This information is not new on this subreddit, but it is often buried inside a lot of other cruft, which made me overlook this for a long time. I think it's useful enough to deserve its own posting.

Tl;dr: On the Intel MacBook Air 11"/13" (2013-2017), and potentially other MacBook Airs and Pros from this era, disabling the thunderbolt ports can save 1.5W of power consumption, potentially increasing battery life up to 25% under idle conditions. (Others reported up to 2W of savings, I did not observe that.)

The screenshot above shows a projected battery life of 10h45m for my MacBook Air 11" (2015). That is unrealistic of course, because it assumes that the laptop is completely on idle. In real life, with some moderate Firefox browsing, I'm seeing 5-6h of battery life, which is noticeably better than the 4-5h that I was seeing before.

The instructions below are for Linux Mint 22.x which uses GRUB as the boot loader.

Kernel Parameters

First, edit `/etc/default/grub`, and add the following option to any other parameters which are in this variable:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="... acpi_osi=!Darwin"

Second, regenerate GRUB:

$ sudo update-grub

Third, reboot the machine. The default kernel selected on the GRUB menu will be configured with the `GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT` variable, and thunderbolt will be disabled. (If you select any other kernel version from the Advanced menu, it will get the `GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX` parameter, which will not contain this flag, and thunderbolt will be enabled. See how to use this to your advantage below).

Results

The power consumption of the MacBook fluctuates up and down every few seconds. I looked for the minimum power consumption over a few minutes, with the display set to about 1/3 brightness.

On my MBA 11 (2013) 4GB/128GB, I saw:

• Thunderbolt disabled: 4.2W
• Thunderbolt enabled: 5.6W

On my MBA 11 (2015) 8GB/256GB, I saw:

• Thunderbolt disabled: 4.5W
• Thunderbolt enabled: 6.0W

(The 2015 model seems to use slightly more power than the 2013 model, probably because of the larger RAM and larger SSD.)

This ArchLinux wiki page (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Mac/Troubleshooting#Disabling_Thunderbolt), says that they observed a 2W reduction. I never saw that on my MBA 11".

Reenabling Thunderbolt

[Update: This section may not be necessary, because even though the Arch Linux wiki page says that this kernel flag disables thunderbolt, my external monitor works just fine through the thunderbolt adapter.]

Occasionally, I use an external monitor with my MBA 11", which requires the thunderbolt to be active. I could go back into `/etc/default/grub`, remove the `acpi_osi=!Darwin` flag, run `update-grub`, and reboot.

But that's a lot of work. There are 2 easier workarounds:

Option 1: Install both the 7.0 kernel and the 6.8 kernel. Both are LTS kernels supported until 2029. Select the "Advanced" option in the GRUB menu, then boot into the 6.8 kernel. Since this kernel is not the default, it will boot with the `GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX` flag, and thunderbolt will be enabled.

Option 2: At the GRUB menu, type `e`' to get the edit screen where you can manually remove the `acpi_osi=!Darwin` flag. Then hit F10 or Ctrl-X to continue the boot process, and the 7.0 kernel will boot with thunderbolt enabled. Unfortunately, my memory is not as good as it was when I was younger, and I will forget about this technique in a few months, so I will probably end up using Option 1.

If anyone knows an easier way to enable/disable thunderbolt at runtime, without rebooting, that would be really useful. Please post info.

For me, no other power saving technique (e.g. TLP, CPU governor selection, CPU PowerSaver option, replacing the Broadcom WiFi card with an Intel AX210 card) made as much difference in power consumption and battery life as disabling the thunderbolt ports.

I've got a 9 year old gaming desktop that I want to upgrade into a Linux/SteamOS gaming rig. I'd need a new GPU, CPU and motherboard definitely (should have a hookup for 2x16GB DDR5). Current PSU is 750W so ideally the upgrade will work with that, but can also upgrade that if required. I've read AMD hardware is best for Linux but I can't manage to wrap my head around all the versions and variants anymore. Could you help by recommending me some parts? My budget is 800-1200 euros. Thank you!

Hi! I would like to build my own data center. Therefore I consider buying an athlon 3000G. I know it s compatible AM4 like every other Apu CPU of the last 3 years and so compatible with series 300, 400, 500 motherboard.

Question is: Does the oldest motherboard need the bios update when I buy them or the constructor is doing it by default now ?

I don't have any other older AMD part to do the update :/

Of if you have an other better idea on what components should I put inside. I try to build it, as inexpensive as possible, to seed , ddl torrent, and share files with my family. And able to stream 4k out of it.

I install Debain [stretch] [mate] [yep], works like a charm.

Issues I had

-1 The temperature sensors didn't want to work properly -or at all I should say. But after a quick google search, all was good.

-2 When first installed wifi doesn't work but you can easily fix it without having to buy a usb to ethernet adapter. I think I just googled it on another machine then transfered the file over & installed like a boss.

-3 Realizing that I am more of a hipster than normal macbook users being that I am using a macbook but am too good to use macos.

& that's pretty it dudes. Have fun.

I just installed Linux Mint 22.3 on an IMac18. Great choice, this thing came back to life, I should have done it way earlier. this thing runs HoMM3 like a lightning. However, I have no sound, and I am way too new to Linux to figure out what to do.

I went to the Alsamixer and unmute what seems to be a mute port. But nothing happens and it goes back to MM after rebooting the system. I am lost here, and I would really appreciate any advise on how to go about this.

So basically I have a monitor and a TV and I want to have mirrored displays to both. I have had no issue doing this with Ubuntu 24.04 and previous versions however I have just installed 26.04 onto a new SSD. I find that when I boot up 26.04 I have TV monitor on by default and I have to turn the TV on, log into the desktop environment and then both monitors can be used. However, I would like for the dual display option to be a thing prior to log in so I don't have to turn the TV on. In practice, you can just press the Enter key and type in the password, however I don't want to risk anything going wrong and typing in things without knowing what is happening.

This was not a problem on 24.04. Some years ago I learned that display settings can differ prior to the login and I think I changed a file with display options so that the login screen you get was dual for both screens. If this is the case still can anyone remind me on how to get the file in question?

I have (580.173.02-0ubuntu0.26.04.1) Nvidia drivers installed on 26.04.

I wanted to know if I could install Ubuntu on some of the second hand laptops I was considering buying about ​​3 days back and it showed this error(granted I might have open three or four pages at once that day). Today I managed to open the site but after loading 3 pages, it again spit out this error, what to do?

Saw this used macbook pro's listing,
I'm on a very tight budget and this will be my primary machine if i buy it.

I found a 2019 16" MacBook Pro A2141 with:

• Intel Core i9 (8C/16T)
• 32GB DDR4 RAM
• 2TB SSD
• Radeon Pro 5500M 4GB
• 16" Retina display
• ~5 hours battery
• Asking price: ~$400

My intended use is primarily software development, browsing, etc (no gaming)

I'm also planning to run Linux as my primary OS. (cuz no future OS support by Apple)

I don't really care about battery life because the laptop will spend most of its time connected to a USB-C monitor, effectively acting as my desktop workstation.

What worries me

I know this is a 7-year-old Intel Mac, and I'm particularly concerned about:

• T2 Linux compatibility
• Sleep/suspend
• Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/audio
• USB-C/Thunderbolt and external monitor support
• thermal throttling
• reliability of a 7-year-old MacBook

The question

Should I buy it? and run linux on it?

Hey guys. I’m just a few months away from having to replace my laptop, and I want to find one that’s as compatible as possible with DaVinci Resolve. I’m currently using a 13" 2019 Razer Blade Stealth (HP ProBook 450 G6 motherboard, 8th Gen Intel Core i7 quad-core processor, 16.0 GB RAM, and Nvidia GeForce 150MX discrete GPU), and no matter which distro I use, running DaVinci Resolve has always been a headache—I’m not talking about missing codecs or editing without proxies… I’m referring to the overall system stability.

Unfortunately, Kdenlive hasn’t been very stable either; Shotcut makes better use of the dGPU, but neither of them has several features I need. I’ve also tried Drift, but it’s still too immature for professional use.

So, even though I’d be inclined to just go ahead and buy a Framework Pro or consult directly with Tuxedo, I’d first like to know if anyone has had success using Resolve on their hardware with performance similar to what it delivers on Windows, and what software configuration makes that possible.

TIA

Hello everyone, not sure if this is the right area of Reddit so let me know if there's a better place. Running Fedora 44 on a 2012 MacBook Air with a bare niri/Wayland setup — no DE. Trying to set a persistent 80% charge limit.

Tried two approaches:

1. mac-smc-bat-guardian (userspace TUI, direct SMC port I/O via a C helper) — installed, configured BATTERY_THRESHOLD=80 in .env, ran it as root (via su). Battery sailed straight past 80% with no error, no charge_control file ever appeared under /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/

2. applesmc-next (DKMS kernel patch exposing charge_control_end_threshold via sysfs) — built cleanly via DKMS (manually copied sbs.h into the kernel headers). Module loaded butBAT0 itself vanished from /sys/class/power_supply/ afterward until rolling back.

Both projects list broad Intel-Mac support (2006–2020ish), but I'm wondering if this specific 2012 Air generation's SMC/battery interface is just an edge case that isn't well tested against current kernels (was on 7.1.12 at the time of the crash).

Has anyone gotten charge limiting working on this specific hardware generation, or is manual 80/20 unplugging genuinely the only safe option here? Thanks in advance.

I stumbled upon one of my facebook friends post saying that they're selling their old 2019 MacBook Pro laptop and I'm really tempted to buy this one. It's 400$ and I wonder if any of you guys have any experience on an old macbook like this? I plan to install FedoraOS on it after getting my hands on it because I mostly develop and maintain web applications and I run docker containers locally so the massive 64gb ram would really help me in my workflows.

If you can share with me some of the things that I should check/verify before buying the unit, I would very much appreciate that. Thanks guys, and also I think for 400$ it's a fair deal, right?

Ordered a computer said they will send it expedited they took the full payment and yet have not sent the computer. Should I get a refund? I do not recommend ordering from them they have terrible customer service!

Original Post

Posted a while back about reverse-engineering the EWEADN H2's protocol and building a native Linux app for it, since the official web driver hides the battery percentage and isn't all that trustworthy about showing you what's actually going on with the mouse. I still owed it real button remapping before moving on to libratbag. That's done now, so figured I'd share.

What's new:

• Full button remapping — all 6 buttons, keyboard shortcuts, media keys, the DPI button, double-click
• Battery reading no longer occasionally shows garbage values
• Works properly while charging now (turns out it's a different USB device in that mode)
• Cleaner-looking Device tab in the GUI

Same repo, same place: https://github.com/MuhtasimJawad/EWEADN-H2-Control

If you've got this mouse, I'd still love to hear whether it's working for you — bugs, weird behavior, anything.

Edit: quite a few of you asked about libratbag/Piper support so this could work with the normal Linux tools instead of my own app — that's well underway. DPI, polling rate, and all the button remapping above already work through a proper libratbag driver, tested on real hardware through both ratbagctl and Piper. Will post again once it's ready to send upstream.

as the title says. i'm looking to switch to linux mint in the far future, but i'm not sure if my laptop is compatible. lot's of people say that "linux is for every laptop", but i've heard that acer models can have issues, especially budget models with mediatek as it's primary wifi provider. i've also heard about various driver issues with video and audio, and it makes me worry. i plan to switch to linux when windows 11 eventually kicks the bucket, but I don't wanna be stuck with a laptop that can't run Linux let alone windows 11. This is the only laptop I own, and I wanna make sure that in the future i'm making the right choice and fully prepared for what could happen.

Looking for advice.

Tried creating a bootable USB with Linux Mint xfce 22.3 on it to salvage an early 2015 Mac (which was also used here to create said USB).

I have checked integrity of the ISO file as instructed by the installation guide. I tried both balenaEtcher and with the dd commands in terminal, both have the following outcome:

During the process itself, no errors appear but once it's done, the laptop instantly fails to read it ("The disk you attached was not readable by this computer.") Rebooting doesn't seem to help. The disk (USB) works fine after running command to erase it.

Any thoughts on what may be causing this, and what should be done to successfully create the bootable media? Thanks!

I am trying to buy a MangoPi MQ-Quad board and test it out. Everywhere I look it seems out of stock or super expensive. Dhgate has it for over $234 for example. Anyone know where to buy this board? I saw the schematic and other files were released so I considered remaking it in Kicad but that would be a lot of work

I'm building a router on a Lenovo m720q. The router really doesn't need much space to be happy; and a 16Gb optane module from the Bay is a lot cheaper than any NVME SSD I can get new, and the 256Gb SSD I have in it now could serve better elsewhere that needs more storage.

Can I use an Intel Optane module as a boot device? They're running about $12 on fleabay right now for a new one...

UPDATE:
So, after some more research I decided to switch distros and move to Pop!_OS running a GNOME session (i think that's how you describe what I've got going on, tbh I have learned a LOT trying to breath life into this crappy laptop) because it apparently works better with this specific dual graphics card situation and it took a lot of tweaks and troubleshooting but I finally have something that is usable. I can now run mpv (I'm using cellulose because I like to have a more navigable ui) without scan lines or random skips. The only real issue I have now, other than figuring out the quirks of GNOME, is a small graphic issue where listed items (like files or settings) don't show up unless I hover or scroll and sometimes will just disappear again, but from what I could find there isn't really a fix and you kind have to just live with it. Thank you for those who gave suggestions and help.

I am having issues with VLC when trying to play videos. At the start of each video it flickers like crazy (enough to hurt my eyes) and on occasion will play at a much faster rate. Though, I think the problem is bigger than just VLC.

System Details Report:

Report details
- Date generated: 2026-09-02 19:09:41

Hardware Information:
- Hardware Model: Apple Inc. MacBookPro11,3
- Memory: 16.0 GiB
- Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-4850HQ × 8
- Graphics: NVE7
- Graphics 1: Intel® Iris® Pro Graphics P5200 (HSW GT3)
- Disk Capacity: 121.3 GB

Software Information:
- Firmware Version: 478.0.0.0.0
- OS Name: Ubuntu 26.04.1 LTS
- OS Build: (null)
- OS Type: 64-bit
- GNOME Version: 50
- Windowing System: Wayland
- Kernel Version: Linux 7.0.0-30-generic

So far I've tried:

Changed VLC's Video Output Module to OpenGL, X11, and XVideo
Disabled Hardware-accelerated decoding
Removed Mesa VA-API
Reset VLC Preferences
Overrode Environment Variables
Bypass NVIDIA via GRUB (which was the most destructive causing UI issues and making it so closing the lid did nothing)
Running MPV instead but that just gave me messy glitchy mess that didn't show anything (screenshot attached)
Attempted xfce and gnome flashback sessions to see if Wayland was the issue

Will be looking at a second hand Ideapad 3 15IIL05 i3 4GB soldered model. Wondering if everything will work for Ubuntu?

We actually did in April already. But now is a good time to show off as Tim Cook will no longer care :-)

It works, but still needs work. We want to be sure we won't break your Mac. Because it's quite easy to do so when messing with security. Ask me why I know.

Thus the video deliberately only shows the sensor registering finger presence and not fingerprint match.

We will deliver. And we will upstream it together with the t2bce driver stack. https://kait2en.org

Found this old system running, currently has Void Linux installed on it. Specs:

• CPU: Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2160 @ 1.8GHz
• Motherboard: Intel 945GC (PI945GCM)
• RAM: 963MB
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 7300 LE
• Currently running Void Linux

Not looking for server/homelab suggestions, already have a server for that. Curious what else could be done with something this old and low-spec. Open to ideas.