- Install linux on old macbook install#
- Install linux on old macbook drivers#
- Install linux on old macbook update#
- Install linux on old macbook driver#
- Install linux on old macbook full#
Install linux on old macbook install#
You should be then presented with a nice GUI (not text only) Ubuntu installer, or maybe an icon that says Install Ubuntu.If presented with a choice in GRUB (a text menu) with an option to install Ubuntu, choose that option.Then press either F10 or Ctrl-X to boot (read the text at the bottom of the screen to be sure of the key(s) to press). Find the line that has ro quiet splash in it and make that bit of the line read ro nomodeset quiet splash. This opens an options file in a basic text editor.Key down so your cursor is on “Install Ubuntu”, but instead of pressing enter, press e to edit the commands before booting. You’ll be confronted with a text-only menu that’s from a piece of software called GNU GRUB.In the resulting menu, select the “EFI” device as the device to boot from. As described in the final step in that guide, when you restart, hold down the option key on your Mac.I’d follow this guide to download Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and get it onto the USB stick, using UNetbootin.Then use the MacOS Disk Utility to format the USB stick as DOS FAT32. Know that it’s going to get wiped, so move important files off it first. Get a USB drive with at least 2 GB of storage.End of February 2017 update.Īlright, with all that said here’s what I think I would do if I were starting fresh, knowing what I know now: What I Did to Install Ubuntu Not being a gamer I don’t know much about graphics cards, but for what it’s worth I believe my MacBook Pro has a G84M card, which is not the same model listed in the forum post the commenter cites.īut if I were starting over I might instead consider the procedure outlined in the forum post the commenter links to in hopes of even better performance.
Install linux on old macbook drivers#
So summing up, if you do a default installation of Ubuntu from a USB on a MacBook Air 3,1 or 3,2, you’ll either have buggy graphics and random crashes, or you’ll install the nvdida drivers and have a blank/black screen at startup.įor the record, I followed the procedure detailed below with my MackBook Pro 3,1 and while I now believe that my nvidia card is NOT being used, basic computing (web browser, document editing coding, simple games) are working just fine. But on a Mac you can’t (easily) do that, and if you install from a USB key by default you will be in EFI mode. On a PC you can force Ubuntu to install in BIOS Legacy mode by selecting that mode in the computer BIOS.
(If you got to that stage, see the ‘‘recovery for nvidia drivers EFI crash’’ below). If you install the nvidia drivers while Ubuntu is in EFI mode, you’ll get a blank/black screen at the beginning of the boot.
Install linux on old macbook driver#
But here is the catch: the driver requires the computer to boot in “Legacy BIOS mode”, not in “EFI” mode (see here or here). To avoid that, you need to install the proprietary nvidia driver. The problem exists with Raring and I expect it arises with Precise (though see ‘‘alternative solutions” below). You can do a default install, it will boot normally, but you’ll soon see little glitches here and there and the computer will normally crash after a few minutes of use (especially when transparency or shadow effects are used, it seems). The graphic driver that Ubuntu installs by default (Nouveau) has bugs with the MacBook Air 3 graphic processor, the nvidia GeForce 320M (G320M). The core problem with the installation is this.
Install linux on old macbook full#
If full graphics performance is desired, a “Legacy BIOS Install” is needed.įrom the forum post that the commenter cites, which is concerned with a MacBook Air 3,2: A helpful commenter, Brian Moran, writes that, when installing Ubuntu on an older Mac with a NVIDIA graphics card, it may be better to “boot in ‘Legacy BIOS mode’, not in ‘EFI’ mode”:Īpparently what is happening is that both the open source and Nvidia drivers are buggy when doing an “EFI Install” on Mac machines.
Install linux on old macbook update#
UPDATE (February 2017): Before moving ahead, you may want to consider the following. Furthermore I think all the data I had on my USB stick is lost due to it being formatted in a certain way at some point in the procedure. There are ways to dual-boot both, but I wasn’t interested in that as Mavericks was running super slow on this computer. For example I believe I had to do steps 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, and 11 only because I have a MBP with an Intel chip.Īlso, WARNING, this procedure completely wiped my OS X and all the files and applications on that installation, as I intended. I believe I bought it in the summer of 2009.Īgain, note, this worked for me and my machine but may not for you.
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