Put ZorinOS on it and use it as a laptop. Easy. Or Mint. Both work nicely on a 2015 Air.
I have a few and was going to use them as servers, but laptop battery management is too fussy for a server setup. Now selling them cheap with Linux.
this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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Did they still have x86_64 CPUs in 2015 apples?
The first Apple silicon macs came out in 2020, and they transitioned from PowerPC to intel in 2006
...and they had only embraced PowerPC maybe 12 years earlier in the early 90s, if I recall correctly.
I think my computer is Intel, not Silicon, if that says anything
A 2015 model is definitely going to be Intel, that was the only thing they made at the time
Model numbers are on the bottom of the computer printed in light grey on the aluminum.
If your computer is an A1466 It's the most common kind of air, and fairly well supported in a few distros.
Yep! A1466
I think 🤔 maybe
Hell, Linux runs great on my nearly 20 year old 2007 iMac. Gonna miss the Intel Mac era.
I have a 2008 iMac running Mint just great.
By the time Apple Silicon is truly old and no longer supported, they will probably support Linux fine. It won't be just Asahi either.
Well and despite how quickly it has grown, Asahi is still a work in progress and has not been updated for M3/M4 processors yet, even when the M5 has just released. I honestly feel like old Intel macs are a waaaay better bang for your buck if you want a stable server box, all of them handle Linux pretty flawlessly, in my albeit limited experience.
Yes, I agree, I was projecting about five or six years into the future.
Whoa, nice!!!! I tried to use mine as a server but Docker wouldn’t set up Lemmy properly, the login doesn’t work when I try to sign up with an admin account, and YunoHost won’t work right either.
[off topic?]
There's probably a local women/children shelter that could use it.
Many of the residents left their homes quickly due to family upheaval and can use it.
Could put the latest available OSX on it and sell it for $300. People buy old apple stuff like vintage clothes.
I actually used an old MacBook air for this project! Not quite 10 years old, but pretty up there. I turned it into a jellyfin media server.
Just installed Ubuntu server on it, then docker and make a docker-compose file for Jellyfin after setting up the file structure for it.
I didn't know what I was doing at first so it took me a bit to get it fully functional, but all the steps are pretty much there in the documentation I think. Not much coding involved at all, just some terminal commands and whatnot.
What operating system are you trying to run on the VM?
Debian, but the Tailscale IP I’m using with YunoHost (IDK much about coding or self-hosting) will work for a few minutes and then I can’t access YunoHost on it even when I start up YunoHost and Tailscale again
Your system probably goes to sleep. Not just screen but also hard disk sleep. Install Amphetamine on it and its companion app. They will work as supercharged Caffienate and keep the system awake even at lid close.
Thank you!!!
You should install Debian on the laptop instead of running it though a VM. Or a friendlier Debian-based distro like Mint. I don't know if that'll fix that issue specifically but it's generally easier to debug and handle network issues when it's not running through a VM. At the very least, you'll get a more lightweight OS and learn lots!
Oh!! Thanks, can I do that with Apple? I didn’t know I could haha!
Yep! It's just a laptop, nothing different about it. I've installed Ubuntu and Windows alongside MacOS on my 2015 MacBook Pro.
Whoa, thanks so much!! I will definitely watch a tutorial later on how to install Debian!!!
Put VMware fusion or VirtualBox on it, install Linux, give it all the resources that the system can spare…
Then run OpenClaw on it. 😆😆
I have a 2017 Air. I used it as a home server for about 2 years with Debian, running some docker containers. Currently, I have installed Fedora on it, and i use it for light tasks.
It has a 5th gen i5, 8gb ram. It can't do a lot, bust still good enough for me as a secondary device.