[albutr]

So far I've had a good experience with Kubuntu on an old Lenovo ideapad from ~7 years ago, after throwing a new SSD in to replace the old HDD. Everything so far has worked out of the box without any problems, I was able to get both MATLAB and Mendeley (the only two programs I was concerned would give me issues) up and running without any problem for my research, and I configured the desktop environment so it looks and functions almost identical to MacOS (at least for how I usually use MacOS, and with a few changes that I feel are more aesthetically pleasing).

I tried this because my main 2015 macbook pro somehow developed an swollen battery, which has caused the case to warp really badly (wobbles distractingly when typing). There are reports that this swelling can, predictably, lead to explosions [1]. The ETA for arrival+service of new battery was ~ a week, full cost to me, and no loaner program. Pretty ridiculous for a known hardware defect.

[1]https://medium.com/@dourvaris/my-2015-macbook-pro-retina-exp...

[albutr]

Pretty sure that no one will see this, but just to make a correction in case someone does, the new battery was totally covered even though the machine was out of warranty, and I dropped it off saturday afternoon and the machine was sent out, repaired, and ready to pick up tuesday morning. Surprisingly a really painless experience.