My parents have this old 2015 MacBook Air that they wanted to use but couldn’t due to no security updates and slow running. I convinced them to let me load up fedora on it instead of junking it. They only really need it for some basic document writing, email, and web surfing so I figured this is perfect for them.

Made a bootable drive with Fedora 43 work station on it, figured gnome would be the most Apple like spin. Everything went super smooth until I realized that the WiFi drivers weren’t installed lol. I also didn’t have a Ethernet adapter for usb-a so I had to overnight it to me while my parents swore I bricked their Mac all night. Got the adapter this AM, hooked it up, installed the drivers and other necessary tweaks, and viola! This Mac has new life.

So far my parents are liking it and understanding it (even though my mom seems more excited about the snoopy wallpaper and Firefox theme, lol). Getting their emails on thunderbird was driving me crazy. Nothing to do with thunderbird, they just didn’t know their passwords smh. All in all not bad. To new Linux converts

  • anon5621@lemmy.ml
    8·
    2 小时前

    Webcamera also should not work btw, cause it need firmware which is not part of linux-firmware package also webcamera need color correction files ,I wrote 2 scripts which fix it,if u need webcamera let me know

  • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
    6·
    2 小时前

    Gnome is closer out of the box.

    But you can make KDE work almost exactly like macOS. The top bar context menu, power menu, bottom dock, left-hand window buttons, etc.

    It just involves changing a bunch of settings.

    • wiegell@feddit.dk
      1·
      37 分钟前

      I in the process of doing that, but the most problematic thing is the keyboard shortcuts IMO. All the apps have their own default shortcuts, all defaulting to ctrl + * instead of cmd + *

      • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
        5·
        1 小时前

        KDE can be set up such that a ex-mac-user barely has to re-learn anything.

        The difference is that while gnome looks a lot like MacOS, it isn’t exactly like it in terms of layout. An ex-mac-user will look for certain things in certain places, and won’t always find them. (such as power off/restart being up in the left corner)

        Meanwhile, the customizability of the KDE desktop means you can manually put the same things in the same places as on MacOS. You can put a krunner search button in the same spot as the spotlight search button. You can make a panel that behaves like the dock, floating and shrinking to fit the number of icons in it. You can have a top panel with a power menu on the left end, and you can display a global menu to the right of it. Even the krunner keybind is the same, and spotlight people tend to pickup krunner like nothing.

        Finally, the KDE settings application seems to be the most similar to the modern MacOS settings application.

        The big caveat being that the user will need someone who can instruct them with setting this up, or who can set it up for them.

  • data1701d (He/Him)@startrek.websiteEnglish
    231·
    8 小时前

    I’m confused. How did you save your parent’s Masters in Business Administration? /s

    (Sorry. I can’t help but think that every time someone acronym’s Macbook Air.)

  • LeFantome@programming.dev
    38·
    9 小时前

    I got a laugh at the end as I have also experienced that the hardest part about converting parents to Linux is them not knowing their passwords.

    • Elvith Ma'for@feddit.org
      2·
      2 小时前

      Mine didn’t want to migrate and I had to build them a new PC with Win11 (their old one was barely able to run win 10 and had already some hardware problems, so a new one was on my bucket list for a while) - but… yeah the most time was spent tracking down all these passwords and accounts they were constantly using without knowing which email address and which password was used for the account…

    • WFH@lemmy.zip
      10·
      4 小时前

      This. Migrating my father to Bluefin was absolutely eventless. Except the 8 hours of fighting over passwords. Because I’m supposed to know all his passwords, apparently.

    • Kelp@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      18·
      9 小时前

      Oh the pain. You should’ve heard the accusations of someone else changing their passwords…somehow. Yet they’ll both bring up me bricking the fam computer dl linkin park from limewire…like 20+ years ago lol

  • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    14·
    8 小时前

    That hardware still has plenty of power for basic use. It should be good for another 10 years running Linux.

  • MrSoup@lemmy.zip
    11·
    9 小时前

    Where did you got wifi drivers? From the distro repo? Why didn’t you used a flash drive to pass them w/o an adapter?

    • Kelp@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      15·
      9 小时前

      I enabled the free and non free repos and entered

      sudo dnf in broadcom-wl

      That got everything working. I used the Ethernet method cause I am a noob and was not aware of using a flash drive until just now lol. Guess I got something else to learn

      • MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz
        4·
        2 小时前

        You can also just hook your phone up via usb and enable usb tethering, allowing the PC to use wifi or mobile broadband via the phone.

    • Kelp@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      9 小时前

      She’s starting off on the…right foot :) I still gotta finish her. Literally just haven’t done the right leg/foot armor