Revive a 2011 MacBook Pro by Installing Fedora 33 in One Hour

In 2021 the author rediscovered a 2011 13‑inch MacBook Pro with a 125 GB SSD and 8 GB RAM that could no longer browse modern HTTPS sites because its Safari version was too old. To give the laptop new life, the author decided to replace macOS with Fedora 33, the Linux distribution they use daily.

Download Fedora 33 and create a live USB

Visit the Fedora Workstation website on another Mac, download the Fedora Media Writer, select the Apple icon, and let it download the Fedora 33 ISO. Use the tool’s “Create Live USB” option, insert a sufficiently large USB drive, and let the image be written.

Install Linux

Insert the prepared USB, reboot the MacBook while holding Option (or Alt) and Cmd to open the EFI boot menu, then select the USB device. Follow the Fedora installer GUI to complete the installation. If possible, connect an Ethernet cable because the Broadcom Wi‑Fi chip is not supported out of the box.

Configure Broadcom Wi‑Fi

After the first boot, install the RPM Fusion non‑free repository:

$ su -c 'dnf install -y http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm'

Identify the Broadcom Wi‑Fi device: $ lspci -vnn -d 14e4: Install the kernel development package matching the kernel you will build against (e.g., 5.8.15‑301.fc33) and the akmods framework: $ sudo dnf install -y akmods kernel-devel-5.8.15-301.fc33 Install the proprietary Broadcom driver package: $ sudo dnf install -y broadcom-wl Build the kernel module: $ sudo akmods Reboot and verify the driver is loaded: $ lsmod | grep wl Finally, use Fedora’s NetworkManager UI to connect to Wi‑Fi networks.

Following these steps, the old MacBook Pro boots Fedora 33, and the Broadcom Wi‑Fi works after a brief Ethernet‑only setup.