Ask Slashdot: What's the Fastest Linux Distro for an Old Macbook 7,1?

Long-time Slashdot reader gr8gatzby writes: I have an old beautiful mint condition white Macbook 7,1 with a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo and 5GB RAM. Apple cut off the upgrade path of this model at 10.6.8, while a modern-day version of any browser requires at least 10.9 these days, and as a result my browsing is limited to Chrome version 49.0.2623.112.

So this leaves me with Linux. What is the fastest, most efficient and powerful distro for a Mac of this vintage?
It's been nearly eight years since its release, so leave your best thoughts in the comments. What's the best Linux distro for an old Macbook 7,1?

Comments

More the desktop environment than the distro.

[serviscope_minor]

I found arch worked well on very old machines, but even so the main thing is to use a lightweight desktop environment or not. I use FVWM which isn't to everyone's tastes, but I like it on machines of all sizes including fast ones.

But you won't like unity on that machine I expect.

Oh also, replace any spining disks with flash.

Re:More the desktop environment than the distro.

[eneville]

evilwm http://www.usenix.org.uk/conte... and/or ratpoison. Both provide great usability. If you spend all day in a GUI or text environment, you really should learn these.

Re:More the desktop environment than the distro.

[KiloByte]

The only current desktop environment I would disrecommend is GNOME and stuff that uses Gnome's display parts (ie, Cinnamon). Unless you have a fast efficient GPU, it's really sluggish even on 2017 hardware.

XFCE works indistinguishably from a high-end machine on a slow SoC with 2GB ram, unless loaded with bloated programs. Without a browser, you'd need to really try to make a dent, a single browser with 10 tabs can bog the machine down single-handedly :/

First gen RasPi (256MB) shipped with LXDE; at this point talking about reducing bloat further is a waste of time. You can use a simpler environment if you find it suits you better, but machine's resources are not a concern.

Oh also, replace any spining disks with flash.

Yeah, that does more to modernize the machine than replacing all other components together would.

Re:More the desktop environment than the distro.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Window Maker is still a thing.

Re: More the desktop environment than the distro.

[Anonymous Coward]

I completely agree with the parent. The kernel is pretty small on any distribution compared to the specs you provided. The chrome on the GUI is going to take a lot more resources in many cases and present a load on the graphics in some cases. I run Xubuntu (Ubuntu with XFCE) on a laptop with lesser specs and it flies with sub-15 second boot times and sub second app launches for web bowsers and other basic apps.

Buy an SSD if you donâ(TM)t already have one. Anything will do and it will make a huge difference in system and app start time.

Re:More the desktop environment than the distro.

[Teun]

You said it, "the allegedly heavy KDE".
Of all full DE's KDE is the lightest, a KDE distro like Neon only installs the bare necessities which makes it even lighter than the Kubuntu it is based on.
I'm running it on a 6 years old i5 with 4GB RAM and it's great.

Re:More the desktop environment than the distro.

[drinkypoo]

Hell, fvwm is still a thing. But personally, I'd probably run lxde. You get all the basic functionality one expects from a modern gui, but it's still plenty lightweight.

Re:More the desktop environment than the distro.

[Big Bipper]

I have an old Dell Vostro with a Core i7 860 @ 2.80 Ghz, 8 gig of ram, and spinning rust as my everyday machine. I run OpenSuSE Leap 42.3 with the KDE Plasma 8.6 desktop which is probably the most functional and customisable desktop out there ( i.e. not a lightweight ). I find the performance perfectly acceptable except when starting up, but an upgrade to an SSD would fix that. Throw leap on your Macbook, tweak KDE to look and work like IOS and enjoy it for years.

Re:More the desktop environment than the distro.

[Knuckles]

I found arch worked well on very old machines, but even so the main thing is to use a lightweight desktop environment or not. I use FVWM which isn't to everyone's tastes, but I like it on machines of all sizes including fast ones.

But you won't like unity on that machine I expect.

Oh also, replace any spining disks with flash.

I am using Unity on a midyear 2009 MBP 5,3 with 2.52 GHz Core 2 Duo and Nvidia GeForce 9400M just fine
I have to compliment Apple on this machine, it has been serving me just fine over 10 years for browsing, email, and video watching

Re: More the desktop environment than the distro.

[Knuckles]

"Posted one year from now."

Right. "Nearly" 10 years

Re:More the desktop environment than the distro.

[slashdot_commentator]

A 6 year old i5 isn't exactly ancient hardware. The entire i-series CPUs are pretty much computing overkill for general audience computing (games/websurfing).

Re:More the desktop environment than the distro.

[Teun]

True, especially for a laptop they are still very useful.

Re:More the desktop environment than the distro.

[The123king]

Building your own car can be more efficient than buying one from the dealership, but it requires a lot more more effort to pull off

Re:More the desktop environment than the distro.

[Gnostic Nomad]

I have an almost identical machine regarding specs - a ShuttlePC case with Core2Duo 2.4 Ghz, originally with 4 GB memory, updgraded to 8 GB. It is running Xubuntu 16.04, ie. XFCE as a desktop. The one thing I really recommend is swapping the HD to an SSD - that really makes a difference. I bought a 120 GB Kingston for 50 euros when I set the machine up. I got the machine for free, as a friends company was throwing them into the trash heap :) Boots up really fast with the SSD. It was completely usable even with the 4 GB it originally had, and with 8 its sweet. -- It works great for everything I normally do - movies, web, email, light photo editing and so on. I even play older games on Steam - I have an Nvidia 620 passively cooled graphics card on it - games such as Torchlight 2, Borderlands 2 on low details, Divinity Original Sin etc run just fine.

Do you reaaly want the "fastest"?

[BellyJelly]

The fastest would be something minimal like puppy linux, but I don't think you really want something that ugly on your beloved macbook. Linux Mint Mate Edition will work fine, with a reasonably attractive and conventional UI.

Re:LUBUNTU

[hazardPPP]

Lubuntu it is. I find that this distro runs just fine od 10+ year old PCs (once-upon-a-time Windows laptops), no reason why it shouldn't run just fine on an old Macbook.

Your Macbook model can run El Capitan 10.11

[carlhaagen]

I'm not sure why you think it's "capped" to 10.6 - that's just the version that was current at the release of your Macbook model. It will happily install and run El Capitan (10.11), and that's bound to be a more compatible and pleasant desktop experience than putting anything Linux on it.

Re:Your Macbook model can run El Capitan 10.11

[Halo1]

It can even run macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) (the current latest version).

Re:Your Macbook model can run El Capitan 10.11

[Admiral Trigger Happ]

It can even run macOS 10.13 (High Sierra) (the current latest version).

Yep it will indeed However you can't install 10.13 directly on a system with 10.6.8 you need to be on 10.8 or later but you can got to 10.11 and then to 10.13 Check out https://support.apple.com/en-a... for the link to download 10.11.6 from the appstore for free.

Re:Your Macbook model can run El Capitan 10.11

[Carewolf]

I'm not sure why you think it's "capped" to 10.6 - that's just the version that was current at the release of your Macbook model. It will happily install and run El Capitan (10.11), and that's bound to be a more compatible and pleasant desktop experience than putting anything Linux on it.

Well. Any upgrade to Linux would still be an upgrade ;)

Re:Your Macbook model can run El Capitan 10.11

[carlhaagen]

Of course you can DIRECTLY install 10.13 (read: fresh installation), or any other compatible version, but you can't UPDATE a 10.6 installation to 10.13. In my opinion doing a single fresh install is a lot faster and tidier than jumping through several intermediate updates to land where you want.

Re:Your Macbook model can run El Capitan 10.11

[angel'o'sphere]

From OS X 10.6.8 to Linux, no.

I'm working on Linux in my daytime job, it is light years behind OS X. Not as bad as Winwos bottom line, but pretty close to run me nuts.

Re:Your Macbook model can run El Capitan 10.11

[Bing Tsher E]

What is so great about a 'desktop experience' from Poland?

Re:Your Macbook model can run El Capitan 10.11

[hey!]

that's bound to be a more compatible and pleasant desktop experience than putting anything Linux on it.

That's a bold statement. It's bound to be a more pleasant desktop experience for someone whose preferred desktop experience is MacOS, but fundamentally it's a matter of personal preference. I, for example, would immediately (regardless of distro) would but the i3 tiling window manager on the thing, because that's what I like, and it happens to fit well with the way I work. Generally I install Linux with i3 and XFCE for the desktop-style utilities in the situations where I want them. There is simply no way way that MacOS could ever beat i3 for me by adding features, because I really like minimalism.

I wouldn't install i3 in a corporate environment, where I need to come up with a common standard that works well enough for everyone for the full range of tasks, but for a personal machine by all means let's make an apples to oranges comparison. They're both fruit, and some people just like one better than the other.

Re:Your Macbook model can run El Capitan 10.11

[hey!]

Really, all that hardware support is easy in Linux for an older computer, particularly a Mac. And for the most part people who get themselves into package management hell are tinkerers who wouldn't be satisfied by a curated environment like an app store.

I'm totally with you on the idea of consistently-designed applications, but a lot of that went out the window even on MacOS years ago. They days of the all-powerful Mac HCI snob were over by the early 90s, killed by cross-platform apps. Yeah, Microsoft tweaks office to follow Mac conventions, but in the end is it more important for them to deliver a consistent Mac experience or a consistent Office experience?

Sure, there are still people who use iWork rather than LibreOffice or MSOffice, but talk about a minority. In general big name Gnome apps are just as well thought out and consistent as what people by-in-large use on the Mac -- which is probably damning with faint praise. And then there are apps which are laws unto themselves, like GIMP. Even if you *could* fix the problems with GIMP, it's not clear that you *should*.

Re:Your Macbook model can run El Capitan 10.11

[Knuckles]

It's not that bold. It might not cover every single person out there, but it covers the vast majority. Most people want wifi, bluetooth and audio drivers that work, proper support for the MacBook's trackpad, good power management, decent and reasonably _consistently-designed_ applications that are easy to install (ie don't quickly descend into package management hell), and a whole host of other stuff that generally just works with macOS and only might kinda/sorta work on Linux, if you spend enough time dicking around with it.

MBP 5,3 from 2009 here, every single piece of hardware worked perfectly on day 1 of this machine with Ubuntu, and still does now 10 years later. I was and actually still am very happy with this machine

Re:Your Macbook model can run El Capitan 10.11

[EddydaSquige]

I recently sent an old Mac Book 7,1 to my mother-in-law. Ram upgraded to 6gb, solid state drive and OS X 10.10. It works great for light browsing, email and FaceTime.

Re:Your Macbook model can run El Capitan 10.11

[Carewolf]

From OS X 10.6.8 to Linux, no.

I'm working on Linux in my daytime job, it is light years behind OS X. Not as bad as Winwos bottom line, but pretty close to run me nuts.

I work on both Linux and OS X professionally. We always try to get the new recruits to volunteer for the OS X maintenance, but within a few weeks, they like rest of us, refuse to touch it unless they absolutely have to. An there is so much more that needs to be fixed on OS X because Apple routinely breaks APIs with their upgrades, so we need to constantly test beta releases to see what they have broken this time. Of course being professionals we also support older OS X versions than Apple does.

Re:Your Macbook model can run El Capitan 10.11

[angel'o'sphere]

Yeah,
that is a pain.
I only _use_ my Macs, I don't develop for them. All my private development on my Macs for myself is done in Java, like all my professional development is in the Java eco system.

Windows 10 works

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting AC for obvious reasons :)

Re:Windows 10 works

[ChunderDownunder]

Windows works on a Core 2 Duo; source me.

The main caveat would be the on die GPU, for which Intel refuses to provide updates (not sure whether that model of Macbook came with nvidia).

you have a really good machine.

[lkcl]

2.4ghz with 5GB of RAM is insanely quick, and an insane amount of RAM. it's only the fact that modern OSes are so stuffed with eye candy, adware and freeware that you've been hood-winked into BELIEVING that the OS *is* the computer. the only thing that will make a HUGE difference to speed is if you get yourself a GOOD SSD. by that i mean one with an Intel chipset i.e. not the 3700 series which is made *by* intel but using a shitty consumer-grade controller IC from Marvell. you want an S3500 or basically hunt around for anything that has "Intel Power-loss Protection". see here for full details http://lkcl.net/reports/ssd_an...

the actual OS doesn't techincally matter, none of them will make a blind bit of difference, you have such a fast machine, you might as well pick one that will make your life easiee.

all apps will work perfectly fine as long as you don't do what i do which is try to run qemu, two web browsers, 3D Graphics Editors, videos, IRC, 2D CAD Packages *and* try to compile the linux kernel all at the same time. this tends to bring even a machine with 16GB of 2400mhz DDR4 RAM to its knees. don't do it :) keep an eye on things, but libreoffice and a few tabs open in browsers should be fine.

your main concern is web browsers, which is one application, and you should try to keep the size of the window to the minimum that you can tolerate. i manage fine with chromium running at around 1024x800 and underneath that firefox with 200 tabs open ar around 1024x700 or so (i use a 3000 x 1600 resolution laptop screen).

someone else here suggested fvwm2: i too love it, because the startup time is well under half a second. for everyone else i recommend XFCE as it's based on the older gnome2 infrastructure so does well at auto-detecting drives and so on. the other desktop i love and thoroughly recommend for end-users is Trinity Desktop.

the only other thing i recommend is that you NOT install systemd as it actually slows boot times DOWN (as well as making your life geneerally hell). you can either install debian and then install sysvinit, which will "disable systemd but still leave it hanging around like a bad smell" or you can go the whole hog, add http://angband.pl/deban and actually get rid of it entirely, going back to udisk2, policykit, consolekit and other packages that debian's developers rather foolishly removed.

bottom line is, the threshold for "good enough computing" was crossed many many years ago, and it's only the marketing teams DELIBERATELY making the proprietary OSes do more so that your machine APPEARS so slow that you feel you HAVE to buy a new one... you see where that's going? anyway, welcome to the freedom that comes with being able to choose your own OS, you're one of the few people that actually has control of their computing hardware back, now.

Re:you have a really good machine.

[carlhaagen]

I fully agree with "picking one that will make your life easier", meaning he should stick with OS X / macOS by simply updating to a current version. The original author is suffering the misunderstanding that he cannot update to anything beyond what was on the laptop when he bought it 8 years ago.

Re:you have a really good machine.

[drinkypoo]

2.4ghz with 5GB of RAM is insanely quick, and an insane amount of RAM. it's only the fact that modern OSes are so stuffed with eye candy, adware and freeware that you've been hood-winked into BELIEVING that the OS *is* the computer.

5GB was a lot of RAM for a laptop, but now it's anemic and it's only a lot of RAM for a phone. Anything less than 16GB might as well just go home and shoot itself. Just loading one game can regularly use 4GB or more. Or one large image. Editing a decent-resolution video will rapidly use more than 5GB. Running multiple components of an office suite can easily eat up your 5GB.

5GB is not a lot of RAM any more. Even if the OSes weren't using more and more RAM, the data sets we're working on have grown to that point.

Re:you have a really good machine.

[serviscope_minor]

5GB was a lot of RAM for a laptop, but now it's anemic and it's only a lot of RAM for a phone. Anything less than 16GB might as well just go home and shoot itself. Just loading one game can regularly use 4GB or more. Or one large image. Editing a decent-resolution video will rapidly use more than 5GB. Running multiple components of an office suite can easily eat up your 5GB.

5GB is not a lot of RAM any more. Even if the OSes weren't using more and more RAM, the data sets we're working on have grown to that point.

A little anemic, perhaps, but still far from unusable. Yes, if you're doing RAM intensive stuff like editing large videos, or truly colossal images (gigapixel images aren't readily available), then you'll want something better. Or machine learning, but then you'd mostly use the laptop as a terminal for a machine with a few fast GPUs.

But even for compiling, you'd have a hard job finding a job for which 5GB isn't enough memory.

I doubt that the OP is interested in playing top end games especially as he wants Linux.

Re:you have a really good machine.

[drinkypoo]

But even for compiling, you'd have a hard job finding a job for which 5GB isn't enough memory.

Ha! What about Android? Is 50GB enough memory? But seriously, my browser sometimes uses more than 4GB. It's not difficult to imagine exhausting 5GB as a regular user any more. It's a bit obscene, but it's just how it is.

Re:you have a really good machine.

[DeBaas]

That upgrade in Apples world means buying a new OS.
Years ago in our household we had one Apple that had the same issue, just a few years old and the only way to be able to run a recent browser was buying a new OS.
I installed Linux on it, and we were able to use the that laptop for years. Oh and not everyone likes MacOS better than Linux. I personally prefer a Mate or Cinnamon desktop any day over MacOS.

Re:you have a really good machine.

[Zontar The Mindless]

It's good to know that Lennart reads Slashdot, I guess.

Re:you have a really good machine.

[carlhaagen]

No, it doesn't mean *buying* a new OS at all - Apple made OS X / macOS free of charge about 10 years ago, and you can download any version you want directly from them without cost or registration. If you want a physical copy that will obviously cost you a small spot of cash ($25, believe).

Re:you have a really good machine.

[DeBaas]

Do you have a link? I definitely had to buy a new OS at the time and that was a lot less than 10 years ago.

Re:you have a really good machine.

[j-beda]

That upgrade in Apples world means buying a new OS.
Years ago in our household we had one Apple that had the same issue, just a few years old and the only way to be able to run a recent browser was buying a new OS.

Yeah, that was a problem for a while - Apple was charging $20 for 10.7 as I recall. Later versions we all free. However, even if the machine in question will not do an upgrade jump from 10.6 to 10.13, Apple provides a free download for 10.11 here: https://support.apple.com/en-u... and one can upgrade for free from 10.11 to 10.13. With the proper firmware updates, this machine seems to be able to do "Internet Recovery", so one should be able to install or update it even with a bare drive and no OS installed.

https://support.apple.com/en-u...

According to https://everymac.com/systems/a... the MacBook7,1 supports up to 16GB of RAM and can run the current version of macOS, "High Sierra" 10.13. Put in a SATA SSD and this machine is perfectly capable of running all the latest macOS software at very acceptable speed.

Re:you have a really good machine.

[DeBaas]

Glad that they changed their policy! At the time it really put me off Apple.

Re:you have a really good machine.

[jouassou]

The computer uses as much RAM as you have available, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work fine with less. I'm using Ubuntu Mate on my laptop with 8GB, and at the moment only require 4GB, even though the machine hasn't been rebooted for 10 days. (That's 3GB used by Firefox, and 1GB used by the desktop environment, syncthing, evince, etc. Technically, 3GB of the "available" space is used for caching, but you can do without that if needed).

I guess the conclusion is that the main hog is the web browser; limit the number of tabs you keep open, and 5GB should be fine. Go old-school and disable tabbed browsing completely (using bookmarks for things you want to revisit, and browsing the internet sequentially instead of in parallel), and 5GB should be plenty.

Re:you have a really good machine.

[carlhaagen]

You can just go to https://support.apple.com/ and search for "how to download os x" (or ditto for "macOS"). Here's f.e. the download for El Capitan: https://support.apple.com/en-u...

Re: you have a really good machine.

[Monster_user]

What world are you living in? Linux software hasnâ(TM)t ballooned so much that 5GB of RAM is anemic. 5GB should be plenty for even the heaviest Linux distributions.

Also, I donâ(TM)t think the sata sets, outside of web pages, have really increased that much either. Iâ(TM)ve been able to run on 4GB of RAM for a decade.

Re: you have a really good machine.

[Monster_user]

So iOS 11 uses unicode apostrophes. How annoying. Another reason to stay on 10.2...

Re:you have a really good machine.

[vaibhav.dlv]

Got a 4 yr old Lenovo with Pentium D 2.3GHz dual core cpu with 2GB RAM. Works fine for basic tasks. Of course if you use Chrome or Firefox, don't expect to have more than 10 tabs open. These guzzle memory like a V12 guzzles gas. I use Vivaldi generally which is lighter and faster. Gets me through those 20+ browser tabs sessions. With 5GB RAM it's way better!

Re:you have a really good machine.

[The123king]

My work machine is a Core2Duo running at 3GHz with 4GB RAM and an ancient HDD with Win10 on it. The thing is slow, but not unusable. I mean it's pretty frustrating and sluggish, but not unusable. You just have to be patient, much like you would with an OAP.

Re:you have a really good machine.

[The123king]

Mountain Lion was the last OS you had to buy, which came out in 2012, so about 5 years ago

Slackware 7.1

[blind biker]

Just kidding, of course.

But if you want to try, here it is, Slackware 7.1

Re:Slackware 7.1

[jmccue]

I am not be kidding. If that system is Intel, Slackware 14.2 will work great. I use it on a 2 core 4 gig memory machine and it is very fast.

I have noticed LibraOffice 5.2 (since 5.0 came out) is sluggish. Outside of that, I would not notice anything on my machine.

Re:Slackware 7.1

[toddestan]

I'm sure the "just kidding" part is the 7.1 version, which came out around the same time as Windows 2000.

But there's absolutely no reason Slackware 14.2 won't run on that system, and Slackware is a great distro.

5GB RAM Core-2 Duo 2.4 GHz

[hcs_$reboot]

Most distribs should run decently with that hardware.

Arch or Clear

[aglider]

I am not sure if they run on that specific hardware.

Re:Same issue

[Carewolf]

I have a similar issue with an '06-'08 iMac (I can't look now). AppStore won't let me install the latest High Sierra. It says my hardware is incompatible.

I'm stuck on Lion.

You can update the firmware manually, and then the newst versions will install and run just fine. It is entirely artificial.

My 0.02

[DaMattster]

Why not consider running one of the BSDs on it? OpenBSD will cruise and you will have a very secure laptop.

It's not that old....

[mysidia]

You have a dual-core 64-bit processor there, I believe. I would try ElementaryOS or Linux Mint KDE first.

Of course if you REALLY want fastest, then you will need a distribution that has no desktop environment and simply drops you to a command prompt after installation --- that would be something like Ubuntu server, CentOS 7, or a minimal install of SuSE or Debian.

The biggest worry (IMO) with the old hardware is Spectre/Meltdown;l security risks which will likely never have a hardware/firmware-level mitigation released for such an old platform, as warranty expired; only the partial/temporary performance-killing workarounds that can be done by patching the kernel, thus the "fastest" choice of distro could be very well be to run a vulnerable/unpatched one.

Re:It's not that old....

[Zontar The Mindless]

OpenSUSE worked great on my 10-y-o single-core laptop until they dropped support for 32-bit.

Re:Same issue

[carlhaagen]

Your old iMac will likely run El Capitan, and possibly even Sierra. You normally can't find these older versions in the AppStore since Apple only offers the current version of macOS in the search results, but you can access the downloads from here: 10.11 El Capitan: https://support.apple.com/en-a... 10.12 Sierra: https://support.apple.com/en-a...

There are many...

[wap3com]

I use distrowatch.com see what is hot.

MX-Linux [https://mxlinux.org/]

Dedoimedo [dedimedo.com] ranked it #1 XFCE for 2017.

Up to date with Firefox ESR, Thunderbird, LibreOffice
1.2g ISO

Requires CD/DVD [or system that boots USB]
i486 or AMD and above
512 MB Ram
5GB free disk space
UEFI or BIOS

Re:There are many...

[Bing Tsher E]

i486 or AMD and above

My motherboard has an AMD 80286 processor, you pratt.

Slackware

[Anonymous Coward]

Slackware is generally the fastest Linux distro, since it is a 'cut the crap' kind of distro. It only has what is necessary. It feels orders of magnitude faster than Ubuntu for example.

Re:Slackware

[arth1]

I'd argue that Gentoo is far faster than Slackware. You get to compile everything for your particular CPU (in this case all the extra instructions a Core 2 Duo has compared to a generic x86), can build a kernel with just the hooks for the hardware you actually have, and build packages without things you don't need that only serves to gobble up memory and run extra code.
Binary distros, no matter how "light" they are, are going to be compiled to run on anything, with quite liberal guesses for what a user might actually want compiled in.

Re:Slackware

[Thumper_SVX]

While you're right, the difference in performance between the more generic compiles and a tuned compile on the particular hardware OP is asking about are so small as to be negligible. While I appreciate Gentoo, in particular in desktop type environments the amount of work required to set it up is just not rewarded by any appreciable improvements in performance or stability, and with Gentoo in particular I have found that you need to stay on top of maintenance and updates pretty religiously or you're going to get behind and get in a very bad place.

I stopped compiling Gentoo a decade ago... when I was using really old hardware (circa 2000-2005) yeah it could make a marked difference but anything with a Core2Duo or newer is really not going to see much if any improvement.

Re:Slackware

[ruir]

A rolling release is neither necessarily good or stable.

Speed it up with RAM, SSD

[Walter White]

I agree with others who have suggested upgrading the HDD to an SSD. That makes a huge difference even for a machine that may not fully support the fastest SATA speeds. According to this web page (if I have correctly identified the H/W) https://everymac.com/systems/a... this Mac can hold up to 8GB RAM. If it presently has 5 GB, it is presently populated with a 1GB stick and a 4GB stick. I would try to match the 4GB stick and bump the RAM to 8GB.

With this H/W you can reasonably run any Linux distro so the choice comes down to choosing a distro and desktop suitable for a new user. Ubuntu and Mint are both good candidates for easy installation. I would avoid Ubuntu 17.10 as it has a *lot* of new stuff like Wayland by default and a return to Gnome from Unity. 16.04 would be a good choice and it's an LTS version meaning it will be supported for a long time.

For a desktop I would consider XFCE or Mate. Both are fairly functional without being too bloated. Some people like the default Unity desktop on Ubuntu which was originally targeted at netbooks. I cannot comment on KDE because I don't use it but there are those that like it a lot and report that it is not a resource hog. Someone mentioned fvwm2. That was my window manager of choice 20 years ago when I ran Linux on a 486 with 4 MB RAM and a few GB of disk drive. I recommend a full blown modern desktop environment for ease of use for a new user. The nice thing about Linux is that you can install and test drive any of these desktops and choose the one to try from the login screen.

Re:Speed it up with RAM, SSD

[j-beda]

According to the linked website, this machine supports 16GB, as well as the latest version of macOS, 10.13 (as well as 10.6, 10.7, 10.8, 10.9, 10.10, 10.11, and 10.12).

Install Linux if one wants, but upgrading to the latest version of macOS is probably a "simpler" way of addressing the "out of date browsers" issue.

Re:Speed it up with RAM, SSD

[Walter White]

You are correct. I read "... but third-parties have determined that it actually supports 8 GB of RAM" Had I continued reading I would have seen "... and 16 GB of RAM running OS X 10.7.5 "Lion" or higher and the latest EFI update."

I agree that if it can run the current version of MacOS that would be the preferred solution.

Re:Run the latest

[Zontar The Mindless]

5GB RAM is plenty for eye candy. Whether he wants the eye candy or not depends on what he intends to use the machine for.

Re:Same issue

[gordguide]

Best practice is to download but do not install every MacOS version as it's released. If you do that, every version of MacOS will be available to you in the AppleStore (provided you access it with that machine). If you have multiple Macs, do the same on each one.

Define terms

[mi]

So this leaves me with Linux.

Or one of the BSDs... Maybe, even Solaris will work...

What is the fastest, most efficient and powerful distro

What is "the fastest"? The same program, with the same input will produce the same output in the same time under the same conditions...

The other terms — "efficient" and "powerful" — are even more vague.

The usual advice is: pick, what the person you'll be asking questions uses...

macOS High Sierra

[DontBeAMoran]

https://everymac.com/systems/a...

Apple officially supports a maximum of 4 GB of RAM, but third-parties have determined that it actually supports 8 GB of RAM running Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" and 16 GB of RAM running OS X 10.7.5 "Lion" or higher and the latest EFI update.

Pre-Installed MacOS: X 10.6.3
Maximum MacOS: Current

So update EFI, upgrade RAM to 16GB, swap HDD for SSD and install the latest macOS.

Problem solved.

Re:macOS High Sierra

[kamapuaa]

So update EFI, upgrade RAM to 16GB, swap HDD for SSD and install the latest macOS.

This is the best answer and really should be +5. The only issue is, looking on Ebay it's a $100 laptop. Is it really worth putting a couple hundred dollars of new parts into it? Personally I would upgrade the OS and leave it at that.

Re:macOS High Sierra

[The123king]

It might be a better option than spending $600 on a new one.

Re:macOS High Sierra

[SuiteSisterMary]

A few caveats:

This system can run the last version of OS X 10.10 "Yosemite" and OS X 10.11 "El Capitan," although advanced feature support is minimal (Mac-to-Mac AirDrop is supported). When running Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" it is not supported booting in 64-bit mode. It is capable of running macOS Sierra (10.12) as well, although the Universal Clipboard, Auto Unlock, and Apple Pay features are not supported. Finally, this model is capable of running macOS High Sierra (10.13), and it supports HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Coding), but it does not support hardware accelerated HEVC.

Additionally, please note that OS X "Lion" 10.7 and subsequent versions of OS X are not capable of running Mac OS X apps originally written for the PowerPC processor as these operating systems do not support the "Rosetta" environment. To run PowerPC applications on this Mac, it will be necessary to use Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard".

I have an MBP 5,1 with Linux...

[tomxor]

I agree with others here that the DE is the more resource hungry consideration than the distro. I use Debian + i3wm on my MBP 5,1 and it's faster than any Apple OS that ever ran on it. I know that i3wm is probably the main reason for that, if I installed gnome3 (which i'm not entirely against) I expect It would be quite a lot slower. i3wm is the most friendly of the tiling window managers if you wanted to go down that route, once you do you tend not to go back.

Use Slackware.

[sombragris]

I will second the other commenters who suggest to install Slackware. According to your Mac's specs, they are plentiful for running 14.2 or -current.

In Slackware64-current you can have the latest and greatest GNU/Linux software. Kernel 4.14.4, the latest Plasma 5, the latest iterations of MATE and Cinnamon, Firefox 58, Chromium 63.0.3239.132, LibreOffice 5.4.4...

If possible I would increase the RAM but that's not really necessary if you plan to limit yourself to light browsing or text editing.

Use Slackware; it's simple, it's fast, it's light. It's not perfect, but I think it fits your bill.

broad question

[v1]

If you ask THIS group "what distro is best for (anything)" within a few hours you're going to get at least one suggestion for every distro known to mankind.

People are going to tend to suggest what works best for them. You haven't provided enough context of what you want to use it for, or how you want it to work for you, or what you're comfortable with, to even begin to weed out the extreme suggestions.

My rule of thumb on asking for advice for computer purchases or OS installs is "If you ask for advice, and someone immediately gives you ideas without asking you some questions, they aren't telling you what they think is best for you, they are telling you what they think is best for them." When anyone asks me for such advice, I ask them several questions so I can figure out their needs and decide on a few options that are best for them.

- You've already answered what hardware you have. That's a start
- do you mostly use a gui, mostly (or exclusively) use command line, or do you want good support for both?
- do you want your options somewhat limited but setup to be mostly automatic and easy, or are you comfortable with manually setting things up so you have more control and more options?
- are there specific pieces of software you need to be able to run? (provide urls) Do you have a specific repo you want to use?
- are you likely to need to rely somewhat on a specific person you know for technical support, that may only be fluent in (or willing to support) a specific distro? (which one(s)) or are you equally open to any options?
- is there any other specific hardware you would like to have support for? (a laser printer, your favorite gaming mouse, an iPad, etc)
- are there any distros you already favor or want to avoid?

that will get us warmed up and help narrow the field.

Re:Just upgrade

[mfnickster]

If I'm not up for buying a whole new machine, I get a new drive and install the new OS onto it, then applications, then migrate user accounts.

If anything goes wrong, I can just pop the old drive back in and be back where I was...and if it goes right, I have a snapshot backup at the ready.

Re:Same issue

[Grand Facade]

You can download Mavericks or ElCapitan or Sierra but you need another mac to do it and make the USB flash drive to install it.

I just went through this recently and had to go to the apple store and have a tech create the USB drives since I did not have another Apple machine to do it on.

I'm going to guess that you will not want to go higher than El Capitan, I think you will have hardware issues with Sierra or High Sierra.

Max out the your ram for best results and SSD you must.

Re:Same issue

[Grand Facade]

You will not want High Sierra, encrypted file system AFS.

Re:Uh why not just run OS X 10.11?

[Farmer Tim]

Unfortunately it isn’t possible to upgrade directly from 10.6.8 to 10.8+ without first installing 10.7, and that’s not available from Apple unless you bought it already...I suspect that’s actually the problem here, since 10.13 will work on the MacBook 7,1. There are some installers floating around the net, but they fail with a checksum error (even if you use Pacifist to bypass Apple’s installer program).

However, it is possible to clone the drive, format, install a later version, and use Migration Assistant to restore user accounts and files.

hahaha, fast not a consideration

[iggymanz]

That machine is plenty beefy enough to run any full-monty linux with heavy desktop.

Example of old would be my Thinkpad T-41 running Debian with xfce,

Re:Uh why not just run OS X 10.11?

[mfnickster]

Unfortunately it isnâ(TM)t possible to upgrade directly from 10.6.8 to 10.8+ without first installing 10.7

Yep, it is – I upgraded directly from Snow Leopard to Mavericks. You just need an update to the App Store certificate.

https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT205702

Re:Be careful. Linux can corrupt Apple's firmware

[Chromium_One]

Corrupted firmware? What had to get re-flashed on OS install?

Yeah, that sounds rather dubious to me. It seems far more likely something went wrong with the EFI partition and someone involved in the process managed to get those concepts confused.

Windows 10

[Anonymous Coward]

Kinda funny how a Microsoft os would work and be supported on a Mac that Apple no longer supports.

Solus (Budgie)

[uncle slacky]

Solus is entirely independent (not a derivative of Debian or Red Hat etc.) and compiled to maximise speed (using the same improvements used by Intel for their Clear Linux).

elementary OS

[discowriter]

I think you should look for a replacement, not the fastest distro. elementary OS is Linux and looks like macOS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

From the same boat

[SirCowMan]

Those spec's aren't too bad, I've just replaced an aging X300 with a T420s, as the softer parts have been giving out (screen bezel, speaker covers, etc.). The X300 uses an ultra-low-voltage processor at 1.2ghz, pretty anemic, had 4 GB RAM in it. I used/use Gentoo. With not much more than setting some USE flags, able to strip it of all the freedesktop stuff (consolekit, policykit, dbus, systemd, pulseaudio, etc.); have Fluxbox for the windows manager, wpa_gui + cbatticon in the tray and that is really quite lean yet fully capable of running what I wants (browser, terminals, etc).

Compile times have grown, but so long as one avoids anything with webkit and libreoffice/openoffice source builds, updates were manageable.

While I wouldn't directly recommend this route due to the probable compiling times of a typical install, it may be worthwhile if you're patient or willing to compile elsewhere (/setup some help via distcc). At a minimum though, whatever linux you might choose, would suggest compiling a custom kernel for it. There is a bit of room to eek out performance and battery life by removing the unnecessary (and perhaps being a bit caviler with the security features)..best of luck!!

Re:Be careful. Linux can corrupt Apple's firmware

[Anonymous Coward]

The low-level (pre EFI if I remember right) firmware was corrupt in a weird way. The boot chime was delayed by two minutes, and cold boots would always fail to find the OS. Rebooting caused the same two-minute boot chime day, but then the OS (Linux or macOS) would be found and boot as if nothing happened. Truly bizarre.

LFS

[thegarbz]

Linux From Scratch would be by far the fastest and most efficient thing you could put on there. http://www.linuxfromscratch.or... It's also the most powerful in terms of customisation.

That was an easy one to answer. Give us something harder next time, like a requirement to do something useful with your OS :-)

Re: LUBUNTU

[giggleloop]

A hackintosh is a non-Apple computer configured to run MacOS. You can't hackintosh an Apple product.

Re:"Intel Power-loss Protection" is bullshit - NOT

[flatulus]

I know I'm replying to score 0 AC, but misinformation should not be suffered to live.

Power loss protection is more than just extra charge in a capacitor. The important feature is that the SSD controller NOTICES when external power is lost and uses the on-board storage capacitor to keep it running long enough to flush the controller's RAM cache to flash in the SSD. On re-power, the controller can restore this dumped cache and return to operation with no lost data.

Just having a capacitor, without the controller feature of sensing unexpected power loss and dumping cache to flash IS bullshit. But this is not what Intel provides with their "power loss protection" feature

Since we're throwing brand names around, it is my understanding that Crucial MX300 SSDs also include this feature, but I really don't know as much about them as I do the Intels. Also Samsung enterprise SSDs (e.g. SM863a, PM863a) offer the same power loss protection feature. They *are* enterprise grade drives. They are white labeled by Dell, by the way.

Try MacOS High Sierra

[wayward_son]

The MacBook 7,1 WILL run High Sierra. This is probably your best bet.

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook/specs/macbook-core-2-duo-2.4-white-13-polycarbonate-unibody-mid-2010-specs.html

If you really want to run Linux, you've got enough power to run whatever you want. Kubuntu or KDE Neon would give you a nice balance of functionality and performance. I'm running Kubuntu on a MacBook 3,1 which has the garbage GMA x3100 video and it is running just fine.

The big issue with the MacBook 7,1 is trying to get the proprietary nvidia drivers to work with EFI boot. Otherwise, you are stuck with nouveau, and nouveau sucks.

Try Bodhi Linux

[AHuxley]

Bodhi Linux http://www.bodhilinux.com/
Read about the ISO images.
http://www.bodhilinux.com/w/se...
A 64bit operating system is supported.
Need a 32bit release with no PAE extension?
Thats supported with the Legacy 32bit release.

What about PowerBook G4 (PowerPC) from 2002?

[antdude]

I tried various Linux, but lots of stuff were just too slow. :(

Re: Be careful. Linux can corrupt Apple's firmware

[wayward_son]

I had a similar problem. Resetting the PRAM fixed it.

antiX

[bigtreeman]

Have a look at antiX, choice of light desktops and definitely put in an SSD
http://antix.mepis.org/index.p...
even goes well on my old MSI Wind

Re: LUBUNTU

[farrellj]

Gee, someone should send you a button that says "Does Anal Retentive have a hyphen?"

Re:Are you sure about your CPU?

[farrellj]

You are close...it's not that the CPU is 32 or 64 bit, it is the BIOS. There is a hack to use a Mac OS 32 bit bootloader and allow you to load a number 64 bit Mac OS versions on to your Mac. I've seen this done on an old iMac, google around a bit and I am sure that you can find a Youtube video showing how to do it.

You can run the current version of MacOS on that

[sdw]

I have a 2010 6,1 running the current MacOS and the current web browsers. I need to swap the hard drive for an SSD, and RAM is limited to 8GB, but otherwise it works well. It is easy to install current MacOS versions on any Mac: Clone a bootable backup, with Carbon Copy Cloner for instance, boot from that backup on your old laptop, and clone it to the internal drive.

Re:ae911truth dot org

[The123king]

I wish you were a blow job. I'm sure your mother does too.

Any XFCE Distro or LXDE Distro Should do the trick

[thedude1249]

You should be able to run a relatively new version of Mac OS X + SSD and your computer should be good.
But to answer the question, i'm usually on Ubuntu Distros, so in this case, Lubuntu and Xubuntu tends to be my Go-To for Older machines and it has yet to disappoint.

Available Here: https://lubuntu.net/ https://xubuntu.org/
Hope this helps

Re:Why Linux when FreeBSD is a better fit

[The123king]

I ran PC-BSD as my main OS for 6 months. Never crashed once. Wine ran fine on it, and most major linux software had a pre-compiled binary available. Ran fine, solid as a rock.

Linux OTOH suffered several kernel panics, and an update totally borked all graphical support. Ever since then i won't even entertain the idea of using Linux as a desktop OS. I'd rather use Haiku (which i had installed at the same time, and was still more reliable)

Mac - Linux?!

[peetm]

Pardon my lack of knowledge; but, it's possible to install Linux on a Mac (but not Windows)? And the same with BSD? Holy smokes - when'd that happen!?

Re:Uh why not just run OS X 10.11?

[Farmer Tim]

I stand corrected and better informed.

crunchbang++

[hoover]

I run cbpp on a few notebooks with similar specs (less RAM though) and it works quite nicely.