Repurposing a 15-Year-Old MacBook Air

Hello, RSS reader! 👋 This post has some bespoke art direction you’ll only see if you view it directly. No hard feelings if you prefer to read here, I just wanted you to know! ✌️ It’s 2026, and I’m writing this post on a MacBook Air I bought in 2011. Why? It still works, for one. No dead pixels, no dents or dings in the aluminum shell, no keyboard quirks or trackpad troubles to speak of. At 2.96 pounds, it’s still the second-lightest computer I own. Even the battery (which I could replace) lasts 3–5 hours… more than enough for a typical writing session. And that’s all this computer’s for now: Writing, specifically for fun, away from my desk, without the pull of work notifications or competing distractions. Often with a record spinning and Buster napping underfoot. Operating System I’m running the XFCE flavor of Linux Mint 22.3. I could run the Cinnamon version fine, but XFCE is lighter and noticeably snappier on aging hardware. Speaking of hardware, everything worked out of the box,…