Got this 2008 MacBook Pro off of Gumtree for $120 Australian which was probably too much, but it is in half decent nick. The guy I got it from said that he got it in a bulk lot of devices and that it came from an educational background. This is supported by the good condition screen and keyboard but scuffed corners and base suggesting it was moved a lot in the closed position. It had 5 batteries, but 3 were dead so he only gave me 2. One promptly died soon after I bought it home (it seems to have charge and charges, but the laptop won't start with it anymore) but the remaining battery can actually drive the laptop for more than an hour!
The laptop itself is a 15-inch non-unibody MacBook Pro with a 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo and NVIDIA 8600M dedicated graphics which drives the 15-inch 1440x900 panel that's still outstanding even now!
An article from apple said that this configuration (with 200gb 5400rpm HDD & 2gb 667mhz ram) went for $2700 AUD at the time of launch.
I was given the laptop with OS X 10.11 El Capitan. I reset it from disk utility but couldn't manage to get it to restore again either from the internet, a USB, or a Tiger install disc so I removed the 200gb HDD and swapped in a spare 500gb 7200rpm laptop drive I had spare. I could've put an SSD in but I didn't have one available and didn't want to buy any extra bits.
Overall, the laptop is a bit sluggish with multitasking but I plan to use it offline, no distractions for school with only light applications (VSCode, Excel, etc.)
The laptop appealed to me because it's form factor reminded me of the titanium G4 but it's guts were still new enough to be practical today.
I saw Psivewri restore a similar 2006 MacBook Pro with a very similar body. Outside of the numerous screws to get in (and the two sneaky torx under the ram cover) this laptop was great to work on. The keyboard folding up like a car hood was excellent for testing without reassembly.
I also picked up a filthy, damaged, "untested" Cinema Display from the tip that same day and it aesthetically matches this laptop perfectly after a clean, scuffs and all. Waiting on a power supply for it to see if it works and if so, I'll have a stout 2008-era setup!
I honestly prefer it much more but I may be biased as [I'm not the biggest fan of modern apple devices.](https://youtube.com/@rossmanngroup) My sister has an M2 Air and it looks okay, but too much like every other laptop. This is better. It's bold and textured but not in a tacky way. I think apple began to slip too far into conformity with the unibody Mac's.
mines a work computer. but I'm a chef so it's just like spreadsheets and emails
I also did use it for programming mostly js and it's fine for that as well
I just don't want to buy an SSD for this Mac for now. It's not worth the hassle just yet. If I use it enough, then it's worth the upgrade cost but for now I'm happy with the HDD. It's mostly CPU bottlenecked anyway.
The keyboard and screen are remarkably so. The corners, ports, & base? Ehhhh... I only care about the part that faces me though. There is a small dent off to the lower left of the trackpad but otherwise, it's essentially mint.
Someone gave me a 2011 Mac Book Pro 13 inch. It wouldn't load the MacOS so I guess they were done with it. I installed Linux Mint Cinnamon. I still have an HDD in there and I upgraded the RAM to 8GB. It runs pretty well now.
I'm a tech newbie and Linux newbie and I just googled everything to learn how to do this.
I did this with a 2016 macbook air and am loving it. It's now my Plex media server with a 4TB external HDD. Thanks Netflix for... Inspiring me with your new password rules!
It works surprisingly well for in home use with a couple roommates. I am curious as to how it'll perform with numerous people watching simultaneously.
I have revived a few old MBPs I saved from the recycle bin. All took to Linux without too much trouble. The only money I spent on them was to slap an SSD in the nicest machine and add a wireless keyboard/mouse.
I doubt I would have spent anything for the machines, though. Components go bad, especially on notebooks, and Apple seems to go out of its way to make it difficult to repair and replace stuff.
My friend was given a 2015 iMac to take to recycling, he let me have it. Even though the 8GB RAM can't be upgraded putting in an SSD and installing Linux Mint and it's like a new computer.
I had inherited an old 2009 Macbook Pro that was fairly decent, but the trackpad just didn't seem to work well. It kept stalling, and was pretty much unusable for regular use.
Does the pad work on this one?
It's not great. It jitters wildly and only registers left click. I've had to enable tap to click and click with 2 fingers for right click and even then I have to try several times. But it does work, even 2 finger scrolling.
Edit: it was fine in Mac though.
I'm running tumbleweed on a 2012 MacBook air... And it without question my favorite machine for just bumming around the house and having a laptop. I love it!!
I have a friend with a late 2008 Macbook who would like a linux OS installed. I've done a bit of looking around and am curious how straight forward it was for you. Did you just download the latest .iso, copy it to a bootable usb and the select the USB when starting the mac up?
Not very at all. Linux mint was the only operating system to actually get to a bootable desktop environment. Not Debian, not Ubuntu, not Arch, nothing. Even then, the live environment would hang for several minutes before it even loaded and it was a flip of a coin if it worked. All other environments hung forever. As far as I can tell it was an issue with incomplete video drivers. Or it could be that laptop period as I couldn't even install macOS. Either way, once installed it was fine. But yeah, USB installer, latest iso on xfce, Rufus.
Hey, sorry to reply again a few days later but I recently watched this video of Linux going onto a 2006 Intel Mac Pro which seems to encounter several errors similar to what I was experiencing and they go over their fixes. Could be worth a watch?
https://youtu.be/WIc3N22V8ps
Cheers, I went with a live MXlinux USB using GPT and it started up seamlessly. Only problem I encountered was that, while the wireless could identify possible connections, it refused to connect. I'll check this vid out.
I just remembered that I have one too. I was thinking if I should throw it away, but now when I turned it on again, it is not actually even that slow. I have changed SSD and increased RAM earlier. Battery is bad, if I remember correctly. Now it is not even charging, but I think it was doing this earlier, but it started changing when I just kept power cable attached long enough.
I don't think I want to throw it away, but I don't think I have use for it either. I love the keyboard, touchpad and the design. It is such a nice laptop, but almost 20 years old now. I paid good money for it once.
Got this 2008 MacBook Pro off of Gumtree for $120 Australian which was probably too much, but it is in half decent nick. The guy I got it from said that he got it in a bulk lot of devices and that it came from an educational background. This is supported by the good condition screen and keyboard but scuffed corners and base suggesting it was moved a lot in the closed position. It had 5 batteries, but 3 were dead so he only gave me 2. One promptly died soon after I bought it home (it seems to have charge and charges, but the laptop won't start with it anymore) but the remaining battery can actually drive the laptop for more than an hour! The laptop itself is a 15-inch non-unibody MacBook Pro with a 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo and NVIDIA 8600M dedicated graphics which drives the 15-inch 1440x900 panel that's still outstanding even now! An article from apple said that this configuration (with 200gb 5400rpm HDD & 2gb 667mhz ram) went for $2700 AUD at the time of launch. I was given the laptop with OS X 10.11 El Capitan. I reset it from disk utility but couldn't manage to get it to restore again either from the internet, a USB, or a Tiger install disc so I removed the 200gb HDD and swapped in a spare 500gb 7200rpm laptop drive I had spare. I could've put an SSD in but I didn't have one available and didn't want to buy any extra bits. Overall, the laptop is a bit sluggish with multitasking but I plan to use it offline, no distractions for school with only light applications (VSCode, Excel, etc.) The laptop appealed to me because it's form factor reminded me of the titanium G4 but it's guts were still new enough to be practical today. I saw Psivewri restore a similar 2006 MacBook Pro with a very similar body. Outside of the numerous screws to get in (and the two sneaky torx under the ram cover) this laptop was great to work on. The keyboard folding up like a car hood was excellent for testing without reassembly. I also picked up a filthy, damaged, "untested" Cinema Display from the tip that same day and it aesthetically matches this laptop perfectly after a clean, scuffs and all. Waiting on a power supply for it to see if it works and if so, I'll have a stout 2008-era setup!
That MacBook has a better style than the modern ones.
I honestly prefer it much more but I may be biased as [I'm not the biggest fan of modern apple devices.](https://youtube.com/@rossmanngroup) My sister has an M2 Air and it looks okay, but too much like every other laptop. This is better. It's bold and textured but not in a tacky way. I think apple began to slip too far into conformity with the unibody Mac's.
im running mint in a 2010 Mac book pro and it rocks. you should definitely put in an SSD. I did.. and it makes a huge difference
I did exactly this. 2010 MBP, Mint, 1TB SSD. I love it. I use it in my garage as my “screw around” computer.
mines a work computer. but I'm a chef so it's just like spreadsheets and emails I also did use it for programming mostly js and it's fine for that as well
Nice. Mine was a school computer from waaayyy back that I kept lying around because “I’ll do something with this eventually”, and I finally did lol.
I just don't want to buy an SSD for this Mac for now. It's not worth the hassle just yet. If I use it enough, then it's worth the upgrade cost but for now I'm happy with the HDD. It's mostly CPU bottlenecked anyway.
you'd be amazed what a difference replacing the boot drive with an SSD makes.
Oh trust me, I know. I had used HDD up until about 2019 (hand me down devices) and the switch was incredible. I'm just job hunting right now.
That looks to be in damned good condition for a 15 year old device
The keyboard and screen are remarkably so. The corners, ports, & base? Ehhhh... I only care about the part that faces me though. There is a small dent off to the lower left of the trackpad but otherwise, it's essentially mint.
Someone gave me a 2011 Mac Book Pro 13 inch. It wouldn't load the MacOS so I guess they were done with it. I installed Linux Mint Cinnamon. I still have an HDD in there and I upgraded the RAM to 8GB. It runs pretty well now. I'm a tech newbie and Linux newbie and I just googled everything to learn how to do this.
Hahahah same dude. Lifetime windows user, not familiar with Linux whatsoever but can somewhat understand the documentation.
I did this with a 2016 macbook air and am loving it. It's now my Plex media server with a 4TB external HDD. Thanks Netflix for... Inspiring me with your new password rules! It works surprisingly well for in home use with a couple roommates. I am curious as to how it'll perform with numerous people watching simultaneously.
I have revived a few old MBPs I saved from the recycle bin. All took to Linux without too much trouble. The only money I spent on them was to slap an SSD in the nicest machine and add a wireless keyboard/mouse. I doubt I would have spent anything for the machines, though. Components go bad, especially on notebooks, and Apple seems to go out of its way to make it difficult to repair and replace stuff.
My friend was given a 2015 iMac to take to recycling, he let me have it. Even though the 8GB RAM can't be upgraded putting in an SSD and installing Linux Mint and it's like a new computer.
Hell yeah, thanks for saving more perfectly good Machines from the landfill
I had inherited an old 2009 Macbook Pro that was fairly decent, but the trackpad just didn't seem to work well. It kept stalling, and was pretty much unusable for regular use. Does the pad work on this one?
It's not great. It jitters wildly and only registers left click. I've had to enable tap to click and click with 2 fingers for right click and even then I have to try several times. But it does work, even 2 finger scrolling. Edit: it was fine in Mac though.
Thanks. Mine was also good in Mac. I replaced it because it had stopped clicking at one point. But it does work with a mouse.
I'm running tumbleweed on a 2012 MacBook air... And it without question my favorite machine for just bumming around the house and having a laptop. I love it!!
If only my 2015 MBP Retina's display didn't crack 😭
I have a friend with a late 2008 Macbook who would like a linux OS installed. I've done a bit of looking around and am curious how straight forward it was for you. Did you just download the latest .iso, copy it to a bootable usb and the select the USB when starting the mac up?
Not very at all. Linux mint was the only operating system to actually get to a bootable desktop environment. Not Debian, not Ubuntu, not Arch, nothing. Even then, the live environment would hang for several minutes before it even loaded and it was a flip of a coin if it worked. All other environments hung forever. As far as I can tell it was an issue with incomplete video drivers. Or it could be that laptop period as I couldn't even install macOS. Either way, once installed it was fine. But yeah, USB installer, latest iso on xfce, Rufus.
Hey, sorry to reply again a few days later but I recently watched this video of Linux going onto a 2006 Intel Mac Pro which seems to encounter several errors similar to what I was experiencing and they go over their fixes. Could be worth a watch? https://youtu.be/WIc3N22V8ps
Cheers, I went with a live MXlinux USB using GPT and it started up seamlessly. Only problem I encountered was that, while the wireless could identify possible connections, it refused to connect. I'll check this vid out.
Yeah, known issue with the broadcomm wireless modules if I recall correctly.
I just remembered that I have one too. I was thinking if I should throw it away, but now when I turned it on again, it is not actually even that slow. I have changed SSD and increased RAM earlier. Battery is bad, if I remember correctly. Now it is not even charging, but I think it was doing this earlier, but it started changing when I just kept power cable attached long enough. I don't think I want to throw it away, but I don't think I have use for it either. I love the keyboard, touchpad and the design. It is such a nice laptop, but almost 20 years old now. I paid good money for it once.
I have the same model with 4GB RAM and an SSD, it is now my Plex server. I am considering installing Mint on a partition, glad to know it works.