That is what I’m using on a 2012 MacBook Pro with some upgrades.

It works really well except for when there is an update to the wifi broadcom drivers. Then I have to use my phone to provide internet through USB.

Otherwise it’s a beast but gaming is out of the question.

I tried running Frostpunk 1 on the MacBook Pro 2012 (upgraded with an SSD and 16gb of Ram) and it wouldn’t boot despite the fact that it’s an old game and that I tried some special settings and commands.

I guess you can still play some games on ot, but many are out of reach, even some of the ones you’d think would be playable..

The feature is called "WiFi Tethering" and is available on most Android systems (sometimes OEMs or carriers disable it)

On iOS it should enable automatically if you've got a hotspot active and connect your device to your computer via USB

You don't have to use the latest OS.

Yes, Tahoe will be the last. However that will last you another year and then you'll get a couple more years of security updates after that, so it will still be safe to use. The thing is already >10 years old so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement before then.

Putting Linux on a Mac is, in my experience, a right pain in the ass. They have proprietary hardware and drivers that just make it very painful.

I have not had a problem with the WiFi on EOS. It installs fine out of the box.

If you are worried about it breaking, just install both an current and an LTS kernel. If current ever breaks, just boot into LTS. After a couple of days, boot into current again because it is probably fixed.

I have had the FaceTimeHD camera break for a few days before. That is why I run two kernels.

I always just booted the old kernel when I ran into the issue, but it was less than ideal, which is why I would prefer to run a stable distro in this case.

Also, isn't ElementaryOS a stable distro anyway due to being Ubuntu-based?

I have not used Elementary in a long time. More “static” than stable though I would say. And you may have a problem with app selection.

It is less of a problem these days with things like Distrobox and Flatpak that you can use to expand your application selection.

I mean, I think static is stable.

I feel like stability in some contexts means more than just the software not crashing often (although that is the big part); it means being able to expect the behavior to stay the same until you’re ready to upgrade to the next release and confront the new behavior all at once, sort of like upgrading Windows XP to Windows 7.

There’s certainly a place for rolling release - I use Debian Testing on my desktop - but I certainly appreciate being able to go a month without opening my laptop without getting a daunting notification like “There are 1578 updates available “ (on my Debian 12 Thinkpad, it’s usually only double digit, very minor updates).

Stable should mean that it runs stable, runs without crashing. In most Linux distros though, stable means “not changing”. That is not the same thing.

So, Debian Stable can ship software with a design problem that makes it prone to crashing. That problem can be solved in a newer version (more stable) but Debian will continue to ship the older version (the crashy one) because that is what stable means to Debian.

A good example is that Debian Trixie is about to ship with NVIDIA drivers from a year ago that have problems with Wayland. There are newer drivers that work better. But Debian will ship the old ones.

Static and stable are not the same thing.