I believe a USB WiFi dongle will be a better idea than modifying live images of various distros

Yeah, you and me both. But I’d be willing to do it for one or two, just to be able to prove that THIS laptop can and will run Linux with its current hardware, should he choose install it.

Also, the only thing lost by modifying LiveUSB trials is my time. If I corrupt the image, or it doesn’t work, or I make it crap out somehow – all of which is likely, lol – I still have done no harm at all. It’s just a USB stick. And I will also have learned a few things along the way, like how Linux distros install and use drivers.

you would be installing the firmware on the Linux system, not onto the WiFi module.

Then technically (not that I personally have the chops to do it) this “firmware” could also be something plugged into the distro on the LiveUSB stick along with the wl driver. That distro is getting its current drivers from somewhere on that USB already, so I’m not reinventing the wheel, just adding to what is already there.

I guess I just have to read up more. Thanks for letting me know the difference.

This I can do. Thanks!

EndeavorOS

I’ll add that to the list of distros I want to try, I hadn’t seen it before but it does run on minimal hardware. I like that it’s built on Arch because Arch itself is a good OS, but intimidating for a noob, lol. According to Distrowatch.com it’s near the top of their page hits so it must be popular. Thanks for the recommend!

Bungie will ban you for running destiny 2 on Linux.

That is so bizarre to me. According to this article, Destiny 2 was already playable on Linux when it was officially ported to Google Stadia, and no one, not even Bungie, can explain why they won’t support it on Linux or Steam Deck, much less ban a player for trying. That’s crazy.

I tried Budgie (packaged with Solus 4.4 “Harmony”) yesterday and loved it. It seemed fast enough even on this old MacBook with 4GB of RAM, but I was just test driving it on a live USB so I don’t know what it would do in a real world scenario. Even so, it was definitely the most pleasant OS/DE combo of all the distros I’ve tried so far.

Well, now I’m back to one USB at a time for Macs, using Rufus to do the deed and just overwriting the ones I know I won’t like. Same as it ever was. I think the problem has to do with how Ventoy interacts with the boot process that involves assumptions about Mac architecture; everything the author suggested, like enabling Grub2, just laughed and flashed the ol’ cursor. Not all Macs are the same under the hood and there have been some fairly big swings in architecture over the years, so when I read that he had not ever tested it specifically on a Macbook it made me think he tested it on one other Mac somewhere and that was enough for him, lol. I still think it’s genius just not on Macs.

Some of the distros I can try now; others have to wait until I get more memory in the Macbook. So right now I’m just doing preliminary look-sees just to find out if I like a given distro, and if it will find drivers and do hibernate without an issue. Funny thing is that one I can’t really look at yet except via review videos may be the one I go with: OpenSUSE Leap. As far as I can tell, it has no Live USB trial, you have to install it. But it’s incredibly feature rich, can bend to a user’s needs even if those needs aren’t foreseen out of the box, it’s not overly CLI dependent but CLI tools are there if you prefer them, has an extensive selection of software, supports multiple package handlers, and most importantly, the wiki is very complete. I just can’t install it until I get more RAM in the test box, lol.

I expect similar with Debian, to be honest, just because it’s so robust, though Debian does support live USB preview. Same with Pop! OS, there is a live USB preview but I have to wait until I get more RAM into the test box.

But of the ones I’ve tried so far, Linux Lite 6.4 seemed kludgy and repellent (not sure why, but I hated it); Zorin OS 16.3 Core was visually gorgeous but seemed VERY limited in other ways (maybe the paid tier would be different); Solus 4.4 “Harmony” with Budgie was responsive, intuitive, and fabulous to use but I need to look under the hood further, and Linux Mint 21.2 remains the winner so far, but I would rather go with a different desktop than Cinnamon (I do not find Cinnamon intuitive) so it’s on the list to retry with Kfce.

So I’m still looking. And now I have an in-law with an old MacBook Pro who is also paying close attention in case I find something, lol. But it’s all free and it’s been years since I did something like this, so I’m happy. Thanks again for your help!

deleted by creator

Ext4 seems to be the default across the distros I’ve looked at so if I can just run with that, all the better. Thank you for pointing this out, much appreciated.

I have a bit of bad news. Ventoy is not supported on Macs. Mac minis, Macbooks, just Mac hardware in general as far as I can tell.

But it’s a fact that’s buried deep into the Github notes when you go looking for support; if you’re not running a Mac there’s no way you would have known. But there it is:

https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/282
https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/381
https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/246
https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy/issues/1056

But this comment especially from the repository owner was delightful after I’d already done everything suggested and more:

Ventoy actually doesn’t support Macbook. I never test it on Macbook.
You can do some try though

Lol, no. No more try, though at least this post let me know it was not user failure. But I want you to know it was a great suggestion, I did learn more along the way so it wasn’t all a waste of time, and I’ll definitely try Ventoy again when I get to non-Apple machines.

Thought I should tell you just in case you run into another Mac user. And thank you for the well wishes – we’re both nerds, so one of us disappearing into tech at odd moments is standard operating procedure around here. Happy Labor Day if you’re in the US.

Excellent question, and for people who have SSDs it’s worth knowing the answer.

Very simply, SSDs store data differently than HDDs, and when a file is removed, sectors on SSDs have to be explicitly cleared instead of simply waiting to be overwritten like on HDDs. Not doing so on a regular basis decreases the lifespan of the SSD. Crucial (a SSD manufacturer) explains it here much better than I can:

https://www.crucial.com/articles/about-ssd/what-is-trim

Yes, this helps tremendously. Thank you so much for taking the time to write out not just the info, but all the terminal instructions for this noob. Much appreciated!

The most-often recommended file-systems for SSDs are Btrfs and F2FS, both of which support and enable TRIM by default (as of Linux 6.2 for Btrfs, so if you are running an older kernel version you might need to manually enable it).

This is great to know on multiple levels because in Windows it is triggered from the OS, I think as a weekly task, and NTFS has little to do with it as far as I know.

It’s also good to know that support is pretty standard now, as a lot of what I found online was just old and the rest assumed I’d already be familiar with it. Bad assumption, lol.

I don’t know enough to have a preference one way or another for a specific file system, so I can just start with Btrfs and go forward with that. I can also read up on Btrfs further on its own, which I now know to do.

Safest bet would be to investigate once you settle on a distro

Absolutely. But this gets me started, and pointed in the right direction. Many thanks.

Sweet, the BestBuy near me has this in 1T for $35 and one still physically in stock. This is fantastic. Thank you!

Also, as I’ve been reading about different distros and checking system reqs, an inability to sleep or hibernate correctly pops up as being associated with inadequate swap space. I don’t know that this has been your issue, and the old rule of 2x your physical RAM is only still recommended if you’re at 4GB or less (you’re at 9GB so 1x is probably fine) but I thought I’d throw it out there because it seems like an easy fix if that’s what’s causing the problem.

Again, much appreciated. Your info has been invaluable twice now, lol. Thank you!

I’m probably going to try Debian Bookworm with Xfce, but to be honest . . . ain’t nuthin “beginner” about Debian, lol. Still, it’s worth doing, because I want to try as many as I can.

I will check that out. Thank you for the suggestion!

EDITED TO ADD: Given that Fedora is upstream from RHEL (no longer truly open source) and is developed in part by Red Hat, is there any chance it too will become less than open source? Because as good as Fedora must be to have all the downstream enterprise versions built around it that it does, if there’s any real chance it will go closed-source I don’t want to waste energy on it. I know that some will likely think this an overreaction on my part, but I’m putting in the effort here because I’m trying to get away from embrace, extend, and exterminate altogether, not just MS/Apple. Gonna list this as a “maybe” for right now.

This is genius. My spouse is busy formatting unused USB drives for this Linux try-every-distro project right now, so your suggestion is just in time, lol. Thank you!

This is incredibly helpful, thank you. Especially the info on coming out of sleep or hibernate. You’re right about the SSD, but there’s only a SATA port on this one, so the best I could do would be SSD through an adapter. Sounds like SSD was an adapter add on for you as well. Is that what you did? I could definitely use your advice on that part.

In other news, and for whatever reason, Mint saw the onboard Nvidia, wifi and Bluetooth hardware and installed correct drivers with zero further modification necessary. I pulled a Mac system information report to try to help with this if I get into a position of having to manually find drivers with any of these with other distros, but it’s good to know Mint will run for me without modification out of the box. I did NOT try going into or coming out of sleep, though. I will add that to my list of things to check on each distro, thank you!

I looked at MX Linux too but it’s considered “midweight” and not optimal for really old hardware; antiX is recommended instead? Apparently MX Linux gets laggy with so little RAM (4 GB) so I have it on my list for after I throw more RAM on the pile. Sounds like you were able to make it work for you.

Again, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time to write this out. So helpful. Thank you again.

Thanks for taking the time to explain the differences a bit, it’s very much appreciated. I’d heard about the Snapstore thing and also Red Hat’s decision regarding RHEL; while I don’t understand it all yet I do think closed-source defeats the whole purpose of Linux (and why I’m getting off Windows) so yeah, I’m with you on that.

So far, with Mint I haven’t had any problems running Cinnamon at all (decided to try the heaviest DE first) but I will probably still end up trying Kfce as the DE on Debian, for example. It was actually shocking how well Mint runs on 4GB of RAM, lol.

But I have plenty of time and plenty of USB sticks, and I will try all the feasible distros mentioned, taking notes along the way. Thank you again for the suggestions!

How to access a system overview (installed hardware, memory, drivers, etc.) It doesn’t have to be super detailed or interactive; I’m thinking of the System Information report available on Macs.

I’ll give it a try. Thank you!

I will try it out. Thank you!