A friend of mine has an old macbook air. It still works, more or less, but the OS isn’t getting any updates anymore, and updating to the latest OS seems dicey.
Has anyone had experience installing linux on an old macbook? From a quick internet search it looks like you can just make a bootable USB and have at it. Thinking mint because it’s popular and my friend is a pretty basic user. The laptop will be mostly used for like youtube/netflix and basic web browsing.
Edit: a little extra context: I am moderately comfortable with Linux. I ran mint for a while on my desktop, and I’ve done software development for a job. I can install docker and start a python project fine, but I’d use a GUI for like partitioning a hard drive.
Update: installed mint. Seems work. Had a problem where it couldn’t see the HD. Had to change an option in grub
Pasting what I found online to fix it:
“”" thank you so much! what was the solution!
for anyone might read this in the future: in the bootmenu where u can select which version of linux u wanna boot u can press “e” and then u need to add intel_iommu=off at the end of the line of the “linux” row - i had some double dashes at the end for me it did the job when I add them before the double dashes.
Then I could see the harddrive and install mint mate on my old macbook air
also needed later on to set the parameter permantent by opening a terminal and used this command sudo nano /etc/default/grub
edited this line like this: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=“quiet splash intel_iommu=off” then save and exit nano and this command for updating the boot thingy
sudo update-grub “”"
Did this recently actually on the same exact model, drivers work out of the box with ElementaryOS. Zero tinkering involved. Has a maclike interface too. It’s based on Ubuntu, since they’re centering Mac driver compatibility it’s unlikely to break on upgrade. I originally tried to install fedora atomic and so on but realized the drivers were going to be annoying to add (wifi module didn’t work) so I just flashed ElementaryOS on it so I didn’t have to bother and could send it back to my friend asap.
It works but be careful with wifi. The other user said that it works out of the box with endeavourOS, and I know you can install it later with Linux Mint too, but the problem is that this wifi driver for the older chips (from 2011 to 2013 at least) is buggy. In my 2011 macbook air it would crash the whole OS on heavy downloads, and on my 2012 one it won’t come up from sleep. So I bought a super tiny supported usb wifi dongle to deal with the problem. Now my two macbook airs work 100% with Linux.
My 2015 macbook air works great with the linux wifi driver, but it has no web cam support, and the driver on github is buggy and not updated for newer kernels anymore.
I have Linux on:
- 2013 MacBook Air
- 2017 MacBook Air
- 2021 MacBook Air
- 2009 MacBook Pro
- 2012 MacBook Pro
- 2008 iMac
- 2015 iMac
- 2013 Mac Pro
I predict that EndeavourOS will run beautifully on your 2014 MacBook Air. You need out-of-kernel drivers for both the Broadcom WiFi and the FacetimeHD camera but EOS has you covered on both. They will both update automatically when you update the kernel. EOS has much faster WiFi on my 2013 than the other distros I have tried. Chimera Linux works beautifully as well but that may not be your scene.
I have not tried Mint on any of the hardware above so unfortunately, I cannot say how well it would work. Perhaps just fine though I wonder about the webcam.
As you guessed, installing Linux on that hardware is just holding down the Option key to boot of the USB. It is pretty close to regular PC hardware with a slightly odd UEFI. Everything works, even all the media keys, brightness control, etc.
You can use OpenCore Legacy Patcher to put a newer version of macOS on that hardware as well. As you can tell though, I think Linux is the better play. You will be amazed at how well the 2014 runs.
[edit: I just read some of the other comments. I never had any of those issues with EOS. I really recommend it for that hardware.]
I got three 2012 MacBook Pros I run different operating systems on. They handle Linux great, even the little 13" one with the i5 and no GPU/dedicated VRAM
Try some debian or antix they go well with older stuff. I have a old 2015 laptop. I run gnome debian 12. Ran antix prior. Its pretty solid.
The installers come with gui partition stuff so don’t worry.
