A friend wants to gift me an old macbook pro he no longer uses. Specs follow:

MacBook Pro, Core i5, 2.8 GHz (I5-4308U), model A1502 (EMC 2875), Retina Mid-2014 13", MacBookPro11,1, RAM 8 GB, VRAM 1.5 GB, Storage 512 GB SSD

Out of principle I don’t use anything made by that brand and the only way I see myself using the hardware is if I can nuke the software and install any linux distro, ubuntu is the distro I know best.

Can it be done?

Any drawbacks?

It’s a model with a screwed aluminum case, meaning I cannot unplug the battery when I don’t need it. How long does it last?

Alternatively, what could I use this notebook for? Is there anything apple does better than linux that deserves I don’t nuke it?

  • deadbeef
    4·
    4 months ago

    I have an A1502 Macbook that I have been using for work since it was new in 2014. It triple boots Windows, Linux and OSX, but I only really use Linux.

    Mine has the same CPU, a i5-4308U but 16GB of memory, I think it was a custom order at the time.

    If I recall I did the regular bootcamp process you would do to install Windows, installed Windows on a subset of the free space and Linux on the rest.

    I’ve got Linux mint 21 on it currently, but I have had vanilla Ubuntu at different times. I can’t think of anything on it that doesn’t just work off hand.