How I installed Linux on my old Macbook
I decided to install Linux on my late 2013 Macbook Pro and it was surprisingly easy. Below is a summary of the steps involved. Note that I can’t guarantee that this will work on your machine as well (for newer macbooks with Apple chips, the process may be less straightforward).
Before you start:
- You’ll need a usb stick with at least 8GB.
- Wifi won’t work out of the box after you install Linux; you’ll need to install a driver. In my case this was handled by the installation wizzard, but you’ll need to download the driver so the ideal option is to be able to connect your macbook to the internet with a cable.
- Create a backup of any files on your macbook you don’t want to lose.
- Check the articles linked to below for more background and caveats.
Get started:
- Download Linux. From what I understand the distribution you pick is pretty much a matter of six and half a dozen. I opted for the Long Term Support version of Ubuntu because this appears to be the most straightforward choice.
- Install balenaEtcher and use this to create a bootable usb.
- Put the usb stick in the left-side usb port.
- Start the macbook holding down the
optionkey. Click the EFI option and click Try or install Ubuntu. - You may wish to try Ubuntu without installing to check whether things like trackpad, sound, network and webcam work properly. You can select
Try Ubuntuat some point through the installation wizzard. - If you’re happy with the results, power off, start again and install Ubuntu with default and recommended options.
I ran into a few minor issues. I’ve turned off Automatic Suspend, because it takes 20 seconds to reactivate, so I’d like some more control over when this happens (you can still put the machine to sleep and save energy by closing it). Also, I still need to figure out the correct keyboard settings (the tilde and backslash are currently linked to the wrong keys). There are some small things I have to get used to, such as using shift-control instead of command in terminal (e.g., shift-control-c to copy), and using command instead of command-space to launch anything (command-space closes the laptop, which still happens to me frequently).