Ubuntu Macbook Air
Write Ubuntu Desktop 20.04 LTS to a USB drive after downloading it. Shut down the MacBook Air after backing up any files you want to keep to a different computer or another USB stick. Install Ubuntu Desktop 20.04 LTS after rebooting. Configure the wireless card if it is not already.
This article covers how to repurpose your old MacBook Air with the installation of Ubuntu Desktop. This post is a step-by-step story about how I installed Ubuntu Desktop 20.04 LTS on my MacBook Air (13) and also got my wireless card working without any issues. I have recently (in the past 2 months) purchased myself an Apple Macbook Air(M1), and do not see myself going back to Ubuntu anytime soon. I have been a very devoted Ubuntu fanboy over the past 15+ years, using the Ubuntu LTS release as a daily driver on Thinkpad notebooks.
Since everything I did on Ubuntu could be done and installed on Mac, as well as iOS application development requirements, I had a legitimate first reason to get serious about getting a Macbook. Now, let us talk about the experiences using the Mac system from a long-time Ubuntu user.
There are a lot of different flavors of Linux out there, but for the purposes of this guide, we are going to recommend installing Ubuntu on a Mac. The next tutorial in the series is about setting up dual-booting with Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS and Kali Linux, and after that, there is a follow-up tutorial showing how to install Fedora on that same MacBook. Heres the tutorial for setting up a reasonable Ubuntu 12.10 dual-boot setup on your shiny MacBook Air. I would use this guide to download Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and put it onto the USB drive using UNetbootin.
It is super easy to download and install, then simply follow the steps in the menu to make a bootable USB stick. If you are trying to create a USB stick you can boot to a Mac, then use the instructions below. If wishing to use thumb drives, then please do so following the instructions below.
The first order of business in Step 2 is to shut down your MacBook Air, and then insert your USB drive from Step 1 into one of its USB ports. At this point, we can insert the USB stick, which is probably mounted to /dev/disk1 by default. Next, we will have to unmount the drive representing the USB stick, copy any files from the image onto the unmounted drive using the dd binary, then eject the drive.
If you reboot with either a USB stick or SD card still connected, you will get a prompt saying Please unmount the install media. Once this is done, your USB device should then show up as a bootable device while holding Alt or Control while restarting your PC. Once you are done with the rEFInd install script, shutdown your machine, insert the USB drive that we prepared before, and power the machine on.
You will wipe the thumb drive in the next few steps in order to place an Ubuntu installation program on it, so be sure you back up any important files first. If you have not, double-check your setup and ensure that the flash drive is configured and that an ISO of the installer is mounted. If reboot fails, you can quit your virtual machine manually, remove the installer ISO, and re-start your virtual machine to boot into the new installation.
Then, at this next step, shown in Figure 6, choose Erase Disk, and install Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS. Once you are sure everything is going to work, click on the icon to install Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS in Ubuntus live desktop, which is 20.04. If everything worked as expected in the above steps, your machine should reboot to the Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS Ubuntu desktop. In Step 7, I was presented with the option menu when restarting my Mac and holding Option. It offered me to try Ubuntu or to install it.
The method described in the above link failed just like others did: I rebooted, held option key, selected the EFI Boot, selected to install Ubuntu, then was met by a black screen. After about 40 seconds, I was presented with the Ubuntu desktop and the shortcut icon for the Ubuntu installer. I burned an image of Ubuntu to a flash drive and booted it up, holding down Option.
The first step was to create a bootable USB drive that will contain the latest version of Ubuntu. I will mention that, once the USB stick was loaded with UNetbootin, UNetbootin warned the device that it can boot Ubuntu on PCs only, and not Macs. UNetbootin for Mac OS X can be used to automate the process of pulling an Ubuntu ISO onto the USB, as well as making the USB drive bootable.
To make a bootable USB drive, Ubuntu Linux developers recommend using BalenaEtcher, which is free, and can be used on Windows, MacOS, and Linux. You have to use third-party application to make USB Installer from a disk image. To install Linux on a Mac, you will need a USB stick with at least 2GB storage. Click on “Flash” and enter the administrators password to erase the USB flash drive and generate the Ubuntu USB installer.
Now, you can either look up your preferred application from Ubuntus Linux application repositories, or install using the terminal. You must perform updates so that system will import latest updates to the operating system and installed apps. With MacBook Air pinning to smartphone Internet, look for the Software and updates tool on the Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS Launcher, then tap on it.
Rather than letting the older MacBook Pro become an expensive paperweight, get a recent version of Linux installed and get it running for years. You can even pick up a brand-new MacBook Air, swap out MacOS for Ubuntu, and save some cash in the process. Instead, you can get an older, refurbished MacBook Air starting around $400 USD, and replace macOS with Ubuntu.
Since I needed Linux Ubuntu for some academic work, and since MacBook Airs since mid-2012 are not getting any more operating system updates anymore (the latest update is Catalina), I decided to completely replace the macOS with Linux Ubuntu rather than a dual-boot setup (as I had on my MBP until recently). I decided the best approach was to initially dual boot MacOS and latest Ubuntu, make sure Ubuntu is stable, then delete the partition in which MacOS lives. We would recommend to Mac users that they download Ubuntu Desktop Edition, burning the CD, for now.
You will need to download Ubuntu Server version, no worries, we will easily install the GUI once we install Ubuntu. At the end of installation, you will get the Ubuntu server installed with no GUI. Select EFI boot from Start manager, and it is a regular Ubuntu install from then on.
Can I use Ubuntu on Mac M1?
Last week’s update to Multipass, the quickest way to run Linux cross-platform, allowed M1 users to run Ubuntu virtual machines with very no setup. Developers on M1 may start using Linux in as little as 20 seconds, thanks to Multipass, which can download and execute a virtual machine image with a single command.
Can I install Linux on a MacBook Air?
You may install Linux on a MacBook, iMac, Mac mini, or any other Mac model. Linux is very flexible (it powers anything from cellphones to supercomputers). To make dual-booting Windows and macOS more convenient, Apple offered Boot Camp, but installing Linux is a totally different matter.