>>51769161
>can it be done?
yes. google your model and year + driver issues just to be sure
>should I dual boot or go straight Linux?
up to you. try to install it with bootcamp.
>if i should dual boot how would I go about doing that?
bootcamp
>what linux distro should i use?
up to you. probably noobuntu
>and can anyone send me links to guides or give me some instructions to help me get started?
no. if you can't into googling your problems, you're going to have a hard with linux.

>>51769161
It can be done, but it is a bad idea. Linux has terrible driver support, so you'd have to buy an ethernet adapter or package the driver on a usb JUST to install it.

Even then things won't work correctly like suspending and resuming, webcam, gpu switching. Linux also has downright awful power management, so expect to lose 20% of your battery life even if you use a low resource WM.

It's better to run it in a VM if you're interested, that will make sure everything works as it ought to without any of the hassle.

Well first of all, mac OS a unix system so commands on linux work on mac OS, what do you really need linux for? Just use a VM or get a raspberry pi 2

>>51769802
>fud and lies

Don't be a pleb go with Windows

In all honesty, why would you? OS X is fantastic and does everything you would need it to, surely?

If you need a package manager, take a look at brew.sh - it basically gives you apt-get for Mac.

If you must run Linux, consider a virtual machine - vmware runs very well in my experience.

>>51770326
not him but pretty much all of it was true for me, down to the part about resorting to using a VM. the only part I can't confirm is 100% FUD is the battery life part, since I didn't keep it installed long enough to observe the difference in battery life.

>>51769802
Linux has great driver support in general. However, apple uses their own special versions of many common chips. That's why you need bootcamp to install Windows: partitioning is easy, what it does is give you windows drivers for all the oddball hardware. You can install linix (or any os you want actually) without bootcamp, and if you can find drivers it will work just fine.

My work buys all apple, but all the devs and sysadmins install linux. We've got 4+ generations of Mac laptops running linux right now, and it's fine. Apple's power management on the macbook-air is the only thing that is sometimes a problem. There are network issues waking from suspend, and you only get 4ish hours of battery on the same box that gives you 6 with osx. Fine trade off by me. If you get a MBP, even the battery life is the same under linix.

>>51770364
>In all honesty, why would you? OS X is fantastic and does everything you would need it to, surely?
>If you need a package manager, take a look at brew.sh - it basically gives you apt-get for Mac.
El Capitan fucked things over pretty well. Package managers are kind of working, but many packages needed major changing, and many things you'd build from source don't work without modification now.

>>51770919
Did any osx release not fuck anything up ? /g/ is constantly whining when apple releases an update for osx.
>it sucks
>next update will fix in guys !

>>51770919
I'm having absolutely no issues with homebrew on El Cap

>>51771031
Snow Leopard was a fantastic update. Mountain Lion was mostly ok. Yosemite was pigshit, but didn't get in your way if you used a ports system. El Capitan gets in your way from using a ports system.

>>51771079
It only gets in your way if you're using a package manager that writes to places it isn't supposed to, and even then the way around it is to just turn off a single setting.
Homebrew isn't affected by SIP because it writes to a correct location by default.

If you're not capable of dealing with something as simple as that, you probably shouldn't be using a package manager.