I have an used, beat up MacBook Air 2015 - and I can’t afford a new laptop for a long while. My situation is a bit messy and sad at the moment.

I can’t use MacOS on it, because the battery was replaced by a third party and MacOS freaks out about it and locks the CPU to 400 MHz.

I can’t use Windows on it, because the Intel HD Graphics drivers are no longer maintained and all versions compatible with Windows 10 and Windows 11 have a regression that disables the internal display - there’s nothing you can do about it, they only run on external monitors.

And there’s an unknown bug on the Linux open source MESA drivers that, on the HD Graphics 6000, also causes a black screen unless you use nomodeset, which is terrible for battery life and performance. I tried the latest Ubuntu, Ubuntu LTS, Linux Mint, Fedora, Bazzite, Arch, Endeavour and Opensuse Tumbleweed - every single distro was affected.

Except Pop!_OS. Maybe someone with more Linux knowledge could isolate what they’re doing different than everybody else, but man am I’m glad I decided to test this last .iso as a last ditch effort.

Also, thank fuck for open source operating systems, otherwise this device would literally be shiny electronic waste thanks to Apple’s proprietary battery bullshit.

EDIT: guys please explain “nomodeset” to me I can’t believe I’ve spent 12 hours testing Linux distros for no good reason please send help

  • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    6 months ago

    Is your battery dead dead? It should work just fine with a 3rd party battery, I’ve never had any machines give me problems with 3rd party ones. It’s only when the battery is below 5% state of charge that it will throttle like that.

    • tahoe@lemmy.world
      2·
      6 months ago

      I don’t know about the 400Mhz part but I’ve had a similar experience with my 2012 Retina MacBook Pro. I replaced the battery multiple times with an iFixit one, and since then the computer has had all kinds of problems (dying at 40% battery, randomly switching off and other similar things). I’m on my third replacement battery, so either I’m really unlucky or there’s something fishy going on

      • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        6 months ago

        (dying at 40% battery, randomly switching off and other similar things). I’m on my third replacement battery, so either I’m really unlucky or there’s something fishy going on

        Not unlucky, they’re just garbage 3rd party batteries, and no official 1st party batteries.

        • tahoe@lemmy.world
          1·
          6 months ago

          Yeah :( It sucks because I don’t think there are any alternatives, and they’re expensive too for what they are

    • kadu@lemmy.worldOP
      1·
      6 months ago

      Not dead dead, just made by a third party and at around ~83% capacity compared to new. Every system works fine, just with the lesser battery duration as expected. MacOS will freak out though and alert about the battery, which is why I assume it’s some kind of genuine part restriction