I had two MacBook Pros, both 13" models from late 2011. One had 4 gigs of RAM, and the other 8. Both of them were intolerably slow. In the first case, I wound up installing CleanMyMac, which did arcane things to various files, and put up alerts to warn me about disappearing memory. But it made the machine useable again, albeit not exactly speedy. I changed some habits: Safari as browser rather than Firefox or Chrome. I tried to keep tabs down to four or five.
The second Mac had bigger problems. Its charger was shot, but even with that replaced, the battery tapped out at 75%. More importantly, the whole disk had been wiped, which meant that it wouldn't boot. Recently, I had downloaded a couple of Linux distributions ("distros") on USB drives. Elementary OS 5.1 (Hera) was reputed to be a lightweight, beautiful distro that shared some aesthetics with the Mac OS. So I thought I'd give it a try.
Ahead of time, I tried to read up on how difficult it might be to install Linux on a Mac these days, and some of the older posts were gnarly, involving multiple and complex steps. But the truth is that Linux gets much better every year. It really wasn't much different than installing on a PC. Here's what I did.
How to: Steps
- Download a distro (an ISO file). Again, I used Elementary OS. It doesn't matter if you download on a PC, a Mac, or another Linux distro.
- Use a program - I recommend BalenaEtcher - to burn the file to a USB drive.
- If possible, plug the Mac into a wired internet connection. Macs, or at least these Macs, use a Broadcomm wireless card, which is not the default for most Linux distros. But Ubuntu-based distros like elementary, and a few others, can install the correct driver easily as an option during installation. As it happened, I had an old USB wireless dongle, which allowed me to add the driver later. For wireless configuration tips, see here.
- Turn off the Mac.
- Insert the USB boot media into an open USB slot.
- Press the Power button to turn on your Mac (or Restart your Mac if it's already on).
- When you hear the startup chime, press and hold the Option key.
- Click on one of the icons that is not the hard drive. This will boot the USB drive.
- At this point, you can run the live distro to make sure everything works. In my case, it did: sound, backlit keys, etc.
- Choose install, and follow prompts.
Post installation
Elementary OS is indeed pretty, and light, and especially quick. The browser uses something like a tenth of Firefox's or Chrome's RAM. On the other hand, the OS doesn't ship with many apps, and I had trouble with several of what was bundled. The AppCenter showed me software it couldn't install. The email program was rejected by gmail as not secure enough. But, on the one hand I can continue to use the Google Suite through the browser, where it's very quick. And I have enough familiarity with other Ubuntu-based distros to install a few other applications through the command line: the Synaptic package management program, Emacs (a word processing program of awesome power), the VLC video app, and a handful of others. I also used a built-in utility to turn a couple websites into standalone programs. But I'm really trying not to cruft it up. I want to keep this light and focused and responsive.
Bottom line: elementary OS is free (although they accept donations, and deserve them), and the distro gives new life to an old machine. I expected to be wrestling with this project for a few days. In fact, it became immediately useable, and a lot of fun.
Thanks, Suzanne, for the gift of the old Mac when you got a new one!
Comments
* AppCenter just spun. Wouldn't update, wouldn't install anything. After a sudo apt-get update, sudo apt-get upgrade, and a reboot, it did work. NOT intuitive! But at least it works now.
* Epiphany didn't allow me to put bookmarks in folders, or pin tabs. So I finally just installed Firefox. I'm happier, and it really doesn't seem any slower.
* Emacs. I downloaded, but it would immediately bomb at launch. It's a bug related to GTK+ display, I gather, but the online fixes didn't work on the launch button. I finally downloaded emacs25-lucid. It doesn't look like any other elementary app, but it works now, too.
* I still haven't been able to play a dvd movie or music CD, not even with VLC. I don't know if that's an issue with Mac hardware or what. But that's a big disappointment.
* Gmail and calendar. I get that Google moved the bar on security. But the solutions are just complex enough, I move to the web. So elementary custom apps wind up being irrelevant.
* Shut down. I guess this bug has been reported too: shutdown often hangs. But if I logout first, it works.
* Quilter is just pretty. Writing is my main interest in computers. But when I open the side panel, it duplicates files. I can show the document markdown outline. But right now, I can't navigate using it (can't click the header). I want this program to work, but it feels half-finished.
And yet, elementary remains so much more responsive than OSX was on this machine. I like the design sensibility, even if it doesn't always live up to it.
I also found a github link that makes everything look a lot more Mac-like, even with a dark theme. See https://github.com/ipproductions/eOS-X.
On the whole I'm genuinely grateful for the project, and deem it worthy of support. After my Chromebook, this is my best laptop, and far more private, customizable, and powerful.
I found the fix for Audio and video playback:
sudo apt-get install libdvd-pkg
sudo dpkg-reconfigure libdvd-pkg
I had previously apt-get installed vlc. Now, all I have to do is insert the disc, load VLC, choose media (movie or audio), then play.
So that solves a problem that bothered me. But note that I'm still not using native apps. Pantheon is a light, intuitive desktop environment. That's the real find of elementary. But the eOS-X theme is better (visually clearer) than the original. VLC is better than the two built in players. Firefox is better than Epiphany. emacs is better than Quilter.
elementary is an Ubuntu distro that, particularly on an old Mac, feels very Mac-like. I *think* it now does everything I need it to do (haven't tried some of the webinar software, but now have more confidence about that). It took a little spelunking (new environment, git, themes). But that adds up to some learning, and in the end, easy fixes for someone with just a little Linux background.
On the whole, liking this a lot.