As someone running two 2010 MacBooks on Linux, most of it is straightforward but I would add a few notes:
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It was helpful for me, as someone very familiar with OSes and hardware but NOT Linux, to pull detailed hardware reports off my Macs before I wiped MacOS off all the way, and to have the specs either memorized or within easy reach whenever I started reading the technical stuff, because there’s a good bit of that unless you happen to find a first distro that matches your hardware exactly. Instead, it’s more likely you’ll kiss some frogs before you find The One. Some distros are worth the trouble of making them work, some are not, but either way know your exact specs, especially for your wifi chip, so you can recognize them when you see them mentioned.
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If you think you may ever run MacOS on them again, for any reason, but do not have another Mac handy, go ahead and make a MacOS bootable install drive now of the latest supported OS and throw it in a drawer. I never thought I would need it, but I did it out of an abundance of precaution and ended up using it multiple times, to my own surprise. But it’s damned difficult to do without another Mac around to create the install media for you, so cover your ass and do it anyway if that MacBook is the last Mac you have.
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I made a GParted Live USB and it’s become one of the most used USB drives I own. No matter the OS, no matter the fuckery you’ve gotten yourself into (and clearly I have), if you can boot off USB it submits to the magic of GParted. Strong recommend.
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Know that you cannot use Ventoy on MacBooks. At all. It kept crapping out on me, I spent hours on it, but when I read the forum (and the dev’s comments to others with the same problem) turns out that nope, Ventoy does not work with MacBooks. Don’t waste your time – or do, if your nihilistic enjoyment of futility needs a strenuous workout.
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If you don’t already have a handful of available USBs, buy a ten (or more) pack of 8GB USB drives somewhere cheap, and just start rolling. They will all get used and reused as you go about trying out various distros and then comparing the ones you liked best, and you will appreciate not having to reformat the same USB every time you want to go to something different.
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You’ve been told about Live USBs, but the thing with these older MacBooks is that a lot of it’s just a pure crapshoot when it comes to a specific distro making happy times with your specific hardware. Usually it’s the older Broadcom wifi chips, but I’ve had other problems. So when you boot into a live trial, you really want to make sure you’re testing ALL the hardware that matters to you (wifi, Ethernet, sound, mouse, trackpad, display, camera, etc) and not just assuming.
And even then it’s not certain: I just recently put Debian 13 with KDE Plasma on my mid-2010 MacBook and it sped through the Live USB trial and even the netinstall process on wifi, but as soon as it was running on the installed OS I had download speeds in the fucking bytes before I understood that the Live USB and the OS were using different Broadcom drivers. I found a guide and it was an easy enough fix, but definitely a pain in the ass. These things happen, so expect them.
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Linux will recognize memory that MacOS will not, so go ahead and fill your actual motherboard capacity even if Apple says it’s unsupported. Chances are good you’ll want to upgrade other hardware as well; I’ve had good luck using iFixit for guides and it’s worth the trouble to ask around for recommendations on where to buy, but in general avoid Amazon, especially for batteries.
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After you’ve installed Linux, run it on a stand for good airflow, open the case and really clean your fan, and/or replace your thermal grease (which it’s past time for anyway) because Linux does tend to run warm on these old MacBooks.
That said, these are excellent machines, a fun project, and honestly I think I like them more now than when I first got them: I never knew how versatile they could be. Hope some of this helps you.
I hear ya. I had to get away from MS for the same reason: I can’t have my PCs turned into data collection points for MS to make a withdrawal from whenever they like. But these old MacBooks are fire on Linux.
If you can successfully navigate the average Windows setup and you don’t have any non-standard partitioning needs you’re golden, especially if you start with a beginner-friendly distro like Zorin or Mint, both of which worked perfectly without further configuration on my 2010 MacBooks that have 64-bit Intel processors. You learn as you go along. I watched a lot of install videos too, especially when I knew I was working with distros that I knew were going to ask me for knowledge I do not now have (Arch, btw, and honestly the latest Fedora KDE that was insisting on Btrfs volumes for whatever reason and I was trying to do it without a working mouse, lol).
But that’s the cool thing about live trials: boot off the USB and test drive the OS experience, with no need to install anything at all until you’re certain.
Hit me up if you get stuck and I’ll help however I can. First, though, start with your Mac hardware: figure out what you already have. Then go from there.