In this video I’m installing Debian Linux 12 Bookworm on the 2014 Macbook Pro 13.3″, which has these specs:
* Intel Core i5-4278U processor
* 8 GB of DDR3L-1600 RAM
* 256 GB SSD
* BCM4360 WiFi chip
Specs for this Mac can be found here:
This is a fast computer. It should not be disposed of just because it can’t be upgrade past MacOS Big Sur. Linux is very usable on it.
The Debian distro here is the current (as of January 2024) Debian Linux 12 Bookworm for Intel-based PCs/Macs.
The ISO image can be written to any USB thumb drive with the Unix “dd” command.
To boot the ISO image, power up the Mac with the Option key down and the thumb drive in the right side USB-A port.
You can download Debian 12 for amd64 from here:
* As you watch this video, you’ll notice that the fonts are readable despite the Retina display’s high resolution.
* There was a prompt for a network card to which I selected “none”.
* Do note that I did NOT install Refit and that Linux is the only OS on this computer.
* At the end of the video, I made some UI updates to use high resolution fonts.
The BCM4360 Wifi card is not supported out of the box. You’ll need to load the broadcom-sta-dkms package, which includes the wl kernel driver.
First though you’ll have to add this line to your /etc/apt/sources.list (and remove the CDROM line):
deb bookworm main contrib non-free-firmware non-free
More info about getting the BCM4360 to work:
Note that the wl driver does “taint” the kernel, so ultimately it will be better to swap out the Broadcom card with something better-supported like an Intel one.
* To support normal fan use, make sure you install the mbpfan package and run it at startup.
* To change the screen brightness from the command line, install brightnessctl.
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