My grandma just gave me her old MacBook Pro (MacBookPro11,1 A1502) and, after removing a spicy pillow, air dusting everything, and copying off her old photos, I’m ready to do a clean install.
I would like to dual-boot either Linux or BSD (which will be my main partition) alongside macOS (which will be handy for testing and for use with certain peripherals; either Mavericks, High Sierra, or Big Sur).
I am already well-versed in unix-like operating systems, so I’ll only start having trouble if I try to use a source-based distro (e.g. Gentoo, Source Mage, LFS, etc.)
Can I have some recommendations for the Linux and the macOS version, please?
I run Linux Mint Debian Edition on my 2014 Mac Mini and it’s works really well. Should be the same on the MacBook. Or regular Mint.
I’ve run Mint on my 2015 MacBook Pro and it worked very well.
Either way I recommend a slow release distro because if you use a rolling distro the WiFi will stop working with every kernel update … It takes a few days before they update the Broadcom reverse driver to work with the newer kernel.
That’s why I’m on Linux Mint Debian Edition - I don’t need the latest kernel nor my WiFi breaking every other week. Linux Mint Debian Edition is stable and just works.
Your preferred distro probably runs great on the 2014 MBP.
“Newest compatible operating system: macOS Big Sur” according to: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201300
Spicy pillow?
I loaded NixOS on a 2014 macbook air, copying over my config from my framework laptop (just switching the hardware config), and it just works. I think pretty much any modern linux distro will work fine.
MacOS is a BSD, so go with Linux if you want variety.
Elementary OS! It would be perfect on a Mac!
OpenSuse Tumbleweed if you want rolling
Debian if you want stable
Fedora Silverblue from ublue.it to get a macOS like workflow but better. Why dualboot if you can create a macos install medium and store that in a drawer?
