this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2026
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Linux

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So last year my wife decided that she was sick of her 2017 MacBook Air being out of support. Mainly it was that her browser wasn't updated and she was increasingly unable to access websites she used frequently. I grabbed a bunch of different liveUSB imgs, and ElementaryOS was the only one that would even boot. So that's what we installed. Some minor early issues that I'd anticipated with the webcam. And everything was fine, just worked.

Then there was a kernel version upgrade. Which resulted in a kernel panic. Update had replaced the newer broadcom driver with an older broken one, and that derailed the whole thing. Fine, relatively easy fix.
6 months of minor updates, and now we're on vacation, but my wife has a teams meeting she has to attend. We're testing out the WiFi at the hotel and just making sure everything is up to date and functions as expected. Webcam isn't working, and there's no FacetimeHD driver anymore. Cool, it was pretty easy to install the first time once I'd found all the files and full instructions. Then get a notification about an update, so update it. Kernel panic.

The Devs rarely interact with any of the places they say to ask questions, there's not really any good documentation. And I really can't be fucked trouble-shooting for an hour or two every time the kernel version changes.

The idea of ElementaryOS is nice, set and forget, MacOS like looks, but it really hasn't been anywhere near a painless experience. I'm no Linux Greybeard, but I am experienced and knowledgeable enough to muddle through most issues. The fact that it's presented as a noob friendly distro that requires no/minimal administration is, in my opinion, kinda BS. As long as nothing goes wrong during updates....

Default for grub is to run a 0 timeout and hidden. After the first update malarkey I changed it, but apparently that only lasted to the next update...

My advice for anyone who is looking for a distro for someone who isn't very tech literate, avoid ElementaryOS. It lulls you into a false sense of stability, then when it breaks, it breaks hard.

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[–] Piatro@programming.dev 4 points 1 week ago

I had similar issues with other distros on old MacBooks, unfortunately it's the locked down nature of their drivers, especially WiFi. I would have continued to use the hardware as it's good enough for simple use cases but fighting with custom WiFi drivers isn't my idea of fun. Gave up and got a second hand ThinkPad a year or two ago, no hardware issues since.

[–] imecth@fedia.io 2 points 1 week ago

Every distro has problems, i don't really see anything troubling in your post: you're using a macbook which is very much not a standard linux installation and as always on linux - ymmv.

After the first update malarkey I changed it, but apparently that only lasted to the next update...

You probably "changed it" wrong, iirc some files are automatically generated and those aren't the ones you want to edit.

[–] misk@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Elementary is based off Ubuntu and I don’t think they maintain a separate kernel so the issue would likely happen on every other Ubuntu based distribution. Elementary is marketing itself as noob friendly because what differentiates them is their desktop environment which aims for a simplified user experience.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world -1 points 1 week ago

I don't think this is exactly correct. The distro maintainer is responsible for choosing when and how to roll out/test upstream updates. So if they are doing their job, they would be pumping the brakes on specific kernel updates until they've worked out issues with them (or waited for upstream to fix them). So distros based on Ubuntu may or may not experience the specific issues that get rolled out upstream of them. Also, there could've been things elementary os was combining with the kernel updates that could've caused breakages.

[–] Hond@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago

Hmm, i had the same experience on a Thinkpad a decade ago with ElementaryOS. It just killed itself after an update a few months in. Seeing that this still is a thing makes me sad. Especially since its a distro which tends to get picked up by Linux newbies.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The problem isn't ElementaryOS, it's the Mac. Sell it and buy a proper Linux laptop. Your problems will be very much diminished.

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.today 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

nah, intel macs (non-T2; i never had a T2 model) tend to work fine with Linux