Resurrecting an old Macbook Air 2011 with Linux 

Awesome video mate, and such an important subject... I recently "upgraded" my girlfriends desktop PC to an 11 year old CPU... A core i5 3570K. I bought a newly manufactured Chinese motherboard with modern features (like full PCIe 3.0 4x NVMe storage). These motherboards re-use old chipsets that would otherwise be thrown away as e-waste, but the wear and tear parts like capacitors, connectors etc. are new. The motherboard was bundled with the processor. Other than that I used her old 16GB of DDR3 memory, her old 2TB HDD, her old mITX case and power supply and a new 1TB NVMe SSD. I Installed Manjaro Gnome. And honestly, in everyday tasks the computer is perceptually as quick as my modern Ryzen computer. Personally, I think my partner will be happy with this setup for 10+ years to come... Imagine that she might be using a 20+ year old hardware eventually, an upgrade that cost me 67EUR from her previously 10 year old computer... Which is now our network connected file server for backups.

Firstly, I love how you talked about tech waste. Its completely true that a lot of consumers are too obsessed with getting the latest&greatest every single year which is super wasteful (and expensive). I remember when *that specific 2011 macbook* was seen as "the latest and greatest" and was used by an artist i looked up to at the time....just crazy how "2011" is seen as essentially vintage now. Love to see other youtubers repurposing older tech with linux! its the wave of the future imo

This is a comprehensive video. 3 Linux Distros into one. Very helpful as I am currently looking for a 2011-2013 Mabook Air to install lInux in it and use it as my daily driver for basic computing. Thank you sir!!!

I love how clear and professional your video’s are! 😍

Absolutely brilliant video.

Great distro comparison! I had a bunch of MPB from 2011-12 and they all got a second live with xUbuntu. I had to tweak a few things though around bluetooth mouse and system sleep when closing the lid but overall I was pleasantly surprised how much hardware support you get out of the box.

My company takes old hardware from our clients thru a buy back program and give them a discount to buy new hardware. We then take that old hardware and factory reset, clean them and donate them to nonprofits.. we just acquired a bunch of these MacBooks pros 2011. Just happened on this video and now I'm interested in maybe taking one of them and throwing Linux on it 😊 to see how it runs.

I did this with my 2011 macbook pro. It breath new life to my old laptop

Just wanted to say thanks so much for this video: I happen to have almost the exact same laptop: mid-2011 11" MBA and it was both running like garbage and becoming dysfunctional due to the inability to update critical applications as a result of being stuck on OS X 10.13. Tried some different web browsers to try and make things like RU-vid playback and Google Maps usable on it, but nothing was working. Decided to research linux distros that I could use, and this video was literally exactly what I needed. After watching, I gave Mint Mate a try and it's an absolute game-changer: not only are the performance issues solved, but shockingly everything works out of the box and at times Linux seems to support devices better than Mac OS did-- even Apple ones. When I plug in my iPhone it mounts like a disk in Linux and I can easily browse the files stored in various iOS applications-- trying to do similar stuff on Mac OS through iTunes was always a nightmare. I should probably see if I can get another battery pack, but otherwise this laptop has received a second life :) Thanks for the work!

Terrific video. I do have a 2014 MacBook that definitely could be better once I get Mint into it. Keep up the great work!

Great video! Glad to see Linux giving this computer a new life

Thank you for the video! At 9:00 you say that wifi was working during the installation but not in the installed system right? You show a dialog proposing to install the additional driver. Has the dialog automatically popped up or did you have to search for it?

Magician!

Thank you very much for this compare! I have exact the same specs in a 11 inch early 2014 I Was thinking what distro use. I will try mint!

Linux Mint Mate is great for this. If the MacBook Air had 8GB of RAM I would have gone with ultramarine or ZorinOS

Nice Video! Good to know I can fall back to Linux just in case. I have an 11“ Air from 2013 which I maxed out back then. That machine went through alot of stuff with me, still love it. I‘m on the current MacOS with Open Core Patcher and dualboot to Windows for some Windows only stuff I need from time to time. Just one comment on the Intro: with a bit work old iPhone 4 or 4s can still be great devices. The battery can be changed very easy and with Jailbreak you can modify lots of stuff which makes them usable as Music- or Audiobook player for Kids, even some old games are possible.

My 2011 MacBook Air with i5 has been running Elementary OS, my 2010 Dell Latitude E6510 is hanging on with Zorin…they both still run smoothly today.

I love Linux Mint. Use to run plain Debian too

An enjoyable video!👍👍 Linux Mint Mate is my preference and I use the Opera and Vivaldi browsers, Opera comes with a free VPN., and a free advert and tracker blocker, Vivaldi comes with a free advert and tracker blocker. Zorin OS., Core is another distro which in my opinion is worth trying, it's default desktop resembles Windows 7 but there a several pre installed desktops to choose from, Zorin 17 is the latest version and I did install it on a Samsung laptop, but I could not get the WIFI., to activate until I pressed the reset button on the router, I had Zorin 16.3 installed on my travelling laptop and I used the upgrade to Zorin 17 tab and the upgrade worked without any problems. I have two old Dell 32 bit laptops and I have LMDE 6 installed on those and so far they work well enough, they were my first and second laptops so I like to keep them in working order.

Congratulations for the clear and professional explanation. I have a MBP mid 2010, stopped at high sierra for Apple limit and used with a win10 virtual machine, but the combination is very heavy... 512 GB SSD + 8GB ram made it more performant, but anyway obsolete. Tested on live distro Mint Cinnamon, it seems good enough to install on disk. All the peripherals are working properly, included the keyboard backlight. The only issue is the fan speed, I use in MacOS macs fan control to help in cooling, I'm looking for something like that for linux mint.

It is true that we use devices for the same tasks, I study programming and I really like to play video games, which is why I have a gamer PC with Ryzen 5 5600g 16GB RAM RX 570, dual monitor, and with SSD and HDD (taken from an old PC from 2011 if it's still useful, why not use it rather than throw it away) and I've been testing a 2012 MacBook Air with i5 and 4GB RAM that works well but a little slow, but it's not mine but I love its hardware quality, I want a portable PC to program occasionally on other sites and I'm thinking about a 2012 MacBook Pro for its quality hardware and update it as necessary and if Mac os is slow, change it for Linux, and get a quality laptop at low prices

Did install Linux Mint on my MacBook air from 2014. I love the idea to not waste mony and don't create completely unnecessary waste and I also have more security and last but not list have more power with minimal RAM.

sorry for commenting on older video but wanted to ask how the touchpad is compared to MacOS was, I've heard and read that it diminishes it quite a bit but wanted to hear your opinion on it

Even Mint Cinnamon would likely have worked well on that machine. One question: on the 2015 MacBook Air (11") I have issues with the Camera in Mint. Did you try the camera on that 2011?

Did you encounter any scrolling problems with your distros? Two finger scrolling seems too sensitive. Otherwise it's been great (Ubuntu 24.04 on A1369).

hoo, brother, how did you add "minimize button" in elementary? please, help me out on this one XD

Awesome video. I'm thinking to try Pop_Os on my 2014 Macbook Air. There's no way to use MacOs on that hardware.

So interesting. I have MacBook air with 2 gb RAM and dual core processor (less then i3). This method can help for it? And if I install to the main hard dusk it will remove macos? I want to make experiment, but afraid about success. Coz I still use this laptop for work 😅

That's so sad seeing so much talented engineering being put in today's apple silicon Macintosh computers and then dealing with irreplaceable SSDs and such..

What about battery life? Macbook's battery life wold be horrendous under linux a few years ago. Has it improved? Honestly battery life is the most important criterea for me onec the machine is usable.

Consider a distro with QT. The tables of graphical heaviness have turned. These days, funnily enough, they are more optimized than GTK.

I was given an old imac 2006 that would only go to Lion. I tried & tried to get 64 bit versions of mint suse & other versions of linux to install. The Imac had a 64 bit intel chip, did not want to install. I finally found solution though. I installed 32 bit version of q40s linux it was easy peasy everything works.

Puppy linux or ramdisk stuff would be nice on this thing

Any reason Windows 10 wouldn't run via BC?

You probably could have gotten even better performance with the linux mint xfce since its even more light weight

Webcam is working?

Linux mint is best for these old airs. I have a 2011 11inch MacBook Air with only 2GB of ram and it works flawlessly. Only problem is no ethernet

mate , just use sonoma with OCLP ...