As long as you can work around the Broadcom module then you got yourself a good deal. Apart from that you'll have some minor stuff here and there but not more than with your average device.
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2026
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It runs just fine on any of the Intel era machines. If you can get it for a good price, that would be a fantastic Linux system.
I used fedora for a couple years on an Intel MacBook Air I found in the ewaste bin.
The camera was the only thing to give me any problems and they were easily fixed.
I spent a lot of time customizing it so that the Mac key combos would work but ultimately gave up, but I learned of a new distro that seems to do a better job at mimicing the Mac ui including the keyboard and I'd be curious to try in your shoes.
I had the exact same PC for a while. Unfortunately it suffers from the same issues as all Mac machines: Broadcom. Speakers, wifi, and lots of other issues. Won't hurt to give it a try though. I ended up just installing Sequoia with OCLP.
I have the same setup (running arch) without issues.
By "without issues" you mean you spent 3 hours trying to get WiFi and speaker drivers working and don't have issues any longer?
Fair question, and yet oddly, I kinda don't mind doing that.
I was using Dell windows machines for work for a long time and let me tell you for a premium priced machines and systems, you still put in a lot of support time.
When it's nearly free I'm ok with tinkering.
I don't really want to use macOS
Well I think I paid $150 for it. And at the end of the day I tossed it and pulled and sold the 64GB RAM 🤣. I wouldn't pay much more than that.
$150
USD?
Correct