I have a 2012 Intel Macbook Pro (the version without a dGPU), right now it only has Pop_OS on it, the SSD on the device is only 128GB so I removed the preinstalled macOS, I want to know if I can replace Pop with Windows 10 since the gaming performance is tanked on the old iGPU, looking online I only find articles about dualboot with macOS which I don’t want because of the low space, the only worrying thing is Windows doing some voodoo shit ruining essential partitions of the device while installing and maybe incompatibility with Windows boot manager
Running Windows is officially supported by Apple, yes most guides use bootcamp to set it up, but you should be able to create an install drive like a normal PC and boot from it by holding Option/Alt as you press the power button. Mac’s usually just use EFI like any modern PC under the hood.
Great thanks
You’d have a better time installing Linux. On that hardware it’s been tested many times and is quite lean (as opposed Windows 10). You can also runs decent amount of games by installing steam, lutris, or heroic game launcher.
It already runs Linux, but the GPU is suffering when it comes to run games with proton/wine, even 2003 games are running poorly, what makes Windows a bad option for that hardware?
First, I don’t know of an option to install windows directly on a Mac. Microsoft says to use “Boot Camp Assistant” which, as far as I understand, is a VM. Second, windows is heavier than Linux in terms of consumption and resources.
If your mac is struggling with linux, my advice is to try a different and lightweight desktop environment (xfce, lxde, …), or get new hardware. Linux is about the lightest thing you can throw on there.
Nah, bootcamp assistant is Apple’s dual boot setup tool, it is a native install, but it has to be started from MacOS.
Oh Linux runs great on it, but gaming doesn’t, the translation layer overhead and poor Vulkan support are the drawbacks here, I could run emulated games pretty well using the same hardware
Unrelated, this is a good thing to hear, I have an old MacBook air 2012 lying around, a supported OS would be handy to make use of the hardware still being in excellent condition.
I love to make most of whatever hardware I get my hands on, I have a 2009 ASUS Eee that’s running MX Linux, it’s not the best experience of a laptop but it runs stuff so I can make use of it