The most difficult hurdle for any of these distros to overcome was resuming from sleep due to the lid being closed. Trackpad X-axis input is Y-axis cursor movement & no x-axis cursor movement possible Wifi & nVidia drivers easily added from disc No option to add nVidia drivers from install disc TIP: To get to the boot select screen on this version of a Macbook, press and hold the Option key when the machine is first booted until the boot device selection menu appears.Īs I dabbled, I came up with a list of features I was looking for.

So when I was gifted another old Macbook, I set about finding what Linux distro would work best with it.

But with another small computer I can permanently untether the Macbook and use it around the house again! However, it is a pain to disconnect all the USB drives from it if I need to move. I have been using my 2011 Macbook Pro with a USB hub. I’ve been looking for a lightweight PC to serve as a dock for my portable hard drives, kind of functioning as an ugly sort of NAS.

Linux Mint with it’s Cinnamon desktop resulted in the fewest headaches out of the box for me and my needs. However, during the installation process, I learned that Linux Mint has a nice built-in Driver Manager that provides an easy graphical user interface to assist with installing the software.A friend recently gave me an old macbook, From prior research, I knew that to get the wireless adapter working on this MacBook, I would need to issue three separate commands in the Bash terminal. I had a hard-wired Ethernet connection to the internet through my Thunderbolt adapter, so I was online. This is in contrast to Intel, Atheros, and many other chip manufacturers-but it's the chipset used by Apple, so it's a common problem on MacBooks. This is because Broadcom, the company that makes WiFi cards for Apple devices, doesn't release open source drivers. Linux Mint started up nicely in live-boot mode, but the operating system didn't recognize a wireless connection. I powered on the system and pressed the Option key on the MacBook to instruct it to start it from a USB drive.

Next, I connected the Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter to the MacBook and inserted the USB boot drive. Free online course: RHEL Technical Overview.

Install linux on old macbook