Discussion
(Almost) ready to turn my beloved MacBook Air 2013 - which is gathering dust on a shelf - into a #Linux laptop.
Only problem: multiple people might have swayed me to pick Arch Linux as the distro. #ArchLinux!!! I know NOTHING but from all the Linux memes I've seen over the years, I've always been intimidated by it.
Debating whether to go with it or #Mint or #Ubuntu. Thoughts?
(The job will have to wait till Monday but getting all my ducks in a row)
@kleisli thanks! I have Ubuntu on my Raspberry Pi 4 and really like it. But I've always heard so many great things about Mint, so I was tempted by it... plus I may one day give that laptop to my child...
@_elena I hear people are often happy with @elementary on their Macs
@_elena
At the moment I got installation problems because of the missing broadcom WiFi driver in Debian.
Ubuntu seems to have this driver in it's sources.
@_elena I have great experience with Fedora and Gnome on old MacBooks. It's user friendly, stable and still up to date. You can even take a look at Fedora Silverblue for an atomic distro is you want to get into a modern way of running an OS.
@_elena Instead of Ubuntu, I would personally go for Debian....
@_elena I'm not sure it supports macs, but CachyOs is basically Arch in easy mode. Especially if you pick Cosmic, KDE or Gnome as your desktop during the (easy, guided) setup.
@_elena Ubuntu is flirting with "AI capabilities", enabling LLM-driven voice-to-text search in the latest version, so I am considering a permanent move away from the land of *buntu.. The current LTS (26.04) does not ride the AI hypewave, so that's at least an option for now.
@_elena My vote? Linux Mint. And don't let the Arch Linux enthusiasts bully you. 😄
Seriously, an old MacBook Air from 2013 is an excellent candidate for a second life with Linux. But I'd choose the distribution based on what you want to get out of the machine.
@_elena Before I swapped to Linux I spent months looking at distros to make a decision what was right for me. I needed something that I could work with, could get started easily, had a large online community to seek help if needed and was heavily customisable. The answer was Mint.
I've had a fair few fights and needed to relearn some stuff but that's no different than with Mac or Windows, just need to find new spaces for support (hence that was important to me in making my decision).
But I'm a proud and happy user of Mint.
@_elena I ran Ubuntu on my Air quite happily.
@Edent thanks Terence! Did you have problems getting your Wifi to work?
@_elena if you want to try a easy to install version of arch there is Omarchy but you'll have to get used to a tiling window manager and doing almost everything with keyboard.
@multiscan I will NEVER EVER EVER use Omarchy sorry. Context: https://blogs.gnome.org/alatiera/2025/11/06/dhh-and-omarchy-midlife-crisis/ I even unsubscribed from 1Password because they were sponsoring it
@_elena I use Mint on the laptop that I use a lot. It is very easy to handle and update. For my writing I have a special laptop with Ubuntu. They say it is more difficult I don't know.
@CorinaKarstenberg thanks! I have Ubuntu on my Raspberry Pi 4 and I like it... but I've always been tempted by Mint
@_elena may I throw in a wrench and suggest Fedora?
It’s running SO well on my MacBook Air 2014.
I had mint on it, my previous favourite distro, but Fedora runs SO much better.
@sylvia oooooh thank you for the advice Sylvia! Did you have issues with internet connectivity? (aka getting your Wifi to work)?
@_elena I installed Arch on my 2015 MacBook, having never used Arch before that, but having run other flavours of Linux as my primary OS for years. It was not a walk in the park. But I did get it to run in some capacity after a while. It was interesting to do, but I was curious about doing it.
@greger thanks! I hear that the documentation is really good and it may be relatively easy to get internet connectivity right away... but I'm also tempted by Mint
@_elena I can only share that my experience with Mint was very good coming from Windows ant not knowing anything about Linux before.
@_elena I guess it depends on what you want to do. To *learn* Linux, Arch might be a good way, but just to *use* Linux, I recommend a more out-of-the-box distribution. I'm using Ubuntu for years on my main laptop and I (usually) don't have to tinker around.