It’s fine. I’ve used Debian on that machine. You’ll need to do Broadcom but that’s incredibly easy and if you find it to be too complex or hard, and I mean this as helpful assistance as opposed to an insult, it’s likely Linux isn’t really for you right now.
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2026
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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.
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 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
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.