from the 2019 (i7-9750H 6 core) and the install/build time was 9m31s for the 2009 vs. This is mainly because no bloat and very little running so far, but I’ve also installed Ruby 2.8.0-dev from Manjaro in rbenv on the 2009 (P7550 Core 2 Duo) vs. Manjaro with XFCE is far snappier than even my 2011 or 2019 MBPs.

I decided to go with Manjaro XFCE and was able to write the ISO to my USB drive and have wifi working on live boot, so I swapped MacBook hard drives back to the original 5400 RPM 160GB hard drive that came with it. I tried a different strategy and searched for Linux distros for a 2009 MacBook Pro. Of course, Linux and wifi isn’t always plug and play and the live boot did not recognize the MBP’s wifi card, so it would have been wired or nothing until I installed the OS. I used Rufus to write an Ubuntu ISO to a USB drive and was able to live boot into Ubuntu. I first went down the rabbit hole of Ubuntu, but the first set of instructions I found did not give me a warm fuzzy about being able to install Ubuntu and still have a working machine. I was trying to get RDP up and running when I hit that issue, so I figured that it was time to see if I could install an operating system that was still supported on the 2009 MBP.

While that doesn’t prevent everything from working, once something won’t install, you either need to fix it yourself or give up. I’ve already gone through dealing with end-of-support with a 2011 MBP (no AirPlay server, no longer getting macOS updates, etc…), but the 2009 is old enough that Homebrew itself has dropped support officially. I have had an old mid-2009 MacBook Pro (2.26Mhz, Core 2 Duo P7550) that got left behind at macOS 10.11 (El Capitan). Me using the same Manjaro Live USB to boot Linux on a 2012 MacBook Air Apple and their aggressive EOL/EOS policies

How to install linux on a mac