{"id":11503,"date":"2025-07-14T18:16:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-14T18:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/?p=11503"},"modified":"2025-07-15T12:51:31","modified_gmt":"2025-07-15T12:51:31","slug":"installing-linux-on-my-old-macbook-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/installing-linux-on-my-old-macbook-air\/","title":{"rendered":"Installing Linux on my old Macbook Air"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve an old Intel based Macbook Air which, unfortunately Apple no longer support updates for, it&#8217;s a great little machine which I want to keep running. So, I do what I always do when the OS outgrows the hardware, I install Linux on it.<\/p>\n<p>I would usually install Ubuntu but thought I&#8217;d try something lighter weight, by installing Linux Mint.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The first thing we need to do is download the ISO from the Linux Mint site (I went with the <a href=\"https:\/\/linuxmint.com\/edition.php?id=319\" target=\"_blank\">Cinnamon Edition<\/a>).\n<li>New we need to write the ISO to a USB drive to create a bootable USB, I used Ubuntu and already had the tools for this but <a href=\"https:\/\/etcher.balena.io\/\" target=\"_blank\">Etcher<\/a> seems to be the go to application for this nowadays, so you could download\/install this and create your bootable USB from the ISO.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Once you have the bootable USB, it&#8217;s over to your Mac.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Boot your Mac up whilst holding the Option key to go to the startup manager<\/li>\n<li>Select the EFI drive (coloured orange)<\/li>\n<li>Select &#8220;Start Cinnamon&#8221; option<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The above will take you into a LIVE mode, i.e. you&#8217;ve not installed Linux but are running from the USB. Let&#8217;s check everything works for you before you commit to installing Linux Mint. From the Linux Mint, Cinnamon desktop&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Open Drive Manager look for your network adapter<\/li>\n<li>Apply\/install any required drivers<\/li>\n<li>From network icon in desktop select your WiFi network<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Play around with the OS and check it&#8217;s what you want to install and all works, then if you&#8217;re going to commit and overwrite MacOS<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Double click the Install Linux Mint icon<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I had an issue when I installed Mint, in that it no longer installed the drivers for the WiFi when I went to Driver Manager to select them. Instead it wanted to go online to get them &#8211; difficult as the WiFi drivers are what I&#8217;m trying to install and I had no ethernet attachment and to be honest, I know the drivers are on the USB as it worked in LIVE mode.<\/p>\n<p>To get things working, I found that if I mounted the USB drive and searched for the Broadcom packages (and these are what was installed via testing in LIVE) and now double clicking on the two files\/packages within the USB installation directories, then I could install the drivers and everything worked.<\/p>\n<p><em>Disclaimer: I&#8217;ve only just installed Linux Mint on the Macbook Air, so I haven&#8217;t down any extensive testing.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve an old Intel based Macbook Air which, unfortunately Apple no longer support updates for, it&#8217;s a great little machine which I want to keep running. So, I do what I always do when the OS outgrows the hardware, I install Linux on it. I would usually install Ubuntu but thought I&#8217;d try something lighter [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,743],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linux","category-mint"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11503"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11511,"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11503\/revisions\/11511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/putridparrot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}