I need to open this to look at it, but I do have an archaic MacBook Pro I’d LOVE to format and turn into a 4.1 machine. Will totally look into this once I have some downtime, thx for flagging!!! <3
@ninavizz, there are a few things I’ve discovered when trying to get things comfortable working on Apple hardware:
The wifi is usually Broadcom
If you don’t know what that means, you soon will
People still haven’t figured out 100% how they actually work (they’re at about 80%)
As a result, you’re wholly reliant on the drivers that Broadcom made. “Take them and go, and stop complaining…”
They sometimes don’t play nice with Qubes OS…
There are usually only one or two USB buses
This makes USB passthrough a pain
If you want to give a Qube a USB port (for example, for a printer, gamepad, etc.), you have to also give it the internal keyboard and trackpad. So, you can pass through the printer, but then your face will go as soon as your mouse suddenly stops moving.
Depending on how old the hardware is, they might be permanently vulnerable to certain exploits.
If you’re familiar with Spectre and Meltdown (a quick online search will get you informed), Intel have basically not patched the microcode for CPUs in most Apple hardware built before circa 2010.
There is a chance that your “archaic MacBook” has one of these CPUs.
In short, it means that things could potentially escape from your VMs.
It also means that Qubes OS 4.1 might not even boot on these machines, because the kernels use microcode that doesn’t exist on those CPUs. (I’ve encountered this on at least 6 Apple machines)
All of these issues have workarounds
Whilst it may not run as intended (and I definitely wouldn’t do anything mission-critical on them), there are definitely ways to get them to at least boot.
Don’t expect it to be a smooth ride, though
I’m more than happy to help you out in getting it up and running.
as soon as your mouse suddenly stops moving.