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Ubuntu On Macbook Air

Ubuntu On Macbook Air

Ubuntu On Macbook Air

Ubuntu on Macbook Air is an excellent way to get a powerful, yet portable computer. Ubuntu is a great operating system that is easy to use and has a ton of features. It is the perfect combination for anyone who wants a powerful computer that they can take with them on the go.

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 had a Macbook Air 2015 which I had not used in some years, and rather than just throwing it out or selling it, I thought that installing Linux on it might be a good idea. I am a pretty religious Ubuntu fanboy of the past 15+ years, and I have used LTS versions of Ubuntu as my daily driver on my Thinkpad laptops. 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. Installing Ubuntu Linux in your Mac laptop is really not that difficult, since both MacOS and Ubuntu are Unix systems, and as such, Mac machines are very well designed to support Ubuntu, and the installation should be a lot easier than in Windows machines or Chrome machines (even with ChromeOS being essentially Linux too). 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 do a dual-boot setup (as I had on my MBP until recently).

With a dual-boot system, you install both MacOS and Linux onto one Mac. If you decide to dual boot Linux on your Mac, hold Option when booting up to select between macOS and Ubuntu. In the rEFIt menu, choose Boot legacy OS from (or Boot Linux from; it is not clear how that is activated).

Advantages
Lock ScreenIt has good lock screen design which offers notifications
FreeIt is free and open source so any one can use it without any payment
CustomizeYou can do your own customizations in it
Do Not DisturbIt has its own do not disturb option
Advantages of Ubuntu Desktop.

Then, in this next step, shown in Figure 6, choose Erase Disk & 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. Select Tux (the Penguin, Linuxs mascot) and use the arrows to go to Try Latest Ubuntu Without Installation. Click on Browse, and choose the Ubuntu Server ISO downloaded at the link above.

At the end of installation, you will have Ubuntu Server installed with no GUI. This will feel very familiar for Ubuntu users that have done the install before. You need to download Ubuntu Server Edition, no worries, we will be able to easily install GUI once we install barebone OS.

The next tutorial of the series is about setting up dual-booting Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS and Kali Linux, and after this follow-up with a one showing how to install Fedora on a single MacBook. Heres the tutorial for setting up a reasonable Ubuntu 12.10 dual-boot setup on your shiny MacBook Air. With your MacBook Air pinning itself on top of your smartphones Internet connection, look for Software and updates tools on Ubuntus 20.04.3 LTS launcher, then tap on them.

Watch this video to learn how to install or boot ubuntu onto a MacBook air

Download the latest Ubuntu release as a disk image from Ubuntus web site. You must create the USB installer from an Ubuntu disk image using a third-party application. Click on “Flash” and enter the administrators password to erase your USB Flash Drive and create the Ubuntu USB Installer.

You will be wiping your flash drive at a later stage in order to place an Ubuntu installer 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 you reboot with a USB drive or SD card still connected, you will get a prompt saying Please delete installation media.

Next, we have to unmount the drive representing the USB stick, copy all files from the image onto the unmounted drive using the dd binary, then eject the drive. Creating is pretty straight forward using the MacOS Disk Utility. To be able to run both the latest version of Ubuntu and MacOS on a single machine, we need to create a partition on our hard drive for holding both OSes.

To install Linux on a Mac, we require a USB Flash Drive with a minimum of 2GB storage. Burning the CD and installing it through the CD-drive externally would work just fine for a Macbook Air 3.2. We recommend that Mac users install Ubuntu Desktop Edition via a CD-ROM at this point.

Alternatively, you can pick up a used, refurbished MacBook Air starting around $400 USD and swap out the MacOS with Ubuntu. You can even buy an all-new MacBook Air, replace macOS with Ubuntu, and save some money in the process. Instead of leaving an older MacBook Pro as a pricey paperweight, just install the latest version of Linux and let it run for years.

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For the latter, a key consideration might very well be whether or not Apples new MacBook Air will be capable of running Linux properly. Instead, your only real choice to run Linux on an Apple-made silicon Mac is to use a virtual machine like Parallels or UTM. For an experienced Linux user, the limitations of using the desktop OS, which requires having id in order to upgrade built-in software or install new ones, far outweigh any of the positive aspects. I have not used every recent Ubuntu laptop, and would not rule out buying one at some point.

The installation steps are mentioned on the UTMs Ubuntu web page. Start up your virtual machine, and when you see the UTM logo, press and hold shift to get to the GRUB menu Choose Advanced options for ubuntu Choose Ubuntu, with Linux 5.4.0-100-generic (or any version below 5.4.0-104) Now you can start Ubuntu up again. Once you are in, install the latest Linux release Sudo apt install linux-image-5.4.0-100-generic Shut down the VM, open VM Settings, and under QEMU -> Teaks, select Use Hypervisor to enable Virtualization again. If a restart fails, you can quit the VM manually, remove the installation ISO, and re-start the VM to boot to the new installation.

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UNetbootin for Mac OS X can be used to automate the process of transferring an Ubuntu ISO to USB, as well as making your USB stick 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.

Can you install Linux on 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 cell phones to supercomputers). To make dual-booting Windows and macOS more convenient, Apple offered Boot Camp, but installing Linux is a completely different story.

How to install ubuntu on Macbook air m1?

To install Ubuntu on a MacBook Air M1, create a bootable USB drive using BalenaEtcher. Boot into recovery mode, disable SIP, then reboot and select the USB drive to boot into Ubuntu. Follow the on-screen instructions to install Ubuntu, making sure to select the correct partition. Finally, enable SIP by entering the recovery mode and typing “csrutil enable” in Terminal.

Is MacBook air good for Linux?

The MacBook Air can be a good choice for running Linux, but it depends on your specific needs and preferences. While macOS is the default operating system on MacBook Air, Linux can also be installed on it. However, it is important to note that some hardware components may not be fully supported in Linux, such as the trackpad or the camera, due to proprietary drivers.

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