I still prefer ‘Xitter’

I can’t answer for Mint specifically, but I’m running kubuntu on a similar 2012 MacBook Pro and it runs great for just an old i5 (16 GB ram with an SSD really helps a lot). More importantly, all the Apple hardware is fully supported, right down to the keyboard & screen brightness buttons, volume buttons, etc. Runs way better than macOS ever did.

Thanks for your service! I’ve been trying out Thunder and I’m generally happy with it so far.

+1

Tabliss

To be fair, the average movie has been pretty awful for quite some time now.

You can use a tool like Handbrake or ffmpeg to burn titles directly into your videos, but you’d have to re-encode the files. Perhaps not what you actually have in mind?

Interesting! Unfortunately you’re too far away for a live session with me, I’m in the US. The singer for my Oktoberfest band lives in Munich, and we tested this already. There’s just too much latency to play together live across the globe.

Side note, Jitsi Meet is the tool I use for video though. Jitsi video with Jamulus audio and you’ve got an impressive working online solution for live music. Bandwidth isn’t a huge factor since Jamulus reguires very little bandwidth per channel (and the video doesn’t really matter as much). But Latency matters a LOT, and distance from the server has a massive impact on that.

I wish you luck in your endeavor though; I hope it works out for ya!

I’m a keyboardist with extensive experience playing live online. It’s really revolutionized rehearsals for my bands actually. I run a low-latency Jamulus server to host live music though. What did you have in mind?

In Ghostbusters 2 they rigged up a Nintendo joystick to drive the statue of liberty through the streets of NYC. Does that count?

Thanks! We’ll try that one again…

Good enough to test drive the OS awhile and get a feel for their OS and desktop environment? Absolutely. Good enough to test their low-level device drivers on your Mac hardware? Not really. For that you’ll want to build a live-boot image on USB stick. Asahi was built expressly with the intent to run linux natively on apple silicon hardware though, so your chances are pretty good that everything should just work. Start with a vm though, see if you even like their environment. It should run pretty fast since it’ll just be virtualized on native hardware and not emulated.

Have fun!

Asahi Linux has matured extremely quickly for the M-series ARM Macs. Try it virtualized in a UTM vm if you wanna take a peek.

This answer isn’t getting enough upvotes

It provides a web interface for mail (and other useful services). You configure it to send outgoing messages through SMTP, qmail, Sendmail, Postfix, Dovecot, take your pick for the back-end.

Have you looked into self-hosting NextCloud or OwnCloud?

Barrier: https://github.com/debauchee/barrier

Edit: Input Leap looks like a promising KVM replacement for Barrier, thanks for sharing!

I run kubuntu on a 2012 Intel i5 MBP and it runs like a champ. everything works perfectly, including mic, speakers, webcam… even minor details like the hardware buttons to turn brightness and volume up/down worked straight out of the box with no fuss.

8hz-wan-ip

I can’t speak for your exact model, but I’m running kubuntu on my old 2012 MacBook Pro (with an upgraded SSD and maxed-out 16 GB RAM). My daily driver is a desktop, but I spend almost as much time on the laptop. It’s a wonderful experience for my use case, and all the hardware is supported “out of the box”.

Maybe try distro hopping a bit to see which experience is best for your usage. Have fun with it!