I’ve got a Macbook Pro A1707

I put Mint Ubuntu on it, had some issues but it was fine. Flashed Mint Debian as an experiment and it’s a lot better, even though it has a lot of the same problems and I can’t get the speaker to start… I still have to adjust the txpower every single time I boot up in order to start the wifi, but the biggest difference is the fan driver.

For some reason on Mint Ubuntu it was more difficult to control when the fan came on and how sensitively it reacted to sensing heat, not really an issue on Mint Debian, it will kick on for any length of time once it senses heat, I can more easily adjust the fans manually as well.

I don’t know if I’d get much money for it if I sold so I’m just trying to use it until it falls apart. I’ll figure out the speakers eventually, I guess. This time it isn’t the speakers, it’s something else, on Mint Ubuntu the speakers just didn’t work until I installed the drivers… on Mint Debian the speakers work but only display sounds from booting up or other computing actions, can’t play sound from music files or video, can’t even plug in headphones. When the speakers on Mint Ubuntu didn’t work before I installed the driver, I could listen with my headphones only. Weird.

Anyway just sharing this experience. The command to adjust the txpower appropraitely is

sudo iwconfig [yours] txpower 10

edit: edited for typos

  • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    Does your A1707 have the touch bar? My wife has an A1706 w/touch bar that she wants me to Linux-ify.

    I’m solidly in the LMDE camp as well; running LMDE 7 on all of my personal machines. Love it.

    on Mint Debian the speakers work but only display sounds from booting up or other computing actions, can’t play sound from music files or video, can’t even plug in headphones

    That sounds like a driver issue, maybe with pipewire or whatever it uses. I’m genuinely curious to see what you’ve tried already, seeing as I’m going to be doing this at some point…

    • sureshot0@discuss.onlineOPEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      Yes, mine has the touch bar. I heard the t2 Ubuntu can give you back the Touch Bar, maybe this will be next distro to try but I’m wary and I just want a computer now lol

      I unfortunately misplaced my documentation too, last time I do that. I don’t know if it’s a driver issue because the sound works when I boot up and other computer actions, just not when I play media, not even when I plug in headphones

      I don’t have much advice for your wife’s computer other than XCFE on my A1707 made everything all tiny, and Ubuntu in general was too much for it. Before I had Mint Ubuntu on there I tried regular Ubuntu and it wouldn’t connect to the Internet even with a cable.