I still love this machine. On MacOS, it still runs very well but is not supported anymore unfortunately. I have installed Mint on it and it was very sluggish. I then went for Ubuntu 22.04 and gnome 42.9 and it has been much better, keyboard, battery, trackpad and shortcuts have been supported mostly out of the box.
But it’s still fairly slow, and it seems I haven’t managed to use the discrete GPU (NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M). Gaming on this, even with a low spec game, is impossible. Granted, 8Gb of ram feels a bit tight nowadays but it certainly has the raw power!
Any other distro you’d recommend? Or perhaps a specific setup I could give a try to enjoy my MacBook at full power?
Your GPU isn’t getting engaged because you either have to install the proprietary Nvidia driver, or if it is already installed, you need to use the utilities to switch over to the GT from the embedded.
Thanks! I did try to install the proprietary NVIDIA driver but couldn’t get it to work somehow. I had assumed I could at least get a good experience without it but it’s still been sluggish unfortunately.
When you say you couldn’t install it, how do you mean?
Did you install by package, or by running the Nvidia installer? Did you get errors, or it just didn’t work afterward?
Edit: I didn’t even think, but I bet you may have just tried to install the latest Nvidia drivers, which don’t support a card as old as yours. Good solutions here: https://www.stevestreeting.com/2026/01/26/linux-mint-22.3-on-an-old-macbook-pro-nvidia-gpu/