I’ve got a Macbook Pro A1707
I put Mint Ubuntu on it, had some issues but it was fine. Flashed Mint Debian as an experiment and it’s a lot better, even though it has a lot of the same problems and I can’t get the speaker to start… I still have to adjust the txpower every single time I boot up in order to start the wifi, but the biggest difference is the fan driver.
For some reason on Mint Ubuntu it was more difficult to control when the fan came on and how sensitively it reacted to sensing heat, not really an issue on Mint Debian, it will kick on for any length of time once it senses heat, I can more easily adjust the fans manually as well.
I don’t know if I’d get much money for it if I sold so I’m just trying to use it until it falls apart. I’ll figure out the speakers eventually, I guess. This time it isn’t the speakers, it’s something else, on Mint Ubuntu the speakers just didn’t work until I installed the drivers… on Mint Debian the speakers work but only display sounds from booting up or other computing actions, can’t play sound from music files or video, can’t even plug in headphones. When the speakers on Mint Ubuntu didn’t work before I installed the driver, I could listen with my headphones only. Weird.
Anyway just sharing this experience. The command to adjust the txpower appropraitely is
sudo iwconfig [yours] txpower 10
edit: edited for typos
FWIW, I have Fedora 44 running on my 2012 iMac. It runs like a dream with minimal fuss.
I might try that… recently I flashed Debian Gnome and it performs even better than Mint Debian Cinnamon. It boots so fast, I’m not sure if I can even flash another OS. I’ve got such a short window to smash the option key that I’ve yet to get to the menu successfully. The wifi, speakers and lack of touch bar are still issues, but once I adjust the txpower, it’s fine.
My major issue was the ATI Radeon driver. The one that came standard on most live USB drives currently works, but trying to update. It just made the screen unusable and resulted in a boot loop. I couldn’t recover from. So I had to flash it again.
But, with any Mac, you’ll have to hold down the left option key at boot — as soon as you hear the startup chime, and hold it down until you get the EFI boot select screen. As soon as you hear the startup chime, hold down the option key! And keep holding it down until you get your boot options. That’s it! From there, you can select your startup device, including your Linux live USB (which may take a second to show up in the list)
This is an option built into every New World Mac, and you can’t ever really get rid of it. It’s hardwired into the Mac.
I am aware that you’ve got to smash or hold down the option key. I’m saying Debian boots so fast that the window to do this is incredibly short, as soon as I hear the booting up chime, it’s loading to Debian. There isn’t really much of a chance to get to the menu.
But it’s ok, I think Debian Gnome is the end of my distro hopping. I don’t feel the need to flash another OS.
Let me rephrase: hold down the left option key during the startup chime. Don’t wait until after.
This will always give you a consistent 3 to 4 second window
Anyway, I’m glad that you like gnome. The difference between Debian and Fedora are under the hood.
Yup. I know that. Thanks though.