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Linux on a 2014 macbook air? (ttrpg.network)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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A friend of mine has an old macbook air. It still works, more or less, but the OS isn't getting any updates anymore, and updating to the latest OS seems dicey.

Has anyone had experience installing linux on an old macbook? From a quick internet search it looks like you can just make a bootable USB and have at it. Thinking mint because it's popular and my friend is a pretty basic user. The laptop will be mostly used for like youtube/netflix and basic web browsing.

Edit: a little extra context: I am moderately comfortable with Linux. I ran mint for a while on my desktop, and I've done software development for a job. I can install docker and start a python project fine, but I'd use a GUI for like partitioning a hard drive.

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[–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

Stable should mean that it runs stable, runs without crashing. In most Linux distros though, stable means “not changing”. That is not the same thing.

So, Debian Stable can ship software with a design problem that makes it prone to crashing. That problem can be solved in a newer version (more stable) but Debian will continue to ship the older version (the crashy one) because that is what stable means to Debian.

A good example is that Debian Trixie is about to ship with NVIDIA drivers from a year ago that have problems with Wayland. There are newer drivers that work better. But Debian will ship the old ones.

Static and stable are not the same thing.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Yes and no. I think connotation is important here; “stable” means different things in different contexts even within computing, and they both denote different but important things - kind of like free of cost verses freedom.

    In the distro case, people need/want a distribution where they know a new version won’t come and break their config when they update at 2 AM and miss it in the changelog, and “stable” has been agreed upon as the term in that context. Of course, that can change, as all language does, but that’s just the current convention.

    Also, Debian tends to make sure software is not unusable before stable is shipped (the Nvidia thing is an anomaly I’ll explain below); while they sometimes fail, as you’ve hinted, I find it quite rare that it actually happens. Also, the “static” of Debian isn’t absolute; if something really has a breaking bug or a security vulnerability that affects overall system usability (basically something that can’t be fixed by installing a Flatpak), they will put out a fix, like with the Linux kernel or a web browser (via the security repo, included by default in all installs).

    Additionally, looking at this changelog, while the Nvidia situation is objectively a bit embarrassing, it looks like they were working on getting them updated, but just didn’t have much luck - I’m guessing a breaking change in the software that made it harder to package. Also, it’s in the non-free repo, which is on the back burner compared to the rest of the distro - something in the main repo will usually only be at most a few months behind at time of distro release.

    https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/nvidia-graphics-drivers

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