I have a T2 Macbook, which I generally like (though the thermals on the i9 aren't great), but I'm a little annoyed how hard it is to get Linux on there because of all the changes that Apple made to the architecture.
I doubt I'll be getting updates of any kind on x86 Macbooks for much longer, so I wanted to install NixOS on here like I had on previous Macs, and I did manage to get it installed, but the support for the T2 hardware is, in my opinion, not usable for daily use. Very basic stuff like suspending doesn't work, the audio sounds like crap, sometimes booting simply doesn't work, and the discrete graphics card doesn't work.
I don't blame the community for this, obviously. These are hard problems, and Apple worked pretty hard to make it difficult to actually sideload other operating systems on here. It's annoying that in another year or so, this computer might become increasingly less secure, because updates will cease.
I should probably just buy a Framework at this point and sell this Mac while it still has some street value.
Anyone that wants Linux on a laptop should support Linux OEMs, instead of expecting other vendors to make life easy to Linux users, while increasing their sales for their own platforms.
System76 is who I would shout out to considering they maintain their own Ubuntu based distro, and their own Desktop Environment for it. I'm sure there's others, but S76's POP OS has been my main Linux distro for a few years now. Things just work. I hope more people buy their hardware and they can devote more resources to making POP OS (and by side effect) and Linux in general better for us all.
They don't sell to many countries (mine included) unless you're willing to:
- lose warranty, practically speaking
- pay through the nose for shipping through a middleman
Most companies ignore small markets because they won't sell enough to justify the costs. And it's not just Linux vendors.
Very large brands attract enough interest from Joe six-pack to sustain such import volume that you can go and buy a MacBook or a Lenovo for somewhat reasonable money (still much more expensive than in the US or the EU).
I'd like to know of it so I can buy one --- the nearest replacement I could find for my Samsung Galaxy Book 12 was a Book 3 Pro 360, and it has me contemplating giving up the battery and high resolution and getting a Raspberry Pi 5 and Wacom One 13 Gen 2 touch screen.
Those of us that rather not deal with those issues any longer, buy Apple, Google or Microsoft, and run GNU/Linux on a VM, via whatever mechanisms they make available.
However buying Apple, Google or Microsoft, and then complaining they don't make hardware to run GNU/Linux natively on it, what is one naively expecting them to do otherwise?
They could stop forcing a windows license down your throat that you basically cannot get rid of and are forced to pay regardless of whether you're going to use it. That would be a logical and good first step. We've been asking this for two decades and have been ignored.
Also, I haven't seen a single seasoned Linux desktop user that cares about the "year of the Linux desktop". It's a meme that's only being repeated by Mac or windows users that "will switch over right away when this particular thing gets fixed", always finding another reason to talk themselves from doing it for basically decades, or well known FOSS haters such as yourself.
I use UNIX since introduction to Xenix in 1993, plenty of commercial UNIX flavours, started with GNU/Linux in 1995's Summer, lost count on the distributions tried since 1995, subscribed to Linux Journal since it went out of print, have a good Walnut Creek CD-ROM collection.
When I really want Linux on a box, I care to find a OEM that makes it possible, regardless if the distribution is specific to them, like on Raspberry PI's case.
I don't "expect" them to, I just wanted the same level of Linux-mostly-working as I had with previous Intel Macs. If I had realized that the T2 would make this harder I might not have purchased it.
Just to be 100% clear, I'm genuinely not actually trying to condemn anyone here; I don't really blame Apple for not making it super easy to install Linux, and I'm certainly not blaming people donating their time and effort for not working fast enough to make my life easier. So much FOSS is a labor of love and so I'm not entitled to anything from them as a result.
I've gone back and forward on this. They obviously want to move on as quickly as possible (the local AI updates for example), but it's not clear how long T2 will get support - the last Intel Mac mini was still being sold new from Apple until 2023. Sure, they could still axe it, but hopefully they won't for another couple of versions (which would imply that other T2 Macs get some additional support).
Even then, you're getting Sequoia at least, a year of support for that, then another two (if memory serves) of patch(y) support.
My wife's 2008 Mac still boots up just the same, just needs a new battery and charger, otherwise, it might be sluggish, but given how much faster things are now, it probably runs the same as it ever did.
I don’t think Apple made the T2 chip specifically to make Linux harder to install, just that they changed a bunch of stuff that made it harder to install another OS. Linux being hard to install was incidental, but I don’t think it was an explicit goal at Apple to make it difficult.
I’m not sure why this is getting downvoted. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that the difficulty in side loading another OS is incidental, rather than designed. A citation would help support the opposite assumption made above.
When it comes to Apple, perfectly reasonable people throw logic to the wind to come up with the most ridiculous theories. It’s annoying as it detracts from actual real conversations.
You might not see the issue there. You might be willing to forgive Apple for it. Plenty of us aren't. And it has nothing to do with "hating Apple", rather it's an extension of hating how Apple makes decisions regarding things like this. I own an M1 Macbook, I've owned an iPhone, I have an iPad. There is no irrational hatred here.
I see absolutely nothing wrong with the original comment. I see a person who wants to use their Mac long-term, but their attempt to use it that way is thwarted by Apple's decisions. You're arguing in bad faith by saying things like this
> people throw logic to the wind to come up with the most ridiculous theories
The user has legitimate grievances and you dismiss it because of this nonsense. You must be joking.
> I see absolutely nothing wrong with the original comment. I see a person who wants to use their Mac long-term
I can put an SSD drive into my wife's 2010 Macbook Pro, and give it new life, and Linux works really nicely on older Macs, though I'd rather let her keep her old Mac so she can look at all her old photos, etc.
I can't truly do that on most Macs anymore, nor replace the RAM. Apple made their macbooks too thin, arguably I'm grateful for less carry weight, but realistically, I want to be able to replace faulty components with ease.
As product categories mature, systems get integrated, which makes them harder for DIY repairs and upgrades. Look at the complexity of modern cars; you can’t just do an engine swap or re-gear in your garage.
See also Intel’s Lunar Lake, where LPDDR is integrated on-package because it is cheaper, higher performance, and more reliable. But… not user-serviceable.
It’s the curse of the hobbyist: the vast majority of buyers are not hobbyists, so product design choices do not favor the hobbyist. Best you can do is find niche brands that focus on your use cases, but of course they will have lower sales volumes, which bring different sorts of pain.
Apple doesn't try. There's thinner devices out there with M.2 slots, the Surface Pro X for example is 4mm thinner than a M3 MBA and yet has an insanely easy to access M.2 slot. The other Macs are even more egregious in their lack of at least an M.2 slot. The Mini in particular could have multiple with all the wasted space in the chassis but nope, not a design goal so they don't care.
…and they shit the bed more often than not while running Linux.
Mine has sleep problems, battery drain and the trackpad does pretty much whatever it wants. The only reply we get from their Linux compatibility guy is don’t use an untested distro… which comes down to you are holding it wrong. System76 might be the better option tbh.
Oh my god I am so sick of hearing about people complaining about the ability to replace the RAM without acknowledging any of the advantages of unified memory as implemented by Apple.
Apple makes decisions like any other company. They are not going to spend engineering time (money) on things that don’t benefit them in some way - that’s a quick way to go out of business. Doubly so if you are actually enabling customers to move away from your eco system - you might have lost future service sales.
You cannot blame apple for acting in its own best interests. That’s the nature of the capitalism beast.
If you want hardware to be opened up for the installation of other operating systems, you’ll have to lobby a governing body for that.
Generally companies have to do things in the interest of the customers, or their not likely to hand over their money. Customers who demand little and yet hand over their money anyways are cattle led to the slaughter. This is a market economy.
> You cannot blame apple for acting in its own best interests. That’s the nature of the capitalism beast.
I care about end-users. I care about my interests. I don't care about Apple's interests, because they are only "incidentally" useful to me as long as they align with my interests. Their own best interests are not any of my concern. I don't care if this is best for them, because it makes the rest of us worse off.
Of course I can blame Apple for acting in its own best interests. The same way I can blame Shell or BP for covering up climate change research in "their own best interests". The same way I can blame EA for putting Ultimate Team in FIFA with insane microtransactions or Bethesda for forcing Arkane Austin to make a live service game like Redfall instead of Prey 2.
We don't live to serve corporations. We have no obligation to agree to every decision they make if they're in "their best interest" and we have no obligation to further businesses solely to the benefit of the businesses themselves.
> If you want hardware to be opened up for the installation of other operating systems, you’ll have to lobby a governing body for that.
And I hope regulation requiring interoperability and open platforms to ensure longevity and end-user control of their own devices is what happens. Because clearly companies like Apple can't be trusted to make choices that benefit everybody. That isn't going to stop me from criticizing Apple for making these decisions.
It's also not like this is something specific to Apple that I'm upset about. I'm also worried about Qualcomm's ARM chips in Windows devices, because I trust neither Qualcomm nor Microsoft to maintain an open platform analogous to what we've had with x86. Long-term, regulation will probably be required anyway.
> I care about end-users. I care about my interest
It’s likely that your interests diverge from the majority of end users. Most people do not want you or me protecting them from highly integrated systems.
Fair to talk about what you want, but I think it’s a mistake to assume your needs are representative.
> We have no obligation to agree to every decision they make
I think you have a misunderstanding here. No one is talking about agreeing with the decision.
People are arguing that they are being malicious without evidence of this, as always happens with apple and it detracts from the conversation.
My point is that they have no obligation to support Linux. Not supporting it isn’t something that can be classed as malicious unless there is evidence to show it was intentional and for a bad reason.
If you want hardware support policies changed inside apple you should push for this through industry regulation, which I would support.
> If you want hardware to be opened up for the installation of other operating systems, you’ll have to lobby a governing body for that.
No need. That was already fine 20 years ago in x86 land.
> You cannot blame apple for acting in its own best interests. That’s the nature of the capitalism beast.
Surely you cannot invalidate criticism towards apple using this logic. As I see you don't use the same when criticizing other companies in your other comments.
It was a guess but because you're asking the obvious here's your not so generous instance on DataDog:
> "Datadog is one of the companies that somehow get a hold of your company email address and spam everyone there with email subjects like “Re: meeting next week”. Instant ick."
Come on now? It's just capitalism, aint it mate? /s
It is indeed. And regulation is the answer here too. You can be annoyed at companies playing the game but if you want the rules changed then they aren’t going to do it themselves.
I want Linux on apple hardware the same as anyone else, but if I was in apples shoes my priority would be my OS on my hardware unless I had to comply.
DataDog are being intentionally deceptive with their email subject lines. There is malice there, since the evidence is there.
Apple has no obligation at all to support Linux. There may be malice there but there is no proof. My point was that people apply malice to Apple with no proof.
I clarified in a sister thread, I don't think I really came up with a "theory", so much as was complaining about an annoyance. I don't think Apple actively tried to make Linux harder to run, so much as they changed a bunch of stuff which made a lot of previous Linux on Mac stuff not work.
It doesn't matter whether it was incidental or not. If a company accidentally dumps toxic sludge into a river, people aren't just going to shrug and say "oh, it was an accident". If Asus releases a Windows laptop with hardware changes that make it near impossible to run Linux without years of software engineering effort, people aren't going to shrug and say "oh, it was incidental". It doesn't matter. Although I guess people like you would say "But they never said they would support Linux", which also is beside the point. The fact that Apple is happily creating their own platform which has, by design, no guarantees for longevity (whether from Apple or being able to install Linux as an end-user) is a flaw in itself that, from my perspective, does not deserve being defended.
You might not see the issue there. You might be willing to forgive Apple for it. Plenty of us aren't. And it has nothing to do with "hating Apple", rather it's an extension of hating how Apple makes decisions regarding things like this. I own an M1 Macbook, I've owned an iPhone, I have an iPad. There is no irrational hatred here.
When reading something like this I can’t help but wonder what the big PC makers do, but figuring that out seems like it would be pretty daunting given the large number of models even a single vendor makes.
Having so few models, plus firmware updates in the OS, probably made figuring this out so much easier than it would be in PC land.
Also: poor 2019 iMac. It’s a nice model but came out right before the Apple Silicon transition. It’s lifetime was never going to be what it could have been.
- Dell XPS 13 from 2014 was getting bios updates until 2019 when I sold it.
- Asus AM4 motherboard was getting updates for 4 years. Mainly for new CPU models.
- 1 year old AM5 motherboard from gigabyte has to be used with original firmware, newer is quite unstable.
- Minisforum miniPC gets about 1 year of updates. Firmware download is via Mediafire (file sharing service). There are no downloads for 3 years old device.
I do not thibg bios is too big issue, most things like CPU vulnerabilities are patched in linux.
>Also: poor 2019 iMac. It’s a nice model but came out right before the Apple Silicon transition.
There was nothing stopping Apple from supporting it far longer. It's not like they're a start-up short on cash with limited budgets. It's their own HW for Pete's sake, not someone else's like Microsoft or Linux has to.
Apple's hardware support timelines are 5 years from last sale date for "vintage" status, and 7 years for "obsolete" status. One should probably assume that firmware support especially and possibly software support will follow similar timelines.
Same with the 2019 16" MacBook Pro with Intel i9 processor. I switched to a M1 Max 16" MacBook in 2022 and use the Intel one with Windows 10 installed on Bootcamp.
>Also: poor 2019 iMac. It’s a nice model but came out right before the Apple Silicon transition. It’s lifetime was never going to be what it could have been.
I find it interesting that seemingly every other vendor does their best to maintain backwards compatability or at least some support.
I'll promptly admit my bias: I've been on macs as my daily driver for 20 years. But that's for a reason — the hardware is great, the software is good, and the support for old hardware is honestly amazing. I do lots and lots of hand-me-downs to parents, siblings, the spouse, and lots of those devices still work, with the latest OSes, years and years down the line. I have a friend that just replaced an old 13" Macbook that was 12 years old and working great.
Find me a company that does that and is as good in terms of build quality and I'll be immediately interested.
It's perfectly fair. When you live by the sword of proprietary and industry-unsupported protocols, you die by that sword as well. Apple products have faced this time and time again, with version updates killing 32-bit program support or pushing the OpenGL depreciation line.
Because Apple doesn't have to compete on merits (as your comment points out), they just have to convince you to upgrade on a regular basis. Their routine depreciation and deliberate gimping of old hardware is evidence that Apple does not want you to keep using their devices once they tell you its time to stop.
I disagree. As an example, Macs stuck on 11 (Big Sur) stopped getting updates in 2023.[1] That includes Macs released until ~2014-2015, which are still usable in terms of hardware.[2]
They did provide security updates even after eol same goes for the first iPhone SE which is over 10 years of now. For feature updates you might be right…
Slightly related to this is a software called OpenCore Legacy Patcher [1]. It allows people to install newer macOS versions on older hardware. I don't know if the firmware updates are included though, maybe they aren't.
I recently installed High Sierra on a MacBook Pro from 2011, and it works flawlessly.
AFAIK, installing/updating unsupported OS versions via OCLP doesn't update firmware. It certainly hasn't on my MacPro6,1 running Sonoma (have 478, current is 481); the workaround is a PITA (Monterey only updates firmware if installed on the internal SSD, so I either need to buy a spare or backup / clean install / restore) and probably not worth the trouble.
Other than this, OCLP + Sonoma on the MacPro6,1 is fantastic.
One of my low-end test Macs is a 2012, 11-inch Air.
Still works great, but is capped at Catalina. I’ll have to check when it got its last update.
I use it as a Zoom machine, and it still runs the latest version of that app, just fine.
I have a first-gen iPhone Xs Max, that I’m using to test my software on iOS18. I test iOS16, on an iPhone 8 Plus. I also have an original SE, but it’s capped at iOS15, so I don’t test against it, anymore (except when I want to test really tight screen layouts). Apple kit does tend to last.
I doubt I'll be getting updates of any kind on x86 Macbooks for much longer, so I wanted to install NixOS on here like I had on previous Macs, and I did manage to get it installed, but the support for the T2 hardware is, in my opinion, not usable for daily use. Very basic stuff like suspending doesn't work, the audio sounds like crap, sometimes booting simply doesn't work, and the discrete graphics card doesn't work.
I don't blame the community for this, obviously. These are hard problems, and Apple worked pretty hard to make it difficult to actually sideload other operating systems on here. It's annoying that in another year or so, this computer might become increasingly less secure, because updates will cease.
I should probably just buy a Framework at this point and sell this Mac while it still has some street value.