I paid £8 for a 2008 MacBook, then Installed Arch Linux
In this video, I take a £8 2008 MacBook, bought as spares and repairs and bring it back to life! 💻
We start by powering it on with to see if there's life in the old girl, test the 17-year-old battery, and find mystery screws and a missing hard drive. Then it’s time for a deep dive inside: removing the battery, RAM, and keyboard, clean some impressive dust and replacing the crusty thermal paste.
After repasting the CPU, cleaning the vents, and installing a spare SSD, we reassemble the laptop and fire it up. The Mac chime lives on!
Next, we install Arch Linux with XFCE4 and test software like LibreOffice, Fastfetch, and Stacer. We also tackle challenges with old GPU drivers and building AUR packages.
Finally, we test performance on YouTube, web browsing, and general usability. This is all on this 17-year-old Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro with 2GB RAM. It’s a testament to how well Linux can breathe new life into old hardware!
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Chapters
0:00 - Intro
0:17 - Repair work
5:52 - Arch Linux install
7:39 - Testing arch
12:50 - Wi-Fi
13:00 - Conclusion