Successful install of Solus 4.3 on a 15+ year old Macbook Pro

Wyrdsmyth

Just wanted to give some feedback that as of today I have Solus working flawlessly on my Macbook Pro 2,2 (Core 2 Duo 2.33Ghz, 3GB RAM, ATI Radeon embedded GPU, 500GB SSD). This is particularly awesome because it's nearly impossible to find up to date internet connectivity software (web browsers, etc) for OS X Snow Leopard or Lion.

The one gotcha I had to overcome is that even though the Core 2 Duo is a 64-bit processor, the EFI bootloader needed to be 32-bit for the DVD to be detected as bootable. I followed an incredibly helpful walkthru here https://mattgadient.com/linux-dvd-images-and-how-to-for-32-bit-efi-macs-late-2006-models/ though I have a feeling there are not too many other Macbooks out there that are this long in the tooth.

I'm also extremely happy because I've already been running Solus on my desktop PC as my primary OS for several months now and I can honestly say it's my favorite distro ever, so this is especially awesome to be able to have it on a portable device now.

brent

Wyrdsmyth Just wanted to give some feedback that as of today I have Solus working flawlessly on my Macbook Pro 2,2

this dual-boot you did deserves a write-up (tutorial) someday

Wyrdsmyth it's nearly impossible to find up to date internet connectivity software (web browsers, etc) for OS X Snow Leopard or Lion.

this is weird. been a while since I used OSX professionally but isn't there an Apple store? what am I missing here?
That 32-bit hiccup interesting as well.
Congratulations, you did some hard work to make this happen. Great post.

brent

Wyrdsmyth Macbook Pro 2,2 (Core 2 Duo 2.33Ghz, 3GB RAM, ATI Radeon embedded GPU, 500GB SSD)

these specs are loaded with nuance which evaded my tired head on first reply but make all the sense now. I thought this was circa '09 (you said '06) and these models had some kind of 'sudden motion sensor' thing. cutting edge I remember. Personally I'm shocked there was foresight for an SSD slot. Again, been a while since I ran a strict OSX workflow. While I always knew mac was as closed a system as Win, I did not know they phased out so many desktop perks and choices. thanks for the reply.

Wyrdsmyth

brent this dual-boot you did deserves a write-up (tutorial) someday

I opted to go with a Solus-only installation and wiped the entire hard drive. I might go back some day and set up a dual boot system, I do still have a Snow Leopard install disk and I've set up Boot Camp before to install Windows 7 on this machine (Solus runs significantly better than Windows 7 ever did and does a much better job at handling the cooling fans' response to CPU temp spikes).

this is weird. been a while since I used OSX professionally but isn't there an Apple store? what am I missing here?

The Apple store no longer carries software for outdated systems like mine. This was particularly troublesome to me because I paid for Lion which could only be downloaded from the App Store - this has since been phased out so it is no longer possible to legitimately obtain OS X Lion from Apple as an upgrade. The app store still works in Snow Leopard but none of the apps listed are supported on Snow Leopard (or Lion).

I found some updated software for older versions of OS X at this site about a year ago but it appears that the web browsers are no longer being maintained by the site owner. https://parrotgeek.com/

joluveba

Wyrdsmyth I opted to go with a Solus-only installation and wiped the entire hard drive. I might go back some day and set up a dual boot system, I do still have a Snow Leopard install disk and I've set up Boot Camp before to install Windows 7 on this machine (Solus runs significantly better than Windows 7 ever did and does a much better job at handling the cooling fans' response to CPU temp spikes).

My heart is filled with glee whenever somebody resurrects and old computer with a good Linux distro. With all due respect, I would forget about dual boot with MacOS. If Apple doesn't want to provide support to my old computer, I don't see why I should use their OS. I would stick to Solus only, provided it works correctly on your Macbook, which you said it does. By the way, which desktop did you choose?

Wyrdsmyth

brent Personally I'm shocked there was foresight for an SSD slot.

The drive it came with was a 2.5" SATA HDD, so I replaced it to give it a bit more speed.

Wyrdsmyth

joluveba I built my own a while back - Ryzen 7 2700x, GeForce GTX 1050 (regretting not getting something with at least twice the memory), 16GB memory with a 1.5 TB PCI-E SSD. Already had to replace the motherboard, power supply and the original SATA SSD since it was first assembled (I'm done buying Gigabyte, they've burned me twice now and I've gone back to MSI). I still have a secondary SATA SSD with Windows 10 on it for those rare occasions where I need to do something in Windows and I don't feel like messing around with a VM quite yet.

joluveba

Wyrdsmyth Sorry, I meant desktop in the sense of Budgie, Mate, KDE Plasma... 🙂

Wyrdsmyth

joluveba Ah I was going to originally say "Budgie" but then I second guessed myself. Figures 🙂

bigrammy

Just for info incase anyone runs into this issue:
I have a old MacBook Pro (A1278) Core 2 Duo which uses the GeForce 320M graphics card.
I got it all up and running using Solus 4.2 without much issue at all but I can't get the Solus 4.3 to boot.
This is due to the 5.13.x-xxx and newer Kernels driver support for the GeForce 320M.
(xorg-driver-video-nouveau).
I have Solus 4.3 running but I have to use the 5.10 Kernel due to the broken/unsupported GeForce 320M Driver.
PS: This is not a dual boot setup but full install using a new 500gb SSD and 8gb of RAM.