air 11 Late 2012, which was used as a daily runner by Linus for a number of years, was a pure Intel machine. Except for a weak Broadcom card, it was flawless with a stock kernel. Plus, it was silent, small and fast. The only comparable machine in terms of silent operation, cost and Linux support was IMHO the Xiaomi Notebook 12.5, which was released quite recently.
The problem with ARM Macs is not just secure boot. The secure enclave chip already gave serious trouble when trying to run Linux on their last Intel machines, as e.g. the keyboard doesn't show up as a standard USB device. So I don't have high hopes.
- marmaduke 6y agoCompletely open is cool, but it’s a high bar to pass. A lower bar might be, can I just install Ubuntu and use it as a daily driver? At least up through the mid-2015 this is the case.
- nextos 6y agoOh yes, I'm happy with that. The problem is that might be even hard to achieve with the T2 chip. It's sad because the new MacBook Air seems superior to all competitors and the price is quite fair after academic discount. Also, Apple makes it easy to buy any keyboard distribution from any location, which is really cool. With many brands, I need to hack the system and shop from NL to get a US ANSI keyboard here in EU.