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£20 2015 Macbook Pro brought back to life

Joe C-J

121,485 views

I've bought a completely dead 2015 MacBook Pro I picked up from Facebook Marketplace for just £20 and try to resurrect it.

The MacBook wouldn’t turn on at all — no chime, no screen, nothing. So I tore it down, replaced the battery and discovered it didn’t have an operating system. So I fit a new NVMe drive. Perfect opportunity to try something different… Ubuntu!

🔥 I installed Linux!
Specifically Ubuntu, to see how well a 10-year-old MacBook can run a modern Linux distro.

📌 What’s in the video?

Replacing the battery

Fitting a new NVMe SSD

Installing Ubuntu

Performance testing & benchmarks

Final thoughts on how well this old Mac handles Linux

Why it makes a great device for remote access and productivity

💬 My Thoughts

I was genuinely surprised at how smooth Ubuntu runs on this machine. Fast boot times, responsive performance, and a perfect little portable Linux workstation. For £20, this thing turned into an absolute beast.

______________________
0:00 Intro
0:33 Analysis of the problem
1:45 Clean + Fitting NVME
2:11 Battery replacement + Thermal pasting CPU
4:12 Ubuntu download + Balena Etcher
4:38 Ubuntu Install
5:08 Initial set up
6:55 Thermal CPU sensor set up
7:29 Geekbench set up + score
8:15 Ubuntu review
8:57 Remote access - Rustdesk + Tailscale
9:57 Summary/outro

20 Comments

@voneschenbachmusic 10 months ago

Always great to see a perfectly usable old device refreshed, repaired and useful again! I have three older macbooks and they all run Linux Mint and are very fast despite their age.

@thedr00 7 months ago (edited)

This video was super inspiring. I am typing this comment from my Late 2013 MBPr, necromanced back into life following your example.

Thanks for the guidance.

@fluffykitties9020 9 months ago

amazing how you can talk through your mind.

@alx8439 8 months ago

So many still good machines are getting abandoned and end up in a scrapyard just because vendor stopped providing software updates to OS. Good job saving it!

Give 'btop' a try next time instead of 'htop'. It's less powerfull in terms of available settings but much more visually appealing

@RichFletcher 9 months ago

That MagSafe adapter made my day. Had no idea they existed and is one of the reasons I have a mental block about using my old MacBook Air: the drama of finding the old MagSafe charger and dealing with its bulk.

@geoman1420 10 months ago

Older MacBookPros were easy to take apart. I removed the dead battery of my MacBookPro (2008) and replaced the HD with an SSD in 2 mins! Now it is running MX Linux 25 and everything works much better and much faster than it did under MacOS. Even the ancient iSight webcam is supported under MX Linux!

@RoyHess666 10 months ago

Id say that oily residue was the foamy gasket slowly disintegrating

@tayal01 6 months ago

neofetch is now fastfetch

@altugo74 8 months ago

Good job. I've recently brought my 2011 MacBook Pro and 2014 21.5-inch iMac back to life with Ubuntu and Linux Mint. Somehow, Ubuntu didn't recognise the WIFI on my MacBook Pro, even though I connected with ethernet and searched for a proper driver to download. But the Linux Mint installation worked spotlessly.

@TheKoodus 8 months ago

if you open any laptop over 5 years old I reckon it's always worth taking the time to clean out the dust properly and replace the thermal paste. I'm pretty sure you would have done much better on temps if you'd done those two things, would defo be worth doing now.

At 10 years old, that stuff is crusty and is stopping effective cooling from happening.

@hansytsma178 8 months ago

The laptop was $20, however you had placed NVME + Adapter + Battery, so total cost is probably a lot more, maybe it is fair to mention the whole price for this machine. Well done!

@gurqhan 9 months ago

if you can turn turbo boost off , cpu temps will drop radically, it overspikes cpu frequently thus creating so much heat.

@Gadgets-reels 9 months ago

£20 for a 2015 MacBook Pro is insane! Love seeing old hardware brought back instead of being thrown away. Great job 👏

@cubestrike 9 months ago

And the nvme is in the correct length after adapter. Cheff kiss

@cubestrike 9 months ago

btw, the macbook should have a in and out from the side to side, check the fan for overheating, what i know that its not under the led screen

@Bender13 8 months ago (edited)

Hello from Canada. I was a Ubuntu user from the days when you had to type in command lines and search for drivers if you wanted to use a printer or other device but I still loved it …probably because I felt like a rebel.😁The Linux community has always been very supportive . When I bought a new laptop it came with windows installed and I went with it. Now windows is telling me they will no longer support windows 10 and my computer won’t accept windows 11 so I installed the latest release of Ubuntu and it is totally user friendly now. My computer runs fast and I wonder why I ever left.