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Distro for 2012 MacBook Pro Retina (15 inch)
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
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I run boring, stable Debian on mine, but I have plentry of experience adding the non-free (not foss) drivers not included in the core distro. For gaming with lots of native hardware support right out of the gate, Bazzite is really popular.
No matter which distro you settle on, see if you can install the 'linux-headers-generic' package to avoid broadcom wifi issues after every kernel update.
Also check which Wi-Fi driver is used. ArchWiki delais this nicely. Sometimes you may end up with wrong one enabled (I did with some distros in the past).
Thanks that's good to know!
Thanks! I have thought of giving a try to Bazzite but wasn't sure I wouldn't face the same problems with my GPU. You have the same MacBook as mine, with a discrete GPU, and you get the same snappiness as on MacOS?
Bazzite will not help, ur bottleneck is old nvidia which not supported anymore by nvidia, so u stuck to Linux kernel 6.8 and nvidia-driver-470, u also need MBPfan daemon without it cooler not working properly u will overheat all time https://github.com/linux-on-mac/mbpfan
Not quite the same actually; mine's the mid-2012 MBP with a more generic Intel GPU. Yours is slightly better, but that Nvidia hardware is sometimes harder to drive properly on Linux. Bazzite should make that a breeze for you tho.