I have an used, beat up MacBook Air 2015 - and I can’t afford a new laptop for a long while. My situation is a bit messy and sad at the moment.

I can’t use MacOS on it, because the battery was replaced by a third party and MacOS freaks out about it and locks the CPU to 400 MHz.

I can’t use Windows on it, because the Intel HD Graphics drivers are no longer maintained and all versions compatible with Windows 10 and Windows 11 have a regression that disables the internal display - there’s nothing you can do about it, they only run on external monitors.

And there’s an unknown bug on the Linux open source MESA drivers that, on the HD Graphics 6000, also causes a black screen unless you use nomodeset, which is terrible for battery life and performance. I tried the latest Ubuntu, Ubuntu LTS, Linux Mint, Fedora, Bazzite, Arch, Endeavour and Opensuse Tumbleweed - every single distro was affected.

Except Pop!_OS. Maybe someone with more Linux knowledge could isolate what they’re doing different than everybody else, but man am I’m glad I decided to test this last .iso as a last ditch effort.

Also, thank fuck for open source operating systems, otherwise this device would literally be shiny electronic waste thanks to Apple’s proprietary battery bullshit.

EDIT: guys please explain “nomodeset” to me I can’t believe I’ve spent 12 hours testing Linux distros for no good reason please send help

  • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    8 months ago

    I can’t use Windows on it, because the Intel HD Graphics drivers are no longer maintained and all versions compatible with Windows 10 and Windows 11 have a regression that disables the internal display - there’s nothing you can do about it, they only run on external monitors.

    I find this very hard to believe, Intel HD is the most common piece of shit iGPU out there, generations of cheap and expensive machines come with it.

    Did you try Debian? Maybe the standard version will do it, or the mac ISO “for older machines”: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-cd/

    • kadu@lemmy.worldOP
      6·
      8 months ago

      You’re correct about Intel HD graphics being everywhere. But the bug only affects MacBooks with internal display adapters, not general laptops, which is why it’s not more widespread. You can find a lot of people facing this issue on Macs though, it affects the HD Graphics 4000 family too.