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Good operating system for a 4,1 MacBook.

HexagonWin

HexagonWin

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 22, 2020
45
14
Hello!
I'm running a MacBook4,1 (Early 2008), which has a Core 2 Duo T8100, 2.5GB of 667mhz DDR2 ram, a 128gb ssd.
I had been running [Devuan Chimaera / Windows Server 2008 R2 / FreeBSD 12.x] in the laptop recently, but I accidentally broke the FreeBSD 12 partition.
I'm trying to install a version of OSX, and any fun OS that I can play with. (FreeDOS?)
Can anybody suggest me something that runs well in the machine?
It would be quite bad if I burn a DVD of FreeDOS or anything and it doesn't work..
Thanks.
 
No idea about FreeDOS, apart from that it doesn't support UEFI boot...

...but unless you're willing to go down the DIY eGPU route, a patched Mountain Lion is as far as I'd go in terms of OS X. Later versions really suffer from the lack of graphics acceleration IMHO. Nonetheless, there are people who have gone for more recent versions on unmodified 4,1's despite the lack of graphics acceleration.

What about, say, Haiku or OpenBSD?
 
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Amethyst1 said:
No idea about FreeDOS, apart from that it doesn't support UEFI boot...

...but unless you're willing to go down the DIY eGPU route, a patched Mountain Lion is as far as I'd go in terms of OS X. Later versions really suffer from the lack of graphics acceleration IMHO. Nonetheless, there are people who have gone for more recent versions on unmodified 4,1's despite the lack of graphics acceleration.

What about, say, Haiku or OpenBSD?
Click to expand...
Haiku.. is what I ran a few years back, and at that time I was having soo many issues including graphics (Only VESA graphic worked).. OpenBSD might be good to try on this computer. Thanks
 
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The 4,1 is one of my favorite versions of the A1181, and Zorin OS is currently my non-Mac OS of choice for it. While I haven't tried them yet, I'd think that CrunchBang++ or BunsenLabs Linux might be fun too.
 
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Amethyst1 said:
BunsenLabs is a cool distro indeed. Or Lilidog, in the same vein.

Another cool one: Lirix (Arch plus the awesome SGI-inspired MaXX Interactive Desktop) :cool:
Click to expand...
Actually, I run Devuan GNU/Linux already, it's very lightweight. consumes about 200 mb of ram idle.
I did try running several different distro/de/wms on this computer (In the Linux world), and different distros just meant different package manager + maintainer (some being unsupported fast after install), and WindowMaker seemed like the best option for a Apple machine. (or mlvwm..?)
MaXX is what I tried to use a bit ago, it looks good at first, but slowly after I get to find out that it's very heavy with all the weird codes and bloated apps, not what we got with IRIX.. (it's also proprietary though.)

Anyway, thanks for the suggestions! :)
 
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Is there a DosDude1 patcher for Sierra that works on your MacBook? This would make your old MacBook much more usable for modern tasks. My other daily driver is still running Sierra and it still works great! (upgrade the ram if possible)

Website:
Dosdude1.com
 
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Amethyst1 said:
The Achilles heel is the lack of graphics acceleration once you go beyond Mountain Lion.
Click to expand...
With that said, I would get a 1tb ssd and make 4 250gb partitions. Then install Mountain Lion. Then you could make a Windows drive and run XP or 7 or 8? Then install 2 different "Linuxes" on the remaining partitions. Try Debian 11 with GNOME theme.
 
PowerPCFan said:
Is there a DosDude1 patcher for Sierra that works on your MacBook? This would make your old MacBook much more usable for modern tasks. My other daily driver is still running Sierra and it still works great! (upgrade the ram if possible)

Website:
Dosdude1.com
Click to expand...
No dosdude1 patcher. We have RMC patcher, and perhaps OCLP can be used (with root patches)
 
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PowerPCFan said:
With that said, I would get a 1tb ssd and make 4 250gb partitions. Then install Mountain Lion. Then you could make a Windows drive and run XP or 7 or 8? Then install 2 different "Linuxes" on the remaining partitions. Try Debian 11 with GNOME theme.
Click to expand...
W2008R2 works pretty welll here. Oh, W11 leak build from 2021 also worked well.
GNOME isn't a theme, it's a DE, but pretty heavy here. (Or try MATE, if you really want some GNOME looks)
 
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I got a stack of 4,1 from a school some years back. Tried a bunch of OS options on them. Yosemite actually runs nicely enough with patched video and audio kexts. Only major issue is closing the lid to sleep. After that, Mint runs nicely, but I found Ubuntu usable too. Windows 10 is just better served up on cheap PC hardware, but with an SSD and 4GB of RAM it’s “okay”. For unsupported, Mountain Lion was great (minus Messages not working) and Win 7 is great too. Worth noting that Messages DOES work in Yosemite.
 
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