There couldn’t be a better way of celebrating Easter, than bringing back to life an ageing 2008 Macbook whose WiFi chip blew the second time since I took it second hand from my brother in law. The device would also not get further OS updates since Apple would want to push you to meaner and costlier machines, even as i think the rest of the old hardware of the device is worth using! Perhaps with a more inclusive and an open operating system – Ubuntu!
The cost of Wifi chip replacement would cost about INR 10,000. Whereas a Wifi dongle cost me only about INR 300 :D. (Thank you China). This dongle did not work with MacOS El Capitan. However it was autodetected by Ubuntu.
I am a fan of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). I used Ubuntu for atleast 8 years before moving to a Macbook Pro from my employers as my primary machine. I did clear their coveted trial on a Dell Vostro 1200 ( 7 year old then) running Ubuntu!.
Force-feeding a Mac with anything not Apple is laborious. The laptop did fail with some strange partition errors before i retried and set it up correctly. The learning experience was fun, and to see the violet purple shades of freedom on the Macbook was sheer delight!
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