> trying to get a 2018 MBP working with Linux and found out ARM basically doesn't work.

Since the M series of ARM processors didn’t come out until 2020, that would make a lot of sense.

Two separate laptops, I could have been clearer. I have an old 2018 I wanted to try it on, and my daily is M2 that would have been next.

Loved my M1 mini, loved my M2 air. I've moved on to 2024 HP Elitebook with an AMD R7 8840U, 1TB replaceable NVME, 32gb of socketed DDR5. 14in laptop with a serviceable enough 1920x1200 matte screen. $800 and a 3 hour drive to the nearest Microcenter. I gave Apple another try (refused apple from 2009-2020 because of the nvidia era issues) and I just can't stomach living off of piles of external drives anymore to make up for their lack luster storage space on the affordable units.

The HP Elitebook was on Ubuntu's list of compatible tested laptops and came in hundreds of dollars less than a Thinkpad. Most of the comparably priced on sale T14's I could find were all crap Intel spec'd ones.

Months in I don't regret it at all and Linux support has been fantastic even for a fairly newer Ryzen chip and not the latest kernel. (I stick to LTS releases of most Distros) Shoving in 4TB of NVME storage and 96GB of DDR5 should I feel the need to upgrade would still put me only around $1300 invested in this machine.

I'm not really moaning about the cost or lack of upgradability. I mean, I don't like it but at least you know what you're getting into. I just always assumed Linux as a backup was an option, and more and more OSX is annoying me (last 2 or 3 days it keeps dropping bluetooth for 30 seconds) and more and more I just find the interface distracting. Plus whether it works with external displays over USB C is a crapshoot.

I'll miss the battery life of the M1 chips, and I'm going to have to re-learn how to type (CTRL instead of ALT, fn rarely being on the left, I use fn+left instead of CTRL A in terminals) but otherwise, I think I'm done.

Surely you're using that thing as a laptop in a minority of cases though, looks like it's basically just specs you bought. That's fine, but if that's all you want then it seems like rather than trying to give a mac a reasonable go of it as opposed to whatever else, you were trying to instead explore a fundamental difference in how you value technology products, which is quite a different battle.

Not at all. Sure when I'm at home its docked, but so far in Linux battery life has been fantastic. Not Apple fantastic sure, but I can get a good 5 hours of heavy use, up to around 8 hours of web browsing and video streaming. I often use it on the road, throw back quake3 lan parties, coffee shop creative sessions.

I just want decent enough power and no thermal throttling if I do have to hammer it. I make music so the extra ram and space for sample libraries is a big benefit and why I had to keep external SSD's around with my Macs.

My Macbook Air needed a usb fan ziptied to the laptop stand to not throttle at times.

>it seems like rather than trying to give a mac a reasonable go of it as opposed to whatever else, you were trying to instead explore a fundamental difference in how you value technology products

I re-evaluate how I feel about technology pretty often and its caused some shifts for sure. My side hobby is ARM/RiscV low power computing and Apple's move to ARM tickled that hyper efficiency side of my brain, but ultimately failed to keep me interested because of all the downsides upgrade/repairability wise.

I think the only laptops you won't find weird issues with linux are from smaller manufacturers dedicated to shipping them like the kde laptop or system76. Every other hardware manufacturer, including those that ship laptops with linux preinstalled, probably have weird hardware incompatibilities because they don't fully customize their SKUs with linux support in mind.

Not that I'm discouraging you from switching or anything. If Linux is what you want/need, there's definitely better laptops to be had than a Macbook for that purpose. It's just that weird incompatibilities and having to fight with the operating system on random issues is, at least in my experience, normal when using a linux laptop. Even my T480 which has overall excellent compatibility isn't trouble-free.

Something like the brightness buttons not working, or sleep being a little erratic is ok. No released wifi drivers, bluetooth issues, and audio and the keyboard not working are not ok. Apple going backwards in terms of supporting Linux is not something I'm ok with.

There are wifi drivers; you just have to install them separately because they use broadcom chips. It's a proprietary blob. The other things do work, but it requires special packages and you'll need an external keyboard while installing. It's a pain to install, for sure, but it's not insurmountably difficult to get it installed.

Apple Silicon chips are arguably more compatible with Asahi Linux [1], but that's largely in thanks to the hard work of Marcan, who's stepped down as project lead from the project [2].

Overall I still think the right choice is to find a laptop better suited for the purpose of running linux on it, just something that requires more careful consideration than people think. Framework laptops, which seem well suited since ideologically it meshes well with linux users, can be a pain to set up as well.

[1] https://asahilinux.org/

[2] https://marcan.st/2025/02/resigning-as-asahi-linux-project-l...

I know there are wifi and keyboard drivers, because the live boots and installers work with them, but then when it comes to installing they're gone. I know it's not insurmountable, and 10 years ago I'd have done it, but I spent a few hours and got sick of it. I agree with you that it's probably better to get another laptop.

A 2018 MacBook would be an intel x86 chip. It’s incredibly easy to get Linux running on that machine.

Getting Linux running wasn't difficult. But Mint lost audio (everything else worked), the specialised Mint kernel lost both audio and wifi, and Arch lost both wifi and the onboard keyboard.

I'm sure with tinkering I could eventually get it working, but I'm well past the point of wanting to tinker with hardware and drivers to get Linux working.

Because of the T2 chip it's actually pretty annoying. Mainline kernels I think are still missing keyboard and trackpad support for those models. Plus a host of other issues.

No, there's a bunch of MBP generations in the middle that just never got any Linux attention.

2018 MBP is Intel unless you're referring to the T2 chip?

I could have written it clearer. I have both, Intel was the first attempt and when I was struggling to get it up without losing one of wifi, audio and onboard keyboard and read that ARM was worse I gave up. Even the best combination I had (no audio but everything else working) would kill bluetooth after a while if wifi was connected to 2.6. I don't like their hardware enough to fight with it.