Abstract Linear codes play a crucial role in various fields of engineering and mathematics, including data storage, communication, cryptography, and combinatorics. Minimal linear codes, a subset of linear codes, are particularly essential for designing effective secret sharing schemes. In this paper, we introduce several classes of minimal binary linear codes by carefully selecting appropriate Boolean functions. These functions belong to a renowned class of Boolean functions, namely, the general Maiorana–McFarland class. We employ a method first proposed by Ding et al. (IEEE Trans Inf Theory 64(10):6536–6545, 2018) to construct minimal codes violating the Ashikhmin–Barg bound (wide minimal codes) by using Krawtchouk polynomials. The lengths, dimensions, and weight distributions of the obtained codes are determined using the Walsh spectrum distribution of the chosen Boolean functions. Our findings demonstrate that a vast majority of the newly constructed codes are wide minimal. Furthermore, our proposed codes exhibit a significantly larger minimum distance, in some cases, compared to some existing similar constructions. Finally, we address this method, based on Krawtchouk polynomials, more generally, and highlight certain generic properties related to it. These general results offer insights into the scope of this approach.