so... I've been trying to make a partition on my MacBook Air to install ubuntu linux.

I am using the disk utility on the Mac for this.

The problem that I encounter is that disk utility isn't letting me create a partition bigger that 16gb. The free space on my Mac is quite bigger than that and is not used.

Have anyone encounter this problem and if yes then how did you solve it?

I have prepared everything and even tried linux on VM before proceeding and everything looks great. So I am really bumped for getting stuck at the very first step of the process.

https://preview.redd.it/ks61h24qvcge1.jpg?width=1888&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b1a7926ba3413331c95c16f95c3a715dccc328f3

https://preview.redd.it/uv5xa34qvcge1.jpg?width=2230&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c971824a7ef9a28f81f32577666b6f3eaeafa8d0

I got a intel imac 2020 and because windows 10 is kicking the bucket this year i installed linux mint (windows 11 got stuck on installing) but the 3d graphics is so slow its unuseable. Also the amdgpu install script did not work and as i see there isnt much support for the radeon pro 5500 xt. any drivers that work?

Hi, im just wondering if anyone here has linux on this macbook. Was given this macbook and am wanting an easy to install problem free linux os that ideally has the wifi drivers built in. Is linux mint xfce the best option? or anything else that is super lightweight. Thanks

Hi all. The dinosaur is reborn and I'm super impressed with how it works. Tho I have two issues with my system:

• without much research I wiped all partitions and now even recovery is gone. Cannot boot into live USB anymore, no EFI manager, keyboard shortcuts do nothing and there's no way to get rid of the annoying chime at the boot.
• while fedora runs better than expected, the back gets quite warm even with light usage (especially around the top left, where probably the GPU is located). The fans run full speed and only a reboot stops them for about 20mins until it starts again.

I'd very much appreciate your help with any of the said issues! Thanks.

UPDATE: heat/fans issue solved.

I'm trying to have two different user account for 'work' and 'play' is there a way to transfer all my setting like trackpad, keyboard, display and others from one account to another??? i don't want to have to set up the settings again and again everytime i make a new user on the same mac

As title says, only mono sound from built in speakers.

Is it possible to get stereo like on MacOS?

I’m looking for tips on getting the graphics cards to work with hardware drivers not “nomodeset”. I found older tips on controlling ati and amd drivers in the grub2 launch settings but with fedora 41 this leads to a crash halfway through loading the os.

Anyone have fedora working with graphics drivers ?

Or have recent success with another distribution?

Am thinking of installing Linux on a Macbook, will everything work normally?

It's not the first time I install debian on my Mac BookAir , my SSD have crashed , so it's twice for now.
I allready know that I need to do some job , before my wifi card work correctly.
Hopefully there is the solution

broadcom-sta-dkms

Just following this to install wl driver : https://wiki.debian.org/wl

CrunchBangplusplus on macbookair

And : Voilà .
All work fine.

Here is the output of 'lspci -k | grep -iA3 "network"

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM43602 802.11ac Wireless LAN SoC (rev 02)

Subsystem: Apple Inc. Device 015a

Kernel driver in use: brcmfmac

Kernel modules: brcmfmac

I have never been able to connect to wifi with this device on arch. I currently have to use a USB WiFi dongle. I'd really prefer to not use it.
The arch wiki is admittedly pretty confusing on this topic. Just wondering if anyone has any experience with Broadcom wifi and driver.

Any help, guidance, or just pointing me to a resource would be super helpful and appreciated.

I have a pile of older macbooks and iMacs ('06 to '11) that need some love. Looking for a distro that:

• installs from ISO with Broadcom wifi drivers auto-setup
• as pretty and snappy as Lion w/similar memory footprint
• correct drivers/settings for trackpad, fans, bluetooth, audio, etc
• mounts and writes to HFS+, APFS, and NTFS volumes/drives
• functional drag-n-drop desktop with aliases/shortcuts
• nothing roaring at 99% CPU after installation

Big bonus points if the distro is made by people who lover older Macs, and are researching (or have accomplished) ways to integrate 32bit and 16bit Mac application native-support into their Linux operating system, among other MacOS life-hacks (such as pretty option-key partition icons, utilities supporting bootable partition clone backups, etc).

Edit: see this post for the best way to run Linux on 2012-2019 era Macs.

Hey Guys ,

Its time to get me a new Linux Laptop to play with and I was thinking of going back to the mac this time. Have installed linux on macs from as old as 2005, but never tried one of the most "recent" machines.

My requirements are that I would like a 13 inch machine, one with a good display and able to charge via usbC (i don't need another charger). The 2018 Macbook or Macbook air comes to mind.

I've read that installing Ubuntu (or another debian based linux) isn't as straightforward as it used to be and that some of the hardware isn't supported (but those were old posts and forum entries).

So my question is: How hard is it to run Ubuntu on the "last of the intel" macs (2018-2020), what works and what does not ?

What are good Linux distro that work well with this machine (fast, decent battery life, not too hot, everything works including camera)? Thanks.

so a while ago I was on Linux mint on my mac air, everything was fine. However, one day I think I was screwing around with the partitions and messed something up. Now my mac air is completley bricked I think. The disk utility repair dosent work and a lot of bash commands assisted by gpt didnt work. Couldn't unmount and erase the disk either. Couldn't boot from USB, even though its recognized by mac. Anyone Else have this experience and/or know how to fix this?

I installed Bazzite perfectly fine using dual boot. But when I went to setup, I couldn't because I didn't have a Wi-Fi connection. Its says: No networks found. IM DUALBOOTING ON MAC IF THAT HELPS! Specs: Intel i5 Mac, AMD graphics, 2019 model. Desktop iMac. Bazzite Desktop, Amd graphics version.

Hi. As the title states im having trouble getting Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (as well as some other things such as the fan) to work on my 2019 Macbook air running Ubuntu. After an unsucessful attempt with Pop_Os, when trying Ubuntu things like the keyboard and trackpad worked out of the box which was nice. But some issues like with the Wi-Fi still persist.

I am basiclly completley new to Linux so many of the potential fixes are quite confusing and overwhelming to me. I understand that this hardware might not be ideal for my first time trying out Linux as per the T2 chip, but i am determined to learn a bit and get it too work.

When it comes to the Wi-Fi, i seem to be running into trouble with:

"broadcom-sta-dkms"

"bcmwl-kernel-source"

"/usr/bin/dpkg" also showed up quite a bit in the error logs.

Any suggestions and or help are much appreciated. Suggestions for other distros which work better with a T2 mac are also hugley appreciated.

Been thinking about getting my hands on an older Macbook Air 12' (the ones with 8 gigs of ram and an M3) also known as 'the overpriced netbook'. The keyboard is horrible but the form factor is delightful. I was wondering if any of you had experience with putting Linux on this machine and .. What distro did you use ?

That’s my first time using Linux. I have an old iMac and as I was unable to install newer versions of Os or windows I’ve decide to give Mint a try. Installation successfully accomplished and beautiful but doesn’t navigate on the web. Recognise the WiFi and I connected but no navigation. Can someone help me? Thank you

Hi all,

Switched to Linux on my aging Macbook Air after Apple stopped providing security updates. I noticed quite a big drop in battery life so decided to investigate, and noticed that in powertop the package C-state never drops below C3. I ran --auto-tune, pulled out the aftermarket SSD and Broadcom WiFi card (to rule them out), as well as trying a TUI-only Live USB (Arch) but with the same results. Tricks that I've used in the past on other laptops (such as installing and enabling tlp) didn't help either. Is there something I'm missing here, or is this just a quirk of Macbooks? Thanks!

https://preview.redd.it/kc5njrnz1q8e1.png?width=951&format=png&auto=webp&s=7708e34c508622b705077bb1af0a130c6e7e9f5d

Crosspost from r/linixquestions

I have an late 2012 iMac (2.7ghz model) I'm repurposing for one of my kids for their room by installing Mint on it. It's running fine, BUT I noticed that two of the 4 CPU cores run very consistently high, in the 70% range. htop doesn't reveal any obvious culprits, so my hypothesis was that no hardware rendering was happening and it was being pushed onto the CPU. I don't know this, but its my working theory.

To test that, I ran inxi -G to see what hardware it thinks I have and I get the following output for the display device.

Device-1: Intel driver: i915 v: kernel

Additionally, lspci -k reveals:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 0d22 (rev 08)
Subsystem: Apple Inc. Device 0122
Kernel driver in use: i915
Kernel modules: i915

Per the specs from Apple above, this should have a NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M, so at the very least this seems to be misidentifying my hardware and this is the immediate problem I'm trying to solve. I had Win11 running on it a couple weeks ago, and it certainly reported GPU hardware. I'm not sure if the CPU usage and this is related, but I'd like to make sure that the hardware is at least being correctly utilized.

I've done a bit of searching, read up on the 'switching' bit related to power savings, downloaded drivers from the Nvidia page, apt install a couple of Nvidia driver packs, but at the end of the day, if the device itself isn't appearing or being identified correctly, many off the solutions and leads I've seen don't apply. Running lsmod doesn't show anything nvidia or nouveau -related is being loaded. One other bit of information is that if I run dmesg | grep "nvidia", I get the following output repeated 4 or 5 times.

[ 11.051537] nvidia-nvlink: Nvlink Core is being initialized, major device number 511
[ 11.067295] nvidia-nvlink: Unregistered Nvlink Core, major device number 511

It was suggested in r/linuxquestions that that using Nvidia Optimus drivers would help, but after looking into that, I'm not sure that's the case since I found no evidence that iMacs use that platform, and it seemed more related to non-mac laptops.

Unsure what to try next (or if anything is even wrong?), I humbly turn to you for guidance, Reddit!

hi! - first time poster here.

i've successfully installed mint on the macbook, but something seems to be _very_ off with the display - it looks like things leave a shadow the longer they stay on kinda - i think it's a driver issue?

could anybody maybe point me in the right direction on where to look for solutions for this?

i shall be endlessly grateful!!

Hi

So, someone gave me this Macbook Pro (a1708) with dead SSD. Since SSD is welded and not replaceable (why would they do this?), and this computer is still in good condition, I decided to install some Linux distro on some external memory stick. After some experiments, I stayed on MicroSD card, because USB + TypeC adapter is big, but TypeC to MicroSD adapter is tiny, and doesn't ruin computers external design.

I installed Arch on some old SD card. It runs well, but is bit sluggish. It takes forever to load any programm from card. I suppose reason for that is this old MicroSD card and cheap TypeC to MicroSD adapter.

Of course I understand that this problem could be solved by buying better card with better read / write speed specs, but I usually don't invest my money into unknown places, and before buying something I decided to get some info about what to buy and what to do in general.

So, question is : does someone have similar setup, with is : running Linux from microSD card + TypeC adapter? In yes, what kind of SD card and TypeC adapter you are using?

Or, maybe this is not the best way how to run Linux on Mac with dead SDD, and you can suggest something else?

Like I said , I run my Arch from USB + TypeC adapter before. I was running faster in general, but whole thing (typeC to USB adapter and USB itself) is big (15 cm long), while TypeC adapter is smaller (5 cm).

Thanks for reading this, and have a good day folks.

Thave a 2015 MacBook Pro with an Intel processor. I decided to dual boot it with MacOS and Ubuntu (latest release) but for some weird reason I don't see any options to turn on WiFi in Ubuntu but it works fine when booted up into MacOS. I can't connect it to internet using wired connection as it doesn't have an Ethernet port. Is there a way to fix this issue? Sorry if I used the wrong flair, I'm new to this sub.

** i am now using mint LMDE -- this not only boot but also recognize the wifi card on macbook air. ***

how do i connect to the wifi? is there a scan function?

** i am now using mint LMDE -- this not only boot but also recognize the wifi card on macbook air. ***

macbook air - looking for a live linux that i can use

** most importantly, which distro can recognize the wifi card in a macbook air *****

** got it working, maybe the way i burn it. but i am now using mint LMDE -- this not only boot but also recognize the wifi card on macbook air. ***

i have created the linux usb in mac. but when i press down optoin to boot, it did not show as a boot option.

Is there anything that i need to do in the bios to get the mac to recognize the usb drive, like in windows?

Hi, I just want to share this. I have a 2015 MacBook Air, and it was so slow I almost bought a new laptop. It was painful to use, everything lagging.

I decided to try Linux Mint (Cinnamon), and I am shocked. The laptop feels like new! It’s so fast, quiet, and smooth, it works perfectly for what I need.

I’m so happy I didn’t spend money on a new laptop. Installing was easier than I thought. If you have an old MacBook, try it!

I'm using a Mac mini late 2012 2,5Ghz intel dual-core i5 with 4GB DDR3 ram. Now I only use it to watch some (streaming) tv and movies but it is getting really slow. I've used Mint on a windows laptop for a bit... so it isn't all new. For what can I use this machine converting it to Linux?