In the spirit of my previous post about switching to Linux Mint, I decided I'd go ahead and re-purpose my old computer.
Introducing: Apple MintBook Pro (13 inch, Mid 2012)
I think you nerds are gonna love it. I can actually do light gaming on this, too. Runs surprisingly fast, too!
Unlike modern day Apple, this MacBook was always fun to work on because you can easily swap parts without worrying about cloud activation locks, soldered RAM, glued batteries with self-destruct, etc. I dropped in a new aftermarket battery that took me five minutes to replace, upgraded the RAM, and slapped in a higher capacity SSD than what I originally bought this with back in the day.
My MintBook Pro runs fantastic, especially on Linux Mint 22.1 Xia with the new battery performance modes. Can't wait to use this more!
I tused to sit in a drawer as ewaste since the last possible compatible Mac OS version on this computer ran terrible and made my MacBook Pro unusable. Now that I upgraded to a MintBook Pro, the performance is incredible! Going to use this for when I need a computer away from my desk. Nice to have one for the couch that functions as an actual laptop!
Specs:
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012)
- 13.3-in LED display at 1280x800 (LOL)
- Intel i5-3210M @ 2.5 GHz
- 8 GB DDR3 1600 MHz (we ballin' boys)
- 1 TB SSD Samsung 850 EVO I think
- CD/DVD burner (yass slay queen)
- Intel HD Graphics 4000 (i can play Stardew Valley with so many frames, biggest frames ever)
- This bad boy has the MagSafe power connector (my favorite back in the day) and firewire! Remember firewire?
Edit: Lemmy.world is having issues with uploading photos, so here's some links instead for two more pics:
How's the trackpad on Linux? I tried Gnome distros and KDE distros and the trackpad didn't feel natural... It seemed off.
All the familiar gestures that make MacOS great to use don’t work here. Candidly I haven’t tried anything else apart from the typical use such as scrolling with two fingers - and that works just fine, but it’s just really fast. I didn’t see an option to slow down two finger scroll speed, so I’ll play around with that next time and see what options there are.
Nothing compares to Apples trackpads in Mac OS. OPs machine is the older unibody MBP which has a (by modern standards) small/normal sized trackpad so the palm rejection not being perfect isn't really an issue. But the acceleration and gestures just don't feel right compared to Mac OS or even windows (with precision drivers). It's better than a Windows trackpad without the precession drivers, but just off.
A long time ago when I first tried using linux on a 2012 MBP I spent ages trying to tweak the trackpad to be closer to Mac OS but could never get it right. I spent like 3 hours a few weeks ago trying to tweak things and I think your options are even worse now than before.
I was afraid of this. I have a mid-2014 Macbook and it runs much better in Linux, but the trackpad leaves something to be desired.