Until recently, I only dabbled with Linux as I did not have a computer I could dedicate to running Linux.
Recently, I setup Linux on a 2015 Apple Macbook Pro, and on a 7 year old old Microsoft Surface Pro, and a 2008 Macbook mini I had laying around. The 2015 Macbook Pro with 16 GB of RAM, Intel i7 quad core processor, dual GPUs and a 512 GB SSD – was bought for $127, including shipping! The hardware is excellent – but Apple no longer supports it – using Linux brings the system back to life with up to date OS and applications.
My first install was on the Macbook Pro. The installation went quickly but I soon encountered problems, notably that the Macbook would not wake up from suspend (or sleep) mode. I tried 4 different versions of Linux – all ranged from complete failure to wake up to it sort of worked – much of the time – except when it didn’t.
I eventually ended up with Pop! OS, a very nice version of Linux – but had to do a lot of manual configuration to get wake up from suspend mostly working (it’s still not perfect, though). I also had to manually configure the Wi-Fi setup – fortunately I have wired Ethernet too, which made it easy to download the support software.
The Surface Pro installation went much better and seems to work with wake up “out of the box”. On this machine I am running Ubuntu. The setup was very easy and everything works except the touch screen on the Surface Pro. I’ve tried several recommended work arounds but no success yet. This PC is perfectly usable without the touch screen, of course, but would be nice to have the touch screen working too. I will work on that again on another day.
I tried several versions of Linux on the Mac mini but settled on Pop! OS as having the nicest interface, a clean set up, and it seemed to be the fastest version. On that old computer, I can play most HD video but forget playing 4K videos off of YouTube!
I’ve configured Python and Libre Office, and several media creation apps on each of the systems and hope to do some programming. Also starting to read some books on Linux – there is a learning curve if you wish to go beyond just high level use.
My Thoughts?
Installation of Linux (when straightforward) is very fast – maybe 5-10 minutes, compared to an hour installing Windows. The disk footprint is small – on the order of 20 GB compared to filling up the “hard drive” with Windows bloatware. There’s no set of screens to up sell you on Microsoft services like cloud storage or Office. It’s just a clean install, fast, and not bloated.
If you’ve got compatible hardware (more compatible than the Macbook Pro!) and can have it set itself up easily, or you have someone with Linux skills to help out, Linux is great.
But probably not for the average person without some techie computer skills – unless you’ve got the right hardware, or acquire a system with Linux pre-installed.
I also have systems running Windows 10, Windows 11 and versions of Mac OS. Each operating system has plusses and minuses, or benefits and drawbacks. I’m open to use of all of them. Some day, the Windows 10 PC (lacks TPM support so not a candidate for Windows 11) might get “upgraded” to Linux – but for now, I am keeping Windows 10 to support two devices that have no support on Windows 11. These devices are a 20+ year old scanner that is still excellent, and a two-way radio that is not so old, but never got a compatible Windows 11 USB driver.
My mileage may differ from yours – I spent my career in software and computer engineering, have a BS in computer science and an MS in software engineering – so I’m happy to do a lot of fiddling to get things working. But most people are probably not in to that.
Here is my used 2015 Macbook Pro running Pop! OS. The desktop background is a photo I took at the Jansky VLA in New Mexico. Normally the radio telecopes are miles apart but 18 of the 24 are shown here, during a maintenance period.
