alt Hacker News> Deprecation of x86_64-darwin
Understandable with Apple dropping official support but kind of sad as they were selling Intel powered Macs until as recently as 2023 and with Tahoe still continuing to receive security updates until 2028.
How is NixOS on Intel Macs currently? Hopefully Linux can still breathe life into these computers in 10 years time.
Replies
It's great. It's complicated. I have a MacBook Pro Late 2013 – very old. NixOS runs totally great! Even the proprietary hardware just works, with the nixos-hardware channel. Battery life is awesome, 4 hours of office work.
There is a snag however: Drivers for the built-in Broadcom Wi-Fi card are unmaintained and bug-ridden. Replacements do not exist either. The driver doesn't work most of the time nowadays and I have to rely on a USB Wi-Fi adapter that is sooo slow.
Maybe more recent Wi-Fi chipsets in Intel Macs are better off. Or maybe you don't need Wi-Fi!
I have NixOS installed on a 2009 MacBook Pro and it works well enough every time I pick it up.
I'm probably also going to install it on a 2019 iMac once macOS stops getting security updates but I haven't tried it yet.
I've been using t2linux[0] patched distros on an Intel MBP for a while now. While I applaud the efforts, it is not without sharp edges, and I do occasionally have to boot into macOS to do some things. I gave up on trying to use the onboard or bluetooth audio (onboard can cause it to crash in weird ways, and bluetooth can break depending on if wifi is in 2.4 pr 5ghz mode? I don't know, I use a USB DAC now and it's fantastic). Trying to use the webcam causes a hard crash. Sleep is weird (but that's a given for most linux things I think). The maintainers do a good job of getting all their little hacks included...but I'd probably be frustrated with it all if I didn't have 25+ years of experience with linux and be able to fix things myself. The MBP was a gift and my only machine at the moment so I won't complain much personally :).
[0] https://wiki.t2linux.org/