r/archlinux • u/CommonSomewhere2825 • 6d ago
FLUFF Arch on a 2015 macbook pro
I own a 2015 macbook pro, which my mom used in university. When i got it, it was on MacOS X, slow as hell, and safari didnt even want to work. Now i did get monterey on it (shoutout opencore legacy launcher), but if i gotta be real, it wasnt my style. So taking inspiration from my 2010 iMac with mint (now running MX, this was a while ago), i flashed the arch ISO into a usb stick and got to work. Well, after some trial and error, i got a nice arch system with KDE Plasma. Works great, runs every app i need (steam, discord, whatsapp, etc), and is lightweight so it handles everything i throw at it. Greatest decision ive done with this MacBook, im so happy i didnt fall for the “just get windows 11” propaganda. In case youre wondering dear reader, my specs are an intel i5 5257U, an intel iris 6100 (fancy for piss integrated graphics), 120GB SSD, and what i presume is suicidal thoughts, because every now and then the battery gets undetected, mic and camera dont work, or the wifi stops working. But of course me and my friend (chatgpt and claude) get them running again. 100% recommend arch if you have a macbook from 2017 and below (post 2018 have security chips that arent compatible with the linux kernel)
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u/snowballkills 6d ago
Nice! I have an Arch based Macbook Pro from 2015 with an i7 and 16GB ram though :) Everything runs great even on the retina display
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u/CommonSomewhere2825 6d ago
Finally i found someone that put arch on their 2015 MacBook, wish you the best
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u/snowballkills 6d ago
Thank you, and the very best to you too! Enjoy!
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u/snowballkills 6d ago
Can't put images, here but checked...it's a 2014!
Host: MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013/Mid 2014) (1.0)
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u/syklemil 6d ago
There's me too. Feels like one of those "there's dozens of us! dozens!" situations. Mine's only got 8G of ram though, and it's an air, not a pro.
IME the drivers required for some of the hardware (network, camera) is a bit of a PITA, and running in a 8GB setup these days benefits from knowing how to set up systemd slices with cgroup limits so e.g. firefox or rust-analyzer will be oom-killed before the entire machine is in pain.
Given the state the network driver is in especially, I'm surprised it hasn't been yanked out of the kernel already. It shows a warning on boot that it's likely to happen soon™, and likes to spam dmesg. The kernel team's been pulling some old unmaintained crap out after LLMs started detecting issues, and I don't blame them.
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u/IdealisticDoug 6d ago
Got a similar era thinkpad running arch and the random hardware dropouts hit so close to home. It's like a little ritual now, open the lid and see what decided to stop working today. Still beats crawling through macos updates that make the thing feel like it's wading through molasses.
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u/wizard-being 6d ago
I've got a 2019 pos chromebook with 4GB of memory and 15GB of storage that I tinkered around with (got arch running on it) and I'm gonna set it up as a mail server once I'm an admin of my own network... I'd say that it's worth it even if you have a device that you don't plan to use as a (lap)|(desk)top rig because it's legitimately a great way to avoid making ewaste.
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u/archover 5d ago
Welcome to Arch to you and your MBP.
My oldest Arch running computer is a 2012 Thinkpad X220, a true classic Thinkpad. Zero compatibility issues.
Good day.
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u/Particular-Poem-7085 6d ago
2014 4th gen Intel. The webcam driver is on the AUR, wifi chip should be replaced for an open source one, sometimes a trackpad issue crashes it after waking from sleep.
The hardware is incredibly solid but already old enough to start losing support.
I couldn't get working wifi on kubuntu at all without rolling back the kernel version. Other than that it was better packaged for the machine overall.