Action Retro tries MX Linux on a 2009 MacBook

A plastic-bodied Apple laptop gets a modern operating system as the retrocomputing channel draws far more views than usual.

Channel: Action Retro Story of October 23, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The whole channel is running at 321,340 views a day, 14 times a normal day (22,398).

The laptop comes with a caveat: Action Retro describes it as "slightly sketchy." That makes the late-2009 unibody polycarbonate MacBook a fitting subject for a channel whose motto is "Totally normal computing."

In "You Should Really Try MX LINUX", the project is to install a modern Linux distribution on that aging Apple hardware. The upload arrives alongside a sharp jump in attention: Action Retro added roughly 320,000 views in a day, more than fourteen times its usual daily pace. That rise belongs to the channel as a whole, rather than necessarily to this installation alone.

Putting different operating systems on old Macs is familiar territory here. "Tiny Core Linux is Basically Magic" and "Modern Ubuntu is KILLER on old Intel Macs!" sit at the top of Action Retro's most-watched regular uploads. The MX Linux experiment returns to that same practical question: what else can an old computer run?

The video includes a promotion for an Anker display hub. Its computing project, though, centers on the old polycarbonate MacBook, rather than a new machine bought for the occasion.

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More from Action RetroThis week on the channel +195K views this weekAction Retro's 2001 voice assistant has a CRT connectionA thrift-store device shares the active catalog with Haiku experiments and a tiny working Macintosh.Channel: Action Retro · Story of October 11, 2026 Also in Technology reviews and gadgetsVideo taking off 14x its usual first dayAppleTrack's iPhone Duo drop test separates cracks from failureSam Kohl's concrete-side comparison with the iPhone 18 Pro Max produces early camera damage and a surprisingly persistent outer screen.Channel: AppleTrack · Story of October 24, 2026 A different discovery todayVideo people are talking about 11x its usual commentsZelenskyy tells Steven Bartlett why he needed "ammunition, not a ride"In a nearly two-hour conversation, Ukraine's president moves from sleepless nights and grieving parents to Bucha, Paddington Bear and the morning the invasion …Channel: The Diary Of A CEO · Story of October 24, 2026

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The numbers

Action Retro's daily views climbed well above their usual pace. Here is the channel-wide picture.

views per day, whole channel

typical day

22,398

now

321,340

subscribers

255,000

▲ 1,000 in the last 7 days

total views

45,609,164

views per day

321,340

typical day: 22,398

subscribers: this channel and similar channels

PCMag

264,000

Byte Review

263,000

GNCA - GamersNexus Consum…

256,000

Action Retro

255,000

Monitors Unboxed

251,000

Adrian's Digital Basement

250,000

As of October 23, 2026 · Data source: Trari Social News, Trari Traffic Trends and Ranking Platform, Google YouTube

Subscriber, view, like and comment counts are YouTube's. Rates, usual days, rankings, comparisons and categories are Trari's own calculations.