I have this laptop getting tired sitting in a drawer and asks me to work 🤪
What Linux distro can run on it? Preferably one with KDE plasma a a DE.
If you want to install linux because it doesn’t support the newest mac os version i would recommend opencore patcher. I use it on my 2013 Macbook pro and it works perfectly fine on ventura(mac os 13) and should work fine on mac os 14
I would use something Fedora-based. It’s just a personal choice from myself, since it’s reliable and very up to date. By using a modern distro, you increase the chance your hardware will perform better.
Workstation: uses Gnome, which can utilize the great trackpad
KDE spin: as you wanted KDE
Atomic (preferably uBlue, but Silverblue or Kionite would be great too): my favourite, maybe you could test too. You can install the KDE version first, and if you dislike it, you can rebase easily to the Gnome or whatever version without reinstallingWhat maybe won’t work is the WiFi and some keyboard things from what I’ve heart, but you can test it for yourself
I’ve tried a few on my 2008ish macbook pro and they all work. Antix and MX work well as do the others. I know MX gets some hate on here, but it works. I did cheat and shoved an old SSD in there because it really sped things up.
Fedora’s my personal preference. They have a KDE spin
Basically anything should work, I had one for a while running Arch + KDE. Wifi doesn’t work out of the box (thanks Broadcom), but once you install the right driver it’s perfectly fine.
Wl Kernel mod?
That works to get it going, but it’s flaky. The older Broadcom chips need either the old reverse-engineered driver, or the old closed source driver Broadcom released.
+1 for Fedora. I have Nobara on my 2012 mb and it rocks. Nobara is Fedora but with all the codecs and Audio/video stuff preinstalled.
Fedora on a MacBook Pro from 2012 works like a charm.
I think Pop OS might work on that model, and if it does, I would highly recommend it, as the DE is very similar to macOS. If I recall correctly, that distro also has multitouch trackpad functions that behave similar to those on the MacBook.
whatever distro you choose, disable the nvidia graphics first. you’ll lose the display out but you’ll gain a cooler laptop with better autonomy. integrated graphics is more than enough to drive Plasma.
Mint, Ubuntu have all pretty much worked out of the box for me
Zorin OS has a really good MacOS themed variant last I heard