Occasionally I’ll get a “broken” old laptop back to a functional state by installing Linux on it. There was Medion Akoya that wouldn’t boot, which I returned to service as a kids Roblox device, and an HP Stream that windows had got too big for, which has been serving as my dads email machine ever since. I had an out-of-service MacBook Pro and figured it was time to give my pa an upgrade.
None of this is particularly clever. I mostly just follow other peoples guides, but I’ll share it here in part as confirmation that yes this works. The full guide I followed this time is here: https://linuxhint.com/install_linux_on_mac/
The key point summary is as follows:
- I used a Linux Mint 21 Bootable USB, the same one I’d used for another laptop fix job. You don’t need to do anything special or get a Mac version.
- With the boot USB plugged in, restart and hold Option during start up to get the boot menu.
- select the EFI Boot Option
- You will have to edit the boot entry: Select “Install Ubuntu” with the arrow keys and press e.
- Change the line starting with Linux and add the word ‘nomodeset’ after ‘quiet splash’. You are replacing the — at the end with this word.
- Press F10 and follow the set up instructions.
- There was a point at the end of the install that looked like it has crashed. I just powered off and on and everything was okay.
- Once you have finished installing and logged in to a Welcome screen you need to set up some drivers: Under First Steps select Driver Manager.
- Select NVIDIA’s nvidia-driver-390 (for graphics) and Broadcom’s bcmwl-kernel-source (for wifi).
And that’s it, everything set up, an out of date mac becomes a fully functional portable linux box.
My dad has been struggling with the webmail he uses, so I’ve set up Thunderbird and we’ll see how he gets on with that.
He also disliked typing a password every time he opens the laptop. You can disable that under the screensaver settings.
The twitter thread about a different laptop rescue job here: