consider switching to btrfs which has subvolumes (think partitions as folders, no need to predefine their size) and you’ll never have to deal with this again. also compression and deduping (all those duplicate games dlls and whatnot take up space only once)
what you describe would be an ardous journey… if the mentioned macbooks cost like $500. or $1000. truly, that sorta thing is nothing short of masochistic and no sane person should bother with that.
you’re making broad statements based on very shitty hardware - 4 gig dual-core laptop isn’t a very representative experience when you can get solid workstations for pocket change.
the macbooks I get are in the $20 region and for that kinda “money” I get absolute top-notch quality hardware, that, although dated, is more than adequate for the vast majority of uses. spending a coupla minutes to tweak it post-install isn’t a huge price to pay.
here’s my headless 2014 MBP (i7-4770HQ with 16 GB, Intel Iris) doing its thing. was sold “for parts” due to busted screen for $25 ($40 asking).
so, yeah, dicking around with broadcom’s stack is a thing, but it’s a thing that you do once and then it just works. I’m as bleeding edge as reasonably possible (F43) on all models I run and I haven’t got any issues, akmod builds the driver on every kernel install, which if you’re doing actual work on the thing isn’t something you’re doing often.
as to how to install without LAN, you use your Android phone and tether its Wifi via USB. after five minutes (full system upgrade, install broadcom-wl via rpmfusion for e.g. Fedora) you’re done. or, use the netinstall thing the same way. there’s also a buncha stuff needed to make the experience better (undervolt, LID0 wake events, etc)
not sure about Airs but MBP 2015 models (possibly 2013/14 as well) can be retrofitted with a $5 adapter board that lets you fit a regular Intel M.2 NGFF in there, eliminating the tainted kernel issue.
zorin woulda been a solid contender if it weren’t for the crew involved and its murky path forward. but as a first, “see it ain’t that bad” step, sure.
can’t give the thing out as-is, there’s a buncha stuff in there pertaining to our infra. restructuring and refactoring it (the thing doesn’t even use roles, just a gargantuan yml file with tasks) is long overdue and I thought your query would be the thing that pushes me over the line to finally do it, but after an hour with it I gave up it’s just too big of a mess.
I had the same path as you, was irritated that maintaining idempotency of the existing bash scripts was such a huge task, so started piece by piece, one task, test, add another, etc. mainly by following jeff geerling’s guides and then venturing out on my own by reading the official docs. tried utilizing bullshitgpt on a coupla occasions, but the thing constantly made up shit that doesn’t exist costing me time I ain’t got, so I gave up on it.
400+ installs in the past four years - discarded/donated business laptops that get fixed, cleaned, upgraded with cheapest SSDs and donated to predominantly tech illiterate users.
99% is ubuntu lts + ansible playbook that removes snap, disables A TON of update naggings, installs flatpak, coupla apps and systemd timer to autoupdate all flatpaks. this is the only thing that has low support requests, everything else we tried (mint, debian, fedora) has a disproportionately higher support request frequency (reinstalls, wifi, fix this, remove that, etc).
I totally could adapt debian to be as good or even better (fedora with the bi-annual versions is right out), but one of the important caveats is the user being able to install it with minimum hassle if needed and that just would not be doable.
I’d urge everyone ITT to look at the thing through the user’s eyes and not get lost in “no true scottsman” fallacies. the goal is to convert a user over, not to demonstrate how cool you are. once they know what’s what, you can sell them on fedora and atomic and whatnot, but not as a first step.
I don’t use ubuntu, have it on none of my stuff, and wouldn’t go out with you if you do. but it’s presently the only option for beginners for use on laptops that has a semblance of a modern desktop OS.
my old guy is on the case:
that’s 2011 tech, works like it came of the line yesterday. here’s to many more versions!
Imma be the problemXY guy here - ditch the https part. without it, you don’t gotta deal with certs, signing, shit that’s outside your LAN, etc. it’s your LAN, do you really need that level of security? who’s gonna sniff packets and shit on your LAN?
now all you need is pihole where you set up your hostnames (jellyfin.lan, nextcloud.lan, etc.) and nginx proxy that maps e.g. jellyfin.lan to 192.168.0.123:8096. both of them run plenty fine in docker.
what/how do you run LLM on a RX 580? I thought ROCM was for RX 6xxx and newer?
ugh… having been involved with a coupla hardware businesses, asking the public what they think about a future product is hella stupid and then basing your decision on that is hella stupid. especially when you’re a minor player with few options available and a history of scamming clients not being china-supply-chain-savvy. out of all them questions, the only ones I’d find useful is the geo distribution.
as to the product itself, jolla is on my shit list on account of taking from the FOSS world and giving dick back; their “community version” for xperias exclusively and paid licenses can get fucked.
no, I mean the drive is encrypted and I don’t gotta bother with shred.
I’ve recently upgraded my hard drives used for storage. and because I ain’t made of money, I wanted to sell the old drives. shredding those things took ages (4 TB drives). lesson learned, new drives are btrfs + LUKS that gets unlocked via key file. so when the time comes to sell those, I won’t bother with shredding, just sell them as is.
another option that works for me is macast. that’s a DLNA sink that you can send youtube (and other) videos to and it plays it via mpv, in full screen if you so desire. it also accepts jellyfin, you can control it remotely (via AllCast).
so I’m browsing videos in newtube on my phone, send them to allcast, and that one sends them to macast. sounds convoluted but its like three taps and an alternative to chromecast.
stole it off jwz
pre-2010 macbooks can be had for like $10 nowadays. those had the touchpads (and webcam, keyboard, etc) connected via USB to the system. pinouts are available on the net and with a little bit of effort and maybe 3D printing you can have your bespoke rig.
rooting for the guys although I don’t want none of them things. I run my device without a modem on (hopefully I disabled it correctly) and I want it to run like my other shit runs - I turn it on when I want it, no doing shit in the background nobody asked it to, syncing to the clown, none of that.
the results are awesome - I get like days of standby out of a severely degraded battery that can’t manage a whole day under android. still, I understand that other people need this stuff. for me, SMS and calls utilizing the utterly broken, insecure, and definitely compromised telecom infra shouldn’t be a thing in 2025.
get the serial off the bottom case, go to everymac and look it up. if it’s a 15" model, that one has the T2 chip and needs a special variant, look up t2linux
“a macbook” is kinda broad, what model you got? no, I’m running linux on discarded macbooks for years and know my way around them.
I have 2010s (nVidia GT330M) and 2011s (Radeon 6xxx) in various states of decay in the double digits, I get them in the sub$10 range. all of them can easily be repurposed as linux workstations, their finnicky broadcom wifi notwithstanding. all of them can have the discrete graphics turned off, whether they work or not - less heat, longer battery life, no driver complications.
this is the first 2012 I’ve gotten, as they were always unreasonably expensive for their advanced age - coulda gotten ten 2011s for the price of one 2012! so now I got one and it’s… meh; yeah it’s better (Ivy vs Sandy, HD4000 vs HD3000, USB3.0, etc.) but nothing spectacular. still, for $20 I could do worse.
have the data drive (movies, backups, etc) get decrypted with a keyfile from the system SSD. you’re safe to lose, throw away, sell your data drive and don’t have to bother with shredding the data. this takes hours for drives of any significant size.