this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2025
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Linux: No ads, it's free and easier than ever to install.
Install??
Mac guy, and I remember trying Linux inside Windows and installing it while using it. For someone with 30 years of experience with Windows, Linux was a fucking joke — as in the mockery it made of everything I knew about Windows. It felt like magic. It’s not very deep though — people need to realize Linux is still very much a project. macOS is a complete product, but it’s not free and it’s tied to proprietary hardware. Still, these days I see the choice between macOS and Linux. Windows doesn’t even make the ballot for me.
Is bootloader locked on mac or apple products?
Yes. However, it’s not super difficult to get a signed image to meet the requirements. To my knowledge they aren’t actively trying to prevent the installation of other operating systems. The bigger issue is the software supporting their unique hardware.
I understand there’s quite a few missing drivers on the latest Macs. It’s possible to run Linux but I don’t think it’s especially user friendly at the moment. Apple does a lot of custom stuff and not all of their hardware has open source drivers available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asahi_Linux
https://asahilinux.org/
Don’t they have a bunch of kernel changes that they can’t merge upstream?
Ah, it appears that it’s indeed a work in progress. If I was going to try it, this is definitely the distribution I would use. But I don’t think a whole lot of people are able to run Ubuntu for example. It’s going to be a more limited selection because of the hardware.
On iPhone, absolutely. On Mac, I'm not sure. I know I can use the disk manager to make a new partition, install whatever OS on it I want — though, my Macs are both ARM64, so I'm quite limited there — and boot to it. I'm not sure if it's fair to say "the bootloader is unlocked" though. Since it's Apple's bootloader. I don't know if I can change it. Like on Android, when I used to mess with custom firmware ~10 years ago, we'd replace the garbage Android bootloader with TWRP (Team Win Recovery Project) and that would give us the option to make backups and to flash custom forks of Android (e.g. CyanogenMod, AOKP, etc.). And some of those bootloaders were locked down pretty tight (like HTC's) where some were wide open (like Samsung, before Knox was a thing).