Since my last post I’ve had to load Linux Mint on my MacPro 5,1 at work – a MacOS “security update” a couple of weeks ago did in the OCLP instance I had set up to run Monterey, so I muttered a quiet “fuck it” and loaded Linux on it.
Initially I was going to load POP!_OS on it like I have on my PC at home, but Pop didn’t like some antique bit of hardware in the MacPro. Mint on the other hand installed just fine and after some under-the-hood wrenching I got all of the fiddly hardware bits working.
Then over the last weekend the SSD in my super cheap refurbished 2013 MacBook Air called it quits, so I replaced it – and that’s where things went pear-shaped…
The 2013 MacBook Air still has a user-serviceable SSD in it, but it also has the “T2” security chip in it, and I was unable to get MacOS to install on the new SSD for ‘security reasons’ – probably because I didn’t install a $500 Apple-blessed M.2 in it.
Fine…
So I spent yesterday getting Ubuntu 23.10 running on the Air, which was kinda complicated because of that thrice-damned T2 that both controls everything and is ridiculously proprietary. The system will run bog-standard Linux just fine, but the keyboard, backlight, trackpad, webcam, sound, wifi, thunderbolt, etc, etc wont work because the T2 controls them and Apple isn’t talking when it comes to reverse engineering the thing to make drivers for anything not-MacOS.
Luckily people aren’t easily dissuaded from doing whatever they want with the stuff they buy, and there are some complicated solutions for the T2 available… All you need to do is recompile the kernel.
Long story short, after about five hours I had “Mantic Minotaur” running on the MacBook Air – along with all of the peripherals. Interestingly, the Air runs better (and cooler) with Linux than with MacOS, probably because Apple doesn’t want people using circa 2013 1Ghz dual-core i3 systems – even if they are obligated to support them for another year or so.
And that’s about it for this update. I’m coming up on my 55th birthday in about two weeks, I passed 20 years in Secondlife last month, and I hit 20 years where I work this year. Some stability I guess. 🙂
Listening to "Subdivisions" by Rush