Put ZorinOS on it and use it as a laptop. Easy. Or Mint. Both work nicely on a 2015 Air.
I have a few and was going to use them as servers, but laptop battery management is too fussy for a server setup. Now selling them cheap with Linux.
this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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Hell, Linux runs great on my nearly 20 year old 2007 iMac. Gonna miss the Intel Mac era.
Did they still have x86_64 CPUs in 2015 apples?
The first Apple silicon macs came out in 2020, and they transitioned from PowerPC to intel in 2006
...and they had only embraced PowerPC maybe 12 years earlier in the early 90s, if I recall correctly.
I think my computer is Intel, not Silicon, if that says anything
I think 🤔 maybe
Whoa, nice!!!! I tried to use mine as a server but Docker wouldn’t set up Lemmy properly, the login doesn’t work when I try to sign up with an admin account, and YunoHost won’t work right either.
[off topic?]
There's probably a local women/children shelter that could use it.
Many of the residents left their homes quickly due to family upheaval and can use it.
What operating system are you trying to run on the VM?
Debian, but the Tailscale IP I’m using with YunoHost (IDK much about coding or self-hosting) will work for a few minutes and then I can’t access YunoHost on it even when I start up YunoHost and Tailscale again
You should install Debian on the laptop instead of running it though a VM. Or a friendlier Debian-based distro like Mint. I don't know if that'll fix that issue specifically but it's generally easier to debug and handle network issues when it's not running through a VM. At the very least, you'll get a more lightweight OS and learn lots!
Oh!! Thanks, can I do that with Apple? I didn’t know I could haha!
Yep! It's just a laptop, nothing different about it. I've installed Ubuntu and Windows alongside MacOS on my 2015 MacBook Pro.
Whoa, thanks so much!! I will definitely watch a tutorial later on how to install Debian!!!
I have a 2017 Air. I used it as a home server for about 2 years with Debian, running some docker containers. Currently, I have installed Fedora on it, and i use it for light tasks.
It has a 5th gen i5, 8gb ram. It can't do a lot, bust still good enough for me as a secondary device.