# My $80 Macbook

## Hot rodded with a 240GB SSD and 4GB of RAM, it’s a screamer.

#### [James Ellis@jamesellisnyc](https://twitter.com/jamesellisnyc)

Posted Fri 10 Jun 2022

**I really liked** the white Macbook, and I had been curious about running Linux on these older machines. So I bought one on ebay for $80. A 2008 model. (That’s 14 years ago.)

**This Macbook originally** shipped with [Snow Leopard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard), which is snappy on this 32-bit rig. I did play with it some. I was able to get [IceCat](https://www.gnu.org/software/gnuzilla/) working. But I was most interested in running Linux. I chose to install [Pop! OS](https://pop.system76.com/) from System76. Wifi drivers required a bit of fiddling, but otherwise the install was smooth and I’ve been impressed how Pop! performs.

It’s a fussy old machine. It runs slow. It gets hot fast. The screen looks bad when you catch it at a good angle. It looks awful off-axis. But still, it works surprisingly well. Here it is running the PA [Destination Homepage](/content/site-root.html):

🔊Sound

**Why bother? Why** tinker? There’s no reason really. I’ve always had good computers around. My work has mainly taken place inside computers, usually inside a creative studio space. The machines were always changing so fast, always unlocking new capabilities. It was best not to get too attached. I got good selling machines on craigslist and ebay. I enjoyed letting them go. But now that I’ve been a computer person for so long, there is something nice about keeping certain older machines around. I like seeing our website still work. It’s just nice. Worth the $80.