Linux on older Intel Macs without T2

[Paddy OPlastic]

Right after posting the above, system froze on kernel 6.12.
Tried wl driver again and got freeze on 6.12.
Checked to be sure and ibt=off was saved in grub.

Thanks for all the help, but at this point I think I will just stick with kernel 5.15 till support ends, and then get a usb wifi dongle.

Aha, the perfect engineering solution - stick with what works!

I did try to use an alternative driver on my 15,1 iMac but it turns out the wl module is the only one there is for it. The brcmsmac is the right open-source driver for your device, the trick is to get it working. This thread will still be here when your kernel support ends if you want to give it another go.

 

[thestickman]

Now most of the Intel Macs are no longer supported by the latest MacOS releases, they seem like a great candidate for a migration to Linux. I haven't seen much about that recently on this forum. If people are doing it, what Linux distro works best and what problems are typically encountered. Also with an unsupported Mac is there any reason not to go all in on Linux and completely wipe MacOS from the SSD?

I decided to ditch both Windows and macOS. I recently bought a refurbished 2015 Macbook Air and installed MX Linux 25 KDE plasma. It runs perfectly & on install wi-fi drivers were installed. This machine has zero scratches or dents in it & runs this flavor of Linux better than it ran macOS. I have Ubuntu installed on my gaming PC and it runs flawlessly, plays Steam games flawlessly. In a month or 2 I am going to purchase a 2014-15 Macbook Pro (always wanted one but never could afford) and install MX Linux 25 with KDE for the desktop.

 

[erich.j.k]

I have an A1502 (13" (2014), Retina, 8GB RAM, replaced SSD with a larger one) that runs Linux Mint 22.x. Everything I need is working (I disabled WiFi though). Just for fun I booted MX Linux from a USB stick, but it seems to not handle the display correctly - everything is very small. I used the FluxBox version, since I like its simplicity. Couldn't find a quick way of adjusting the display though.

 

[serpico007]

I have a 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 running Ubuntu. I’ve also had Fedora installed on this system and both worked flawlessly.

 

[Snowlover]

Aha, the perfect engineering solution - stick with what works!

I did try to use an alternative driver on my 15,1 iMac but it turns out the wl module is the only one there is for it. The brcmsmac is the right open-source driver for your device, the trick is to get it working. This thread will still be here when your kernel support ends if you want to give it another go.

I finally found the solution to the freeze problem on my 2011 air.
It is caused by a driver regression affecting the Broadcom BCM43224 Wi-Fi chip under modern Linux kernel architectures.
When the 6.x kernel tries to interface with this wireless adapter it triggers an unrecoverable kernel deadlock that locks the cursor and freezes the machine entirely.

The fix is adding a kernel boot parameter to bypass the aggressive Message Signaled Interrupts (MSI) power management on the PCI bus, which stabilizes the Wi-Fi card driver and stops the freezes.
Add "pci=nomsi" to the end of the grub line that starts with linux, and no more freezes, no worries about wifi drivers.

My air is now running the latest Big Linux in dual boot with Mavericks. 🥳

I have google's AI mode to thank for helping steering me in the right direction on this, even with a lot of errors and bad suggestions. I hadn't found this solution anywhere in my unaided searches.

 

[Minghold]

My air is now running the latest Big Linux in dual boot with Mavericks. 🥳

What are your ram/drive on that Air? (If 8gb/128gb, you might be better off running Big in a 3gb Parallels VM in a High Sierra or Mojave APFS partition. (Disable MDS_stores . )

 

[Snowlover]

What are your ram/drive on that Air? (If 8gb/128gb, you might be better off running Big in a 3gb Parallels VM in a High Sierra or Mojave APFS partition. (Disable MDS_stores . )

4gb ram, 256 gb ssd, so no good for vm. I prefer Mavericks to later mac versions.

 

[Snowlover]

Changed out big linux for mx fluxbox version. Big was too heavy for my machine, mx fluxbox is superlight , with only 0 to 1 % cpu usage at idle.

 

[Minghold]

4gb ram, 256 gb ssd, so no good for vm. I prefer Mavericks to later mac versions.

Put Activity Monitor on the dock, then restart. Immediately click Activity Monitor as soon as the desktop shows up, and watch memory. (With Notifications, MRT, Reportcrash, and MDS_stores disabled via Terminal, El Capitan uses about 1.3gb and Mojave about 1.7gb. Not enough for BigLinux Parallels VMs, but plenty for flyweight linux distros...see below.)

Changed out big linux for mx fluxbox version. Big was too heavy for my machine, mx fluxbox is superlight , with only 0 to 1 % cpu usage at idle.

Speaking of MX, can someone recommend a decent GUI "store" for it? (That, and configure its desktop to be the friendly & reasonable drag/drop/copy tool that was the huge sale-point of Mac in the first place back in 1984....crappy desktop implementation being a major drawback of many distros. )

 

[Snowlover]

Put Activity Monitor on the dock, then restart. Immediately click Activity Monitor as soon as the desktop shows up, and watch memory. (With Notifications, MRT, Reportcrash, and MDS_stores disabled via Terminal, El Capitan uses about 1.3gb and Mojave about 1.7gb. Not enough for BigLinux Parallels VMs, but plenty for flyweight linux distros...see below.)

Speaking of MX, can someone recommend a decent GUI "store" for it? (That, and configure its desktop to be the friendly & reasonable drag/drop/copy tool that was the huge sale-point of Mac in the first place back in 1984....crappy desktop implementation being a major drawback of many distros. )

It's not just the ram usage, but background cpu usage too. Mavericks has way less than el cap or mojave, and no sip. All are unsupported so I use the one I like using and that works most efficiently on my air.
I have enough storage to do the dual boot.
1.5 gb ram use (average of el cap and mojave) plus vm dedicated ram ( 1.5 gb? for lightweight distro) leaves only 1 gb ram for browser etc. Really doubt that would be workable.