I recently bought a new computer, a Lenovo P15 G2, but I’ll talk about that in another post. Today, I want to focus on something essential: reusing devices instead of throwing them away or leaving them forgotten in a drawer.

For years, my MacBook—with a Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 175GB SSD—was my daily driver. However, the last macOS update I could install was Big Sur, and as we know, proprietary software quickly drops support for older versions. Instead of discarding it, I decided to give it a second life as a Debian server.

Why Debian and why LXDE?
I chose Debian for its stability, and specifically the lightweight LXDE desktop version to make the most of the device’s resources. The process requires a USB drive and downloading the Debian ISO you want to install. At first, I installed Debian 12, but encountered a problem: the BCM4360 network card driver (Broadcom) is not compatible with the 6.10 kernel that Debian 12 uses. The proprietary broadcom-sta driver only supports up to kernel 5.10.

The solution?
Install Debian 11, which comes with the right kernel, and then manually add the necessary dependencies. Here’s the complete list of packages you need to download and save in a folder (preferably not on the desktop):

List of packages to download

• Perl and system dependencies:
  perl-base, perl-modules-5.32, libperl5.32, libfile-fcntllock-perl, liblocale-gettext-perl, dpkg, libdpkg-perl, distro-info-data, lsb-release

• Build tools:
  gcc, make, dpkg-dev

• Kernel headers and tools:
  linux-headers--common, linux-headers--amd64, linux-kbuild-5.10, libc6, libelf1, libssl1.1

• Wireless tools:
  wireless-tools, libiw30

• Broadcom STA driver:
  broadcom-sta-dkms

Save all packages in a folder and, from the terminal, use cd to access it and install them in this order:

Basic Perl and system dependencies

sudo dpkg -i perl-base_.deb sudo dpkg -i perl-modules-5.32_.deb sudo dpkg -i libperl5.32_.deb sudo dpkg -i libfile-fcntllock-perl_.deb sudo dpkg -i liblocale-gettext-perl_.deb sudo dpkg -i dpkg_.deb sudo dpkg -i libdpkg-perl_.deb sudo dpkg -i distro-info-data_.deb sudo dpkg -i lsb-release_*.deb

Build tools

sudo dpkg -i gcc_.deb sudo dpkg -i make_.deb sudo dpkg -i dpkg-dev_*.deb

Kernel headers and tools

sudo dpkg -i libc6_.deb sudo dpkg -i libelf1_.deb sudo dpkg -i libssl1.1_.deb sudo dpkg -i linux-kbuild-5.10_.deb sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-<version>-common_.deb sudo dpkg -i linux-headers-<version>-amd64_.deb

Wireless tools

sudo dpkg -i libiw30_.deb sudo dpkg -i wireless-tools_.deb

Broadcom STA driver

sudo dpkg -i broadcom-sta-dkms_*.deb

If there are dependency errors

sudo apt-get install -f

Load the Broadcom STA module

sudo modprobe wl

If the module does not load automatically after reboot

echo “wl” | sudo tee /etc/modules-load.d/wl.conf

To avoid conflicts with other modules

echo -e “blacklist b43\nblacklist b43legacy\nblacklist ssb\nblacklist brcmsmac\nblacklist bcma” | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-broadcom.conf

This process took me almost eight hours of research and trial-and-error. I hope this guide helps you give new life to a computer you thought was obsolete. See you in the next post!