Hi all, I’m dipping my toes into Linux again after almost 30 years, and I’m looking specifically for any distros that will run on a mid-2010 Macbook (Intel Penryn-3M Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM and a 1T HDD). Video is integrated Nvidia GeForce 320M.
I’ve already tried Linux Mint 21.2 Cinnamon booting off USB (but not installing) and it runs well, even wifi and video, no hitches at all. And going forward I’d be fine with Mint from what I’ve seen so far.
But before settling in on one distro, I’d like to try as many as will run on this ancient Macbook, because my endpoint is to eventually convert my much newer Windows machines to Linux, so I’m not just deciding for the Macbook. I am, however, limited to that as my test machine for the moment.
I’m not at all new to tech, but consider me a noob to Linux, esp Linux GUIs: last time I ran it in the early 90s it was text only. I don’t even remember what flavor it was, lol. So yeah, I’m starting from scratch here but can pick it up quickly if I’m pointed in the right directions.
Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!
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Many thanks to everyone who gave me their time and made suggestions. I was looking for myself as well, so now I have many distros to try, lol. I have checked the system requirements and install directions for each of the following, and here is the list I have so far of distros that will work on this old MacBook (not in any particular order):
Will definitely try
Linux Mint 21.2
OpenSUSE Leap 15.5
AntiX 23
Debian 12 “Bookworm” with Xfce
Peppermint OS
Linux Lite 6.4
MX Linux 23 (after RAM upgrade)
Pop! OS 22.04 (after RAM upgrade)
Might also try, but might not (various reasons):
Zorin OS 16.3 Core and Lite
Solus 4.4 “Harmony” with Budgie (after RAM upgrade)
Fedora with Xfce
Thanks again!
Debian.
Debian with what DE? It has to be light enough to run on this old Macbook.
Xfce is very light
I will try it out. Thank you!
If XFCE feels too heavy (it probably won’t), you can try LXDE. I think XFCE is a good place to start though.
I recommend Mint as it’s overall a fantastic distro. Better than the majority. And it’s not just for beginners. It’s full blown Linux so it can do anything.
They have an XFCE version so try that too, as well as the MATE version. All 3 desktops are quite light.
I wouldn’t recommend Ubuntu and it’s flavours simply because they have Snaps so deeply embedded now it will spoil your experience.
MX-Linux is also a great distro and quite light. Antix is even lighter and maintained by the same team as MX.
Opensuse is always a great choice, and their KDE implementation is quite good. So if you want KDE try opensuse Leap. (Don’t use tumbleweed on a Mac because the proprietary drivers for Mac tend to break with frequent updates).
I’m running Mint on my 2012 Mini and it works great. Tried a few others but I find Mint the best.
Fedora Xfce is also great on old HW, and have SELINUX if you are paranoid with security.
I will check that out. Thank you for the suggestion!
EDITED TO ADD: Given that Fedora is upstream from RHEL (no longer truly open source) and is developed in part by Red Hat, is there any chance it too will become less than open source? Because as good as Fedora must be to have all the downstream enterprise versions built around it that it does, if there’s any real chance it will go closed-source I don’t want to waste energy on it. I know that some will likely think this an overreaction on my part, but I’m putting in the effort here because I’m trying to get away from embrace, extend, and exterminate altogether, not just MS/Apple. Gonna list this as a “maybe” for right now.
No, I don’t think so, as Red Hat only source revenue is RHEL and cloud, not fedora. And RHEL still open source, just you can’t get the builded binary from red hat, but you can build it yourself, as open source means the code is available for public, and it’s available for public, and most of the codes are in CentOS stream, https://gitlab.com/redhat/centos-stream/src
And most of the Enterprise linux downstream could inspect and use rhel code, just the binary and how to build is restricted, it’s still adhere with the GPL/LGPL in my opinion
Thanks for taking the time to explain the differences a bit, it’s very much appreciated. I’d heard about the Snapstore thing and also Red Hat’s decision regarding RHEL; while I don’t understand it all yet I do think closed-source defeats the whole purpose of Linux (and why I’m getting off Windows) so yeah, I’m with you on that.
So far, with Mint I haven’t had any problems running Cinnamon at all (decided to try the heaviest DE first) but I will probably still end up trying Kfce as the DE on Debian, for example. It was actually shocking how well Mint runs on 4GB of RAM, lol.
But I have plenty of time and plenty of USB sticks, and I will try all the feasible distros mentioned, taking notes along the way. Thank you again for the suggestions!
Pretty much anything with XFCE, LXDE/LXQt, Cinnamon, MATE, a window manager like Sway or i3, or probably some others I’m forgetting, will work just fine. GNOME and KDE are the most popular but the slowest, and from what I remember, Deepin, Budgie, and Pantheon are somewhat slow.
I’m mainly using Budgie lately, and its quite fast, even on older hardware. I would say it feels faster than cinnamon (and much more pleasant to work with imo), but unfortunately it’s very unstable.
I tried Budgie (packaged with Solus 4.4 “Harmony”) yesterday and loved it. It seemed fast enough even on this old MacBook with 4GB of RAM, but I was just test driving it on a live USB so I don’t know what it would do in a real world scenario. Even so, it was definitely the most pleasant OS/DE combo of all the distros I’ve tried so far.
I’m glad you’ve liked it, and I hope it runs nicely from HDD.
If you decide to keep Budgie I highly recommend the window shuffler extension that helps with arranging windows.
I always used Xubuntu or Linux Mint Xfce. Both have access to the Ubuntu package repository and are easy to use and install.
