Category: Operating Systems

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Geekery Kernel Linux Mac OS MacBook Air Operating Systems Technology

Macbook Keyboard HID and Touchpad

A better configuration for the Apple keyboard

As a piece of hardware, the Apple keyboard is great – crisp and satisying to use. In terms of key layout – not so much. Many users coming from non-Mac systems find the following frustrating:

  • The media keys defaults to on all the time. Most people, particularly developers, use the function keys (F2, F5 etc) more often.
  • The Ctrl and Fn keys are swapped, meaning Ctrl (surely the most important special key) is no longer at the corner of the keyboard. I’m flumoxed by this design choice, also present on the Thinkpad – it’s pretty infuriating.
  • Alt is no longer by the space bar. This is confusing for alt-tabbing between windows.
  • The “super” (start or command) key is moved compared to PC keyboards
MacBook function and control keys

Fortunately, there is a simple way to configure the mappings directly in the kernel under Linux.

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Arcana Geekery Kernel Linux MacBook Air Power Consumption

Battery life under Linux

Linux energy efficiency, laptops and battery life

While linux distributions proliferate on servers and desktops (and even on mobile devices in the form of Android) linux desktop OSs running on laptops have often been the poor relation. Most prominently, it’s become somewhat accepted that popular fully-featured distributions like Ubuntu and Mint will have significantly higher power consumption, and worse battery life, than Mac OS – or even Windows. Keeping up with Windows running on the same machine is typically considered a good result.

This was much the situation I found for myself when running Linux Mint on my 2015 Macbook Air. The features of Linux Mint are excellent, and I much prefer the interface and flexibility to Mac OS. Indeed, modern distos like Mint are now by necessity generalised for many different systens, which inevitably introduces some degree of unwanted components (or “bloat”).

What I was interested in was whether it was possible to piece together a Linux system more minimally tailored to my needs, and optimised for the MacBook hardware – and so maintain the freedom and flexibility while regaining the battery life performance.

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Geekery Linux MacBook Air Mobile Devices Operating Systems Technology

Macbook Air + Gentoo + LXDE

What?

Take a 2015-era, 11-inch MacBook Air. Strip off the proprietary software tailored exactly for this hardware and model. Install the most do-it-yourself Linux distribution there is.

Apple no more

First up, why (on earth) would I want to do this?

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