Some time ago, Apple Mail on my white MacBook stopped communicating with Gmail. As I recall, it was some error message that translated to “your mail client is horribly old and uses outdated security protocols“. Unfortunate, because OS X Snow Leopard was my favorite version of OS X. Anyway, I decided it was time to throw Linux on it.
At the time, I was having trouble getting the latest 64-bit Linux distro DVDs to boot. Eventually I came across ubuntu-14.04.3-desktop-amd64+mac.iso which actually did boot and install. Unfortunately, these mac-specific images seem to have fallen by the wayside as of late.
I figured it was time to look for a method to get this stuff running.
Before reading further: Make sure you’re in the same boat!
To be clear, this applies to the 64-bit Macs that use a 32-bit EFI. These tend to be all of the Core2Duo models from late 2006. More specifically:
- iMac 5,1 – iMac 5,2 – iMac 6,1
- Macbook 2,1
- MacBook Pro 2,1 – MacBook Pro 2,2
- Mac Pro 1,1
- Xserve 1,1 (maybe)
If you’ve got an earlier Mac which is a CoreDuo (not a Core2Duo), it can’t run 64-bit anyway. If you’re on a later Mac, you’ve probably got a 64-bit EFI so most 64-bit Linux distros should install and run.
If you’re on some other (non-Mac) 64-bit machine that uses a 32-bit EFI, well… I have no idea. It could be worth a try.
Note that the MacBook Air 1,1 doesn’t have a DVD drive which makes things more complicated. You may have to be creative.
Option 1: Pre-modded 64-bit DVD Images for the 32-bit EFI models listed above
For DVD-burning only (see Option 4 for USB).
Warning: You’re best to skip to Option 3 and create the disk image yourself. For all you know, I could be a botnet kingpin and you could be downloading the Botnet Linux 16.04 ISO. Or maybe the actual botnet kingpin hacked their way into the server and quietly replaced my ISO with their own. Beyond that, it’s also going to be really helpful for you to understand what problem you’re actually solving so that when new versions of your favorite distro come out in the future that you want disk images for, you’re capable of effortlessly handling it on your own.
April 19 2020: I’ve re-added a few pre-modded ISOs here (the old server died long ago, taking the hundred or so ISOs with it). Due to reduced disk space and bandwidth on the new server, it is likely that only a minimal selection of the more popular distros will be offered from now on. For other distros, you will have to follow the instructions in the other sections to mod your own ISO.
lubuntu-22.04-desktop-amd64-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: f95154bf3242f3959d33b99c4f9561a4 )
–
Ubuntu 22.04 Desktop (64-bit Mac) – 3.5 GB
ubuntu-22.04-desktop-amd64-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: 7dae18f00871db0405e9664cc686c673 )
–
–
Lubuntu 20.04.1 LXQT (64-bit Mac) – 1.7 GB
lubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: 78967d5a57240acf0a6edb975a519da3 )
–
Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop (64-bit Mac) – 2.6 GB
ubuntu-20.04-desktop-amd64-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: aa38a556fa5648a706b365665eee2cd2 )
–
–
Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop (64-bit Mac) – 2.0 GB
ubuntu-18.04.4-desktop-amd64-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: 1ec7f556caf83a4c14c57818b8c018cd )
–
Lubuntu 18.04 LXDE (64-bit Mac) – 1.2 GB
lubuntu-18.04.4-desktop-amd64-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: 8bdd6b561768f7990d230b6019f8630e )
–
Xubuntu 18.04 XFCE (64-bit Mac) – 1.5 GB
xubuntu-18.04.4-desktop-amd64-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: e7cc98d6d11ac9a83281ebc27d5e63d6 )
–
–
Ubuntu 16.04 Desktop (64-bit Mac) – 1.6 GB
ubuntu-16.04.6-desktop-amd64-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: 2dd875ae71eeed3b94d08130e07ba599 )
–
Lubuntu 16.04 LXDE (64-bit Mac) – 932 MB
lubuntu-16.04.6-desktop-amd64-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: c8838182ac372edb55c69bfec250b1e7 )
–
–
NOTE: These older versions are worth trying if you are using dedicated graphics (ATI/nVidia) and are not having luck with new versions. If these work, you can search for and try “nomodeset” when attempting a newer version.
–
Ubuntu 14.04.4 Desktop (64-bit Mac)
ubuntu-14.04.4-desktop-amd64+mac.iso ( from http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/)
–
Ubuntu 12.04.4 Desktop (64-bit Mac)
ubuntu-12.04.4-desktop-amd64+mac.iso ( from http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/)
linuxmint-22-xfce-64bit-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: 4a11007942505f166ac5242eadb761fa )
–
LMDE 6 (64-bit Mac) – 2.6 GB
lmde-6-cinnamon-64bit-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: 2ddd066b921633a4a63ca66089a5b11b )
–
Linux Mint 21 Cinnamon “Vanessa” (64-bit Mac) – 2.3 GB
linuxmint-21-cinnamon-64bit-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: 2c308dcae479525651ae96cc662d6543 )
–
Linux Mint 20 Cinnamon “Ulyana” (64-bit Mac) – 1.9 GB
linuxmint-20-cinnamon-64bit-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: ddb562eea46a0589d649da2136b4de1d )
–
Linux Mint 19.3 Cinnamon “Tricia” (64-bit Mac) – 1.9 GB
linuxmint-19.3-cinnamon-64bit-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: 8e8112a70d2ec03573189586a10e4afd )
–
Linux Mint 19.3 XFCE “Tricia” (64-bit Mac) – 1.9 GB
linuxmint-19.3-xfce-64bit-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: 44415e6b5a4d8042ae71135d554b48d5 )
elementaryos-5.1-stable.20200405-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: d62fb6d45b3026244b7ce8ef1e653e69 )
Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-31-1.9-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: 9ee717892e2d5ca9dc429926e9f72698 )
–
Fedora 31 XFCE Live (64-bit Mac) – 1.4 GB
Fedora-Xfce-Live-x86_64-31-1.9-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: 079a3e028deb48ea71d80a95d3f864a8 )
emmabuntus-de4-amd64-11.2-1.01-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: e55d6eac04bf0f97d45b273186d1552a )
debian-live-10.3.0-amd64-gnome+nonfree-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: 234ebce0a46a661f51c4bb62011537e6 )
–
Debian 10.3.0 Live XFCE + non-free (64-bit Mac) – 2.7 GB
debian-live-10.3.0-amd64-xfce+nonfree-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: 064708164f9a41cd01a03bbdcbd985aa )
–
Note: If you’re able and willing to use a “netinst” installer, and without the non-free firmware, Debian provides an official debian-mac-x.x.x-amd64-netinst.iso which can be found at https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/release/current/amd64/iso-cd/.
Zorin-OS-17.1-Core-64-bit-r2-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: e53e543437b8ed598ef0fc98512c4aeb )
manjaro-cinnamon-21.3.7-220826-linux515-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: f155edf4c366059f309c6574846e9359 )
–
Note: Manjaro installation attempts normally have a low success rate.
I have only personally used/tested Ubuntu 16.04, 17.10, and Fedora 24. Note that Lubuntu tends to be one of the snappiest installs if you don’t mind the LXDE interface.
Check out the comments for successful and non-successful distros/versions that others have been kind enough to report back with.
Notes:
- Burn to a DVD (these will not work for USB – see Option 4 further down if you need USB). Hold the “option” key on your Mac during boot and select the image. It will likely be detected as “Windows” by the boot menu.
- If burning the DVD from macOS, do not use Disk Utility. Use a dedicated program capable of burning ISOs (Burn and SimplyBurn are a couple open source programs capable of this).
- When you format/install, you’re best to use MBR for the hard drive (not GPT). Most distros will automatically use MBR as part of their “auto format/install” when you use these disk images, but if you do some custom partitioning, you’ll want to keep an eye out.
- I haven’t tested to see if it works with a dual-boot system. Some people in the comments mentioned success, but you are on your own here.
- If you redistribute the images, please either leave the “mattgadient.com” bit in the file name or replace it with something that clearly indicates it isn’t an official ISO. That way if there are problems with it, people won’t think it’s an official ISO that’s broken.
- Update: As far as the firmware is concerned, there’s no default start-up partition anymore. Thus, the Mac will sit at the white/grey screen for about 30 seconds on each boot looking for all the drives before it fires up Ubuntu. If you don’t mind, great! If you *do* mind, I have another write-up for dealing with that here if you’d like to tackle it after you’ve got Linux up and running. Note that it requires an OS X Install DVD to “bless” your new Linux install.
If your computer has an nVidia or ATI video card and you aren’t seeing anything at boot or it appears to freeze, you can try setting “nomodeset” and enabling debug. This involves entering the grub boot menu and changing GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="splash quiet" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nosplash debug nomodeset". A web search for your distro plus “nomodeset” will give plenty of details. You can also search the web for your particular video card and whatever distro you’re attempting to use as this is generally not a Mac-specific issue, but due to proprietary drivers that have long stopped being supported. If “nomodeset” alleviates the issue, you can search the web for instructions to permanently add this to the boot menu and update-grub on the distro you chose.
If the install proceeds fine but the system won’t boot from the hard drive after installation, there is a strong possibility that your distro installer formatted the hard drive via GPT/EFI instead of MBR/BIOS. You can check this by booting from the LiveDVD again, starting the Terminal program, and typing parted -l or fdisk -l (that is a lower-case L). If you see “gpt” listed for the hard drive (instead of “dos” or “msdos”), this is likely your issue. The most simple option is to install Ubuntu and let it do a full erase/install, as Ubuntu tends to be well-behaved here. However if Ubuntu is not an option, you will need to do some manual work along with a reinstall. You may want to consider disconnecting any drives with important data on them (USB drives and hard drives) first so that you can not accidentally erase them in the process. To manually wipe a drive pre-install and force MBR, you can do the following from your LiveDVD (again in a Terminal – all data will be lost): parted /dev/sda mklabel msdos or fdisk -t dos /dev/sda. Replace /dev/sda with the actual path of your hard drive. If you don’t know what the path is, you can run parted -l or fdisk -l again and see if you can decipher which drive letter is for your hard drive. Alternately, there is often a GParted program available on LiveDVDs that will show you the paths for your drives (/dev/sda, /dev/sdb, etc) in a more readable way. Once you’ve finished, restart, boot from the LiveDVD, and decide whether you want to trust the automatic installer or want to manually create partitions to install on. After the install completes you can try parted -l or fdisk -l again to verify that the drives are still “dos” or “msdos” (good) and not “gpt” (bad). If it’s “gpt” (bad) you’re simply going to have to fight with your distro’s installer.
Option 2: Mod an ISO yourself with the modding program.
Note that if you’re happy to compile the program on your own (it takes under 5 seconds to compile), option #3 below is preferred.
This is the program I use to mod ISOs. It’s quite simple to use: you just run it against an ISO. So head to your favorite distros website, download the ISO, open Terminal, and run this program against the ISO.
The program is tiny, and a big advantage to using this program to mod your own ISOs is that it’s very quick. It also allows you to modify ISOs I do not provide above.
MacOS version (compiled): isomacprog.gz
Linux version (compiled): isomacprog.gz
You’ll have to decompress it and make it executable. Normally this is done from a Terminal window. As an example:
cd ~/Downloads
gunzip isomacprog.gz
chmod +x isomacprogThe program should technically run at this point. You can check it by typing:
./isomacprog…it should say “No iso name assigned”. If it doesn’t work and you get a cryptic error, you will likely have to compile it on your own via steps in the “How To” section.
To actually mod the ISO, I prefer to make a copy of the original, and run the program against the copy. Replace “original.iso” below with the name of the ISO you downloaded and want to mod:
cp original.iso macversion.iso
./isomacprog macversion.iso…it should usually take less than a second to run. You can verify that it worked by typing the following on a Mac, again replacing “original.iso” with the name of the ISO you downloaded:
md5 original.iso
md5 macversion.iso…or on Linux…
md5sum original.iso
md5sum macversion.isoIf the MD5 is unique for each file, the program worked and you can burn macversion.iso to a DVD. Some ISOs will not work with the program (the before and after MD5 will be identical), in which case you’re out of luck and should probably attempt another distro.
Note that just because the program successfully modded the ISO does not mean the distro itself will work – you won’t know for sure until you try the install. Stock Ubuntu LTS releases tend to work (with older ones having higher success rates depending on your Mac model). Arch and Arch-based distros (Manjaro/etc) have very low success rates and often require manual work to get a bootloader going. In any case, you may want to parse through the comments below to see what distros people have had luck with.
The notes from Option 1 (burn to DVD, etc) apply.
Option 3: Compiling the program to make a standard Linux 64-bit distro ISO compatible with 32-bit EFI Macs
This is the recommended method for modding an ISO. The source code is under 60 lines (easy to parse if you’re a programmer). It compiles within a couple seconds and the program itself takes less than a second to run against any ISO you downloaded.
A short explanation of the situation, followed by the source code and instructions:
The “problem” with the 32-bit EFI macs (as I understand it) is that they fall apart when they try to load a “multi-catalog” disk image. Most linux distros use multi-catalog images so that they support both BIOS and EFI. When the Mac tries to load the disk image, you get the cryptic “select CD-ROM boot type” text. Since the mac hasn’t loaded any keyboard stuff yet, you can’t actually choose any of the options. The cleanest solution is to change the disk image to be BIOS-only (non-EFI). Basically, remove other items from the El Torito catalog. That’s what the old Ubuntu amd64+mac ISO’s did. The 64-bit BIOS linux bootloader kicks in, and all is well. A more detailed explanation can be found here.
Converting the ISO
This is done via a very simple C program. Credit goes to the poster here. A lot of extra info if you expand that thread’s bug discussion. Here’s the code (slightly modded to let you provide the file name instead of hard-coding it):
Source code: isomacprog.c.txt
Save it as “isomacprog.c” (remove the “.txt”), and compile it with:
cc -g -Wall isomacprog.c -o isomacprogAfter that, make a COPY of the original ISO for your linux distro and run it against the copy. Something like:
cp original.iso macversion.iso
./isomacprog macversion.isoThis isn’t guaranteed to work on every Linux ISO image out there, but it’s worth a shot, and is what I’ve used for the images above.
The notes from Option 1 (burn to DVD, etc) apply.
Update: Compiling
A number of people in the comments indicated they weren’t sure how to compile a program. Thus, I have put some copy/paste instructions below for people currently running Ubuntu (and Ubuntu-variants). I can not add instructions for every possible OS combination unfortunately, but a bit of web searching should get you started.
I will warn you that I do not really recommend this copy/paste option. If the ISO doesn’t work you won’t know whether it’s because there was an issue with the hunk you copy/pasted, or whether that distro just doesn’t work.
Copy/paste instructions for Ubuntu 18.04.6 (dump them in the terminal and cross your fingers):
cd ~ && \
sudo apt install build-essential curl && \
curl https://mattgadient.com/dl/linux-iso-program/isomacprog.c.txt > isomacprog.c && \
gcc -g -Wall isomacprog.c -o isomacprog && \
curl http://releases.ubuntu.com/bionic/ubuntu-18.04.6-desktop-amd64.iso > my-linux-mac.iso && \
chmod +x ./isomacprog && \
./isomacprog my-linux-mac.iso && \
echo "Done. If there were no errors you can find/burn my-linux-mac.iso" && \
echo "from your home directory to a DVD!"
- Want to use another distro? Replace http://releases.ubuntu.com…ubuntu-18.04.6-desktop.iso with a link to an ISO from your favorite distro. This means you will have to copy/paste into a TEXT EDITOR first, make your ISO change, and then copy/paste the whole (modified) chunk into a Terminal window.
- The “sudo apt install…” line will cause this block of text to require your password, as it has to install build-essential and curl to your system. This will happen immediately. After that, you can get a coffee while it downloads the ISO.
- Your new ISO will be in your Home directory (from the file manager it will likely either be called “Home” or “YourName”). The file itself will be called “my-linux-mac.iso”. Rename it afterwards (once the program has finished) to something you’ll remember and then burn to a DVD.
Option 4: Alternative Options (USB, etc)
I’ll be honest: I prefer the above solution(s) for the following reasons:
- Simplicity – it’s the least complicated option.
- Robustness – as long as you partitioned as MBR, the install should survive most (not all) distro version upgrades since they tend to equate MBR with BIOS, and GPT with EFI. This can matter if it updates the bootloader (I’ve had a GPT bootloader get borked by an upgrade before).
If you’ve got a bad DVD drive or MacBook Air, I’d be inclined to try pulling the drive first and install Linux via another machine (swap the drive back in after and hope for the best).
But if forced to use USB or intent on going the EFI32 route, here are a few places I’d start:
- Update: Stefan has a step-by-step process for Live CD on an USB Stick (32-bit EFI, 64-bit Linux) which manually creates an EFI32 partition on the install USB. This is probably the route to try first.
- Update 2: Gero has mentioned a USB-bootable method via YUMI. You can find details via Gero’s blog at https://ger.oza.hn/2020/02/orbsmart-aw-05-minipc-und-linux-mint-64-bit/ (German, though Google translate works well for non-German speakers). The YUMI tool itself can be found at https://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/ .
- Thread: Ubuntu 15.04 on Mac Mini 2,1 with EFI boot (2007 Intel) – The guide uses rEFInd on one USB stick. On a 2nd USB install disk it uses a Ubuntu USB install, but adds a bootia32.efi to the /EFI/BOOT folder. When starting up the Mac, uses ALT to bring up the manager and chooses rEFInd. Then once rEFInd has loaded, selects the option that contains “bootia32.efi”.
–
Once the Ubuntu install is complete, grub fails to install, but there are steps listed to manually install a grub-efi-ia32. Much of it is based on the steps that Jason Heeris provided on his blog. This is a very “EFI-native” solution, but I’d personally still be a little concerned about the potential for major release upgrades to overwrite the bootloader with a new 64-bit EFI. - Hackintosh bootloader solutions – The hackintosh community has been finding solutions for Apple’s EFI compatibility limitations for years. If you’re looking for something very Mac-specific, search for Mac Pro 1,1 and add ML/MountainLion/10.8/10.9/etc to the search. Otherwise you can peek into various bootloaders like Chameleon, Pike’s bootloader, etc., but your are more likely to hit some trial-and-error bits there since every guide looks at a different purpose (some for having a different bootloader, some aimed at hackintoshing, etc).
The End
Regarding comments: As of 2020, there were nearly 900 comments on this page! While comments have always been much appreciated, I recently reached the point where I had to start pruning comments back. Unfortunately the comment system isn’t well suited to displaying a large volume of information in a readable way: many questions went unanswered, and many duplicate questions arose. Older mobile phones also struggled to display the page and required some workarounds as comments grew over the years.
Moving forward, comments will likely be pruned on a regular basis to try and strike a balance between size/readability and the information provided. The focus for now will be on retaining success/failure reports that list the Distro/MacModel, steps that allowed a distro to work, and how to address specific issues. Essentially I’d like to get things to the point where 99% of people who arrive here with a question/issue that isn’t addressed above can quickly find the answers they’re looking for in the comments below.
I know a lot of thoughtful, informative, and insightful comments have been removed during this process, and for that I do apologize.
-Matt
Linux Mint 18 (Cinnamon) works flawlessly, however. Again, many thanks for having this page and the program to convert ISO images up.
Thanks again! I'm so happy to keep these machines running, while I start exploring Elementary.
Clarification: I first put on a fresh install of OS X, then ran Boot Camp Assistant (partition, clicked the option that didn't include downloading anything, then quit). Then shut down, then startup with cmd + alt keys.
I had to "parted" the disk back to empty and then let Leap install a its bootloader into MBR.
A first attempt where the bootloader went into its own partion failed to boot, I could only boot from disk indirect by the DVD ISOlinux bootloader from the SUSE install DVD. It then gives the option to boot from disk which works that way.
-> ubuntu-16.04-desktop-amd64-mac-mattgadient.com.iso
MacPro 1,1 has 32-bit EFI. Without this iso image only 32-bit OS can be installed which limits RAM access to 4GB. With Matt's iso file I can boot, intall and run 64-bit Linux on this 32-bit EFI machine.
Before upgrading to 16.04, my MacPro 1,1 was already on 64-bit Ubuntu but it was only 14.04. To upgrade it, the iso file makes everything simple the same way as we would downloading and installing Linux on any other computer.
For Ubuntu 14.04 there was a MacPro 1,1 (32-bit EFI) x64 distro available. For Ubuntu 16 and Fedora, there aren't any otherwise as far as I know.
Here the spec of the Mac for reference:
- Model early MacPro 1,1 2006
- Memory 32 GiB
- Processor Intel Xeon(R) CPU X5365 x 8 (2 x 3GHz Quad-Core)
- OS type 64-bit
This is valuable. I offer great thanks to the author.
Update 1: I got impatient and burned minimal.... It's working perfectly. Thanks again
One of your modified Linux distros worked for me! After banging my head for several weeks, I was able to boot Linux Mint on my Mac Mini 2007. This model is in the same boat as the 2006 models - 64-bit Mac using 32-bit EFI (or so I've read).
Arch installs the system in MBR, choose manual install in GUI. Otherwise your mac won't see the bootloader. It's easier if you install ubuntu or Linux mint first, then install Arch afterwards. If you choose the option replace Arch in a partition ( in the install program) without installing a bootloader, then it wil boot perfectly. The Ubuntu family install the bootloader better for a mac then Arch does. If you choose for the last option, then you'll use the grub loader from Ubuntu (or Mint).
I did it this way a year ago with a 32 bit distro of manjaro.
Firstly, I could not use the cd-rom as it is non functional. I tried various methods of getting it to boot with USB, but so far the simplest and most reliable method has been to install GRUB 2 on a flash drive (using a virtual machine to run ubuntu and mounting the flash in there. First, enable universal sources, to install p7zip and do an apt-get update.). More instructions here: https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple/MacBook/2-1.
I used this grub.conf file: pendrivelinux.com/downloads/multibootlinux/grub.cfg but added the graphics setup inside the if .. fi statment from the tutorial at the top of the file.
I used the same configuration for ubuntu (the ISO structure is the same) just renamed the menu entry to elementary and same for the iso.
I am finishing the install as we speak. (*edit* ran without a hitch) I also had to use a new hdd as it kept failing to partition my 500GB. Sadly. Sounds a little wonky.
If my instructions are unclear or if you need a little help, feel free to comment.
*edit* Elementary Loki was running fine after install. Except reeeeealy slowly. So tried Ubuntu. It worked until the second reboot. Then tried Fedora 24. Installed beautifully (so fast!) but would not boot up after install.
Going to try roll my own Arch iso and see what happens.
a USB pen drive (or two), preferably on a blog with screenshots (not in comments here) and link it here?
I do not have access to DVDs or the DVD drive (replaced it with a second hard drive on the mini). What I do have is a 2007 mini which has a 64 bit Core 2 Duo processor and a 32 bit EFI.
I added the 32 bit efi file into the EFI folder on the USB pen drive and somehow got to see it in the boot menu on the Mac, and when I chose it, it dropped me into a grub shell, where I got completely stuck. I'd like to install Korora (a fork of Fedora) and stay current (on software/security) for as long as possible since the mini is still working fine.
Also, thanks a lot Matt, for putting up the ISO images here and providing so much flexibility for people!
Fedora has it's own special way of doing things. I never quite got it to work properly in this scenario.
In order to get the install USB working, what I did was install grub (32 bit) onto an old hdd Using an ubuntu live distro in a virtual machine, on my windows box. (with rEFIt installed as well.) Plugged in as a usb external. Google is your friend here as I do not know your setup.
From there I added the prepared ISOs into the root of same drive and created appropriate boot entries for each ISO in the grub.cfg. This helped tremendously with setting up the config file: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Multiboot_USB_drive#Boot_entries_for_other_distributions
I did have varying levels of success in this regard. It took a lot of tinkering. But Arch install and subsequent booting ran without a hitch. Usin an unprepared ISO!
@Clemens
yes, it's possible to put on usb using kind of bootia32.efi built with grub.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/toysbox/files/MacBook_revival_Playground/lubuntu-16.04.3-i386%2BmacHybrid.iso/
Just dd copy this iso on usb stick , The stick does boot on MacBookPro DuoCore 32bits and also on windows10_type uefi (64bits of course ) as live "lubuntu xenial". In MacBook_revival_Playground there are readme or pdf giving details of howto do this. The iso's here are not only bootable as cdrom image but also as usb image (a.k.a isohybrid including uefi awareness) It 's just fun. Have a good day.
most of the distro´s booted perfectly, except kurora and fedora, on my macbook Pro 2,2! I finally settled with Linux mint 18.1.
Is there a way to get the full 4GB used on the system (Macbook 2,1)? Supposedly it is only using around 3GB instead of the full physical 4GB installed in the system.
Thanks for the information and images. I have used the Fedora 24 image and upgraded to 25. Wondered if anybody experienced any graphical issues with 25 on a Mac Pro 1,1 with a 7300GT card? Straight after the upgrade the screen was covered in wavy white lines.
Updated: It would appear my leaving it alone and restarting it over lunch has resolved the issue. Will check the logs to see if there is anything in there but may well have been an update conflict between xorg and Wayland I assume.
Update 1: Thanks Matt. I installed the debian version, it seemed all fine. However when i try to boot using the optionkey or rEFIT, it doesn't show up.
Update 2: Hi, Matt. Now it works. I did a full re-install of OSX. Then I used Bootcamp to create a partition for linux, intalling debian i made the ext4 partition before the swap one. Finally i installed the grub boot loader on the same partition (ext4) of the linux one.
(as suggested here https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2145888 )
Updated 2: Unfortunately Kali isnt working. A package is corrupted and installation is aborted around 70%. As i said earlier Parrot works perfect and i will give it a try, since Kali isnt working! Thank you again!
My only problem is I wasn't able to get it to boot directly, and also didn't got Refind to install OK. Creating a Refind USB boot disk and copying its boot folder to /boot/efi/EFI works OK. Will try to figure out why it is that to provide a cleaner solution.
Update 1: I was sleepy when I tried that and skipped a step, I just retried and it can install grub efi without need of refind perfectly.
Update 2: There is no need to continue to make this images for Debian, the official mixed mode efi install media is made for this scenarios -64 bits systems with 32 bit efis-.
Just to add my experience. After much struggle to get a linux distro to even run by CD ( the test or live cd ) - the closest i ever got was the "press 1 or press 2 to boot option" , even the fast 1-enter -1enter did not work - well i did get the 1 to appear a few times.
So i grabed the Linux Mint 18.1 Cinnamon “Serena” (64-bit Mac) – untested , downloaded on my windows machine and used imgburn to burn the iso to a CD
I powered up the macbook 2007 2.1 , loaded osx10.6 as per normal , installed the dvd , then shut down the macbook.
I restarted the macbook, help the option key and eventually the option of the osx Macintosh harddrive or windows appeared , Arrow left and enter and i was running Linux Mint within 2 to 4 minues , a few error message came up in the background terminal , but eventually the linux desktop came up fine
As i have been using / testing linux mint on my Windows machine in a virtual box i decided to add some new life into the macbook - everything still works with 10.6 so far but it is surprising how much we rely on internet and youtube these days - firefox has stopped being updated for 10.6 , and i guess it will be fine for many years to come.
But like my other mac laptop a G4 Ibook i find it still works as a great word processor and early games machine,, use VLC player for movies as long as they are not highly compressed - codex, i can use 104 for the browser but as of 2016 i just cant watch any youtube - so 1 small item and it makes the computer obsolete
The only drawback is that i have used puppy linux of a cd or usd and stored in ram , and it has the option to save a config or swap file on the hard drive so that it gets all the machine variables right and boots quicker, a shame this version of mint does not do that , it would make placing the dvd and booting much faster
Matt - thank you for all of the hard work on this issue for our specific versions of macbook ( i do also have a imac 5.1 i will try this on as well - yes 3 mac pc's in the house )
For newbies like me who like to keep things simple here are the steps I followed to get a dual boot:
1- Partition the main HD (Shrink the OS X partition and and leave 20Gb Free Space for Linux)
2- Install REFind (not sure I needed to do that but it felt reassuring)
3- Download the amd64 distro of Lubuntu 17.04
4- Modify it using your little C program
5- Burn it on a DVD
6- Boot Lubuntu from the DVD (will not work if step 4 is not done, as Matt explains very well on his page)
7- Run the normal Lubuntu Install - it detects the free space on the main HD and installs Lubuntu gracefully alongside Mac OS X
Now when I boot I have the REFind menu and then the GRUB menu, which seems redundant, but apart from that everything works fine and most importantly, I didn't break the OS X installation.
I hope this helps your visitors, it took me a lot of trial and error (goose chase to try and boot from a USB Key, trying to boot several distros from DVD, etc.) to get to a simple path to install this dual boot.
Tanks again
Update 1: I'm not even 100% sure how my drive is partitioned (I'm at work at the moment). I'm assuming it's MBR since 14.04 or is sort of old and I installed Linux clean with defaults - there is no Mac OS left on this system.
I'll be sure to try going to another LTS.
This is my Kodi system. While I was typing I had a "Duh!" moment. I have all my movies, TV Shows etc... on other drives, my boot drive really only has the OS, a few programs, and a few videos that don't fit any indexed category that don't matter much anyways. I can totally put a different hard drive in and install to that, then put my media back without it being much of an issue. I can even copy my old FSTAB over and get the drives mounting back exactly where they were before and probably can copy my Kodi config files too.
You've been a great help, I'm not sure why I didn't already think of this considering I sort of did this before when I switched from Mac OS to Linux (I got way too many interruptions from Apple specific stuff and Chrome telling me it was out of date and couldn't be updated on Mac OS - there wasn't a way to turn a lot of those warnings off).
Update 2: So, long story short, I yelled "Leroy Jenkins!" as loud as I could, didn't unplug any drives and sat at my workstation and did the upgrade over SSH and VNC from 14.04 to 16.04.
It worked great.
My NFS issue is gone and I was able to mount up the movie drive via NFS on my 1st Gen Apple TV running OSMC. I went ahead and re-added the Kodi repository afterward before even booting into the Kodi desktop (I have it setup as a window manager) then "installed" it again so there wouldn't be version issues. I'm in the clear.
FYI - I'm not a big Apple fan despite the Apple TV and the old Mac Pro. It's all a bunch of happenstance that I have this stuff, but I've long been a fan of Mac Pro's for being being great server-class hardware that can usually be picked up at a reasonable price on the used market. The fact this 11ish year old computer is still in use is a testament to that.
So, between your experience and my experience I'm going to declare "14.04 to 16.04 on an ancient Mac is probably okay".
Update 1: I tried the CentOS minimal install, I need CentOS because I am studying for RHCA and my MacPro still has enough horsepower and memory for being a decent training server. I already checked the HDD and partition type is msdos. I'll give Ubuntu a try and I will give you a feedback.
Update 1: Crud. I’ve burned the ISO to DVD, and when I reboot holding “C”, the rEFInd menu shows up but with no bootable disks! I tried other methods of getting Ubuntu on this machine and one of the options required rEFInd to be installed
As for benefits of going the 64-bit route, Michael Larabel of Phoronix does periodic 32vs64-bit benchmarks. I'll link of a couple of the more recent ones in case you're interested:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu-1604-3264 (Ubuntu 16.04)
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=32-64-16.04-Power-Tests (Power consumption)
...depending on the workload, you can see a (sometimes substantial) performance increase. Of course in other workloads you may not see any tangible increase.
Worth noting that as a general benefit, 64-bit can natively (ie not through PAE) use more than 4GB of RAM. This is a little less relevant for the Macs of this specific era though (2006-early2007) since most tended to be capped at the hardware level to either 2GB or 4GB - obvious exception here being the MacPro which can handle something like 16 or 32GB. I believe the iMac 5.1 your friend has only supports 2GB or so max, so this isn't something that'll affect them.
Where things *can* come into play is compatibility. Most of the 64-bit Linux distros support "multilib" which result in them being able to run both 32-bit and 64-bit programs. So there isn't a real down-side to using a 64-bit variant here. On the other hand, 32-bit can only run 32-bit programs. If you're just using packages offered by your distro this won't really matter since they're using free open source software and will build both 32 and 64-bit versions. However, if you're using closed-source software, some if it is being offered in only 64-bit variants. An example here would be something like Autodesk Maya which has been 64-bit only on Linux since Maya 2009. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that Maya is a common or even reasonable use case for these older macs - just that from time to time you'll run into something that won't work on a 32-bit distro, particularly if you need something from the closed-source realm.
Looking forward, a number of distros have toyed with the idea of dropping 32-bit support. It's a lot of extra time and work for them to maintain. I believe openSUSE, Arch, and Solus are 64-bit only at this point.
All that said, I don't think anyone would fault you for just sticking with a 32-bit distro on the iMac 5,1. It's an older machine with < 4GB RAM, there are 32-bit versions of distros available that should install/run right out of the box, and by the time Mint or whichever distro you choose decides to drop 32-bit support (assuming they do one day), the iMac might be old enough to have been retired anyway.
Thanks for this! Am new to Linux and struggled for some time until I discovered this page. I then tried installing via usb, and also target disk mode from another mac... Eventually i got lucky by fixing my superdrive (opened it up and fiddled with the laser) and now have ubuntu 16.04 on my old MBP2,2! Fantastic! and Thanks! The trackpad response however is 'jittery'. Ive read into mtrack but some users werent so lucky with it and I dont think my mbp has multi-touch...? Perhaps you/ someone else here has had a similar issue and can advise on a trackpad driver for old machines? Thanks!
Your ISO allowed me to install Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on my trusty old MacBook Pro 2,2
I've installed your Linux Mint 18.1 Cinnamon “Serena” on a 2006 A211 Macbook Pro and everything works out of the box.
The only thing I could not yet get to work was the @-character on the Swiss-German keyboard It is not where Macs have it and not at AltGr-2 where it would be on the Swiss Keyboard on a PC.
thanks a lot for the article. You saved my bacon.
I ran the ISO modifier on the CentOS 6.9 minimal image and it installed fine on my Mac Pro 1,1.
D.
What about Kubuntu? Have you tried it yet? Would love to get an ISO from you!
Thanks again!
thanks for your help. Finally I got Linux on my Macbook 2.1 and Imac 5.1.
My problem was that in both devices the CDROM is broken. With the Macbook I managed to boot from an xternal USB CDROM this image: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Desktop (64-bit Mac) – 1.4 GB
Interesting enough the Ubuntu 17.04, Ubuntu GNOME 16.04 do not boot.
I created a CD with the Xubuntu 17.04 mini distro. This one booted but the installation did not go through.
The Xubuntu 17.04 adopted with your isomactool did not boot either.
Just wanted to let you/people know.
I am really happy and greatfull!
Thanks a lot!
Update 1: I have to revise my statement above: The Xubuntu 17.04 does boot, but:
I need to restart OSX, hit reboot and then choose the CD image in the USB CDROM in refind. now it is working.
Interesting...
Instructions here: https://turanct.wordpress.com/tag/appleusbvideosupport/
have a look at https://sourceforge.net/projects/toysbox/files/MacBook_revival_Playground/Booting_any_ubuntu_on_MacBook-32bit_and_windows10-like_uefi_using_usb_stick.pdf
and here is a supplement to the nice job started by Matt:
put his iso on to usb stick
https://sourceforge.net/projects/toysbox/files/MacBook_revival_Playground/detailedStepsBootingLinuxUefi.pdf
have fun
I am relatively new in distros Linux. I have a Kubuntu and xfce already installed on an old Dell laptop, and it works fine. Now I have got an old Imac 5.1 / Intel Core duo, 2,16 Ghz with 1,5 Ghz SDRAM already partitioned in 3 patitions; MacOs Leopard , Snow Leopard, and Data all formatted in HFs+. I have tried to try/eventually install on the Data partition various linux distros (Manjaro-net x86 or Arch Linux all previously .iso files burnt on CD ). With Manjaro I didn't get further than " select CD-Rom boot ... " and then .. was blocked. I tried then with your "archlinux-2017.05.01-x86_64-mac-mattgadient.com " it booted ok till a terminal window popped out and asked for a command... ? Preferably I would like first to test the Arch before installing. Any advise ? Thank you very much
Update 1: Thxs Matt; i followed your suggestions and installed 16.04 LTS Ubuntu from your .iso file burnt on DVD-R.
Also previously I formatted in Fat32 the DATA partition; so when the installer asked me where to install the Ubuntu LTS I indicated this partition. During process I also changed extension to .ext4 and put a slash for the indexing ( i suppose ?) At this point I wasn't expecting my Imac to be able to boot on any partition so I burnt a very useful CD made by reFind just in case ... I used it and it worked well as a CD-boot ( option key on start ) and I was able to choose any of the 3 partitions ( 2 Macos + Ubuntu ). I chose Ubuntu and updated the system and shut down the computer. On restart with option key dwn, ...the 3 boot choices appeared .. at this point i have to do now is optimize Ubuntu or try to install something lighter. Would Manjaro still be a good choice ? Thxs for your patience and attention - great blog
maybe in near future i change my mind and i do other things... i don't know.
Thank you so much!
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:evolve-os/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install budgie-desktop
And after remove mate: sudo apt-get --purge mate-desktop
sudo apt-get autoremove
Update 1: Before remove mate you need to reboot, and will already run budgie...then you type the commands for removing mate.
I did this with Ubuntu and change to Xubuntu and works perfect
I download Manjaro image and work ok in a live cd, but when I try to install on the MacBook bios can't find the manjaro grub...
Do you know which can be the problem?
I did manual partitioning and created a /boot/efi FAT32 esp partition as Manjaro suggest, but doesn't work.
Also I let Manjaro install itself and don't work either.
Always MacBook bios shows a folder with an interrogation character inside...
Thanks for your help
Someone can chime in if they've got some experience with Manjaro specifically, but I suspect you don't want the /boot/efi bit, because that'll trip things up by trying to boot via the 64-bit EFI (which these machines don't support). Essentially you want it to boot via the standard BIOS bootloader. If you created the partition table with the /boot/efi, chances are the partition table is now GPT which will likely cause you problems because it tends to be tied to EFI. You might want to wipe the partition table and create an MBR partition table which tends to get tied to BIOS bootloaders. Then try installing with a standard (non-EFI) boot.
One more question...
How can I make work the Left ALT key to use the "third level characters" like @,#,€ ?
I can't in XFCE distros...do you have any idea?
Again thanks a lot for your help!
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Xserve1-1
This is a very interesting blog - thanks for giving us older mac users the hope of continuing to use hardware that is still in reasonably good condition! I've got an interest in Yunit, but haven't got the skills to compile an image... Is it something you'd care to do?
Thanks.
If someone's created a new Ubuntu derivative (or another distribution) that has Yunit by default, you'll probably have to point me in the direction of the 64-bit ISO for it and I can run the program on it.
Note that when I had played with Unity 8 + Mir during some of the older Ubuntu betas, it was *very* early stage and not terribly usable as a desktop environment. I don't know how far things have come along since then, but it might be worth testing Yunit in a VM before devoting too much time to it just to make sure it fits your needs.
Update 1: Hi Matt
I just wanted to say a huge THANKYOU! I'm now running 17.04 as a 64-bit image on my 2007 MacBook, and it's smooth and seemingly effortless. What's more I can now look into doing the Yunit thing. So, thank you for what is going to be a much-used and much-loved Christmas gift. Hope you have a simply splendid holiday season.
- Manjaro
Aftter modifying Manjaro with the help of isomacprog I tried to install it pressing Alt or C while booting : no keyboard ! Could not install it
- Linux Mint KDE (your version) : pressing ALT the installation freezes on the Mint logo ; pressing C, a menu appears, but no keyboard ! Could not install it
- Linux Mint XFCE (your version) : able to install it pressing ALT on boot.
Then I succeeded in installing WIFI, migrating my user accounts of Firefox and Thunderbird. Thank you very much for your help.
Regards
Thierry
Update 1: After Manjaro - which is very slow on my iMac - I tried twice to install xubuntu-17.10-desktop-amd64-mac-mattgadient.com.iso.
The iMac boots on the dvd, but the installation freezes after one minute or so, on the Xubuntu logo with the turning wheel underneath.
What's wrong ?
THANK YOU! Thank you to maintain this site and the Linux iso images for our Macs.
After hours, and days, reading blogs, how-to, etc... I could install Ubuntu on my good-old Mac Mini2,1 with a fu**** EFI and upgraded CPU, simply by burning a DVD with the amd64+mac image.
Is it normal for the ismacprog script to execute extremely fast and respond with "done" ?
Thanks
...the output should mention that bytes differ.
Update 1: Never mind about the USB mouse. I tried another one and it worked. The problem with the first mouse was a badly designed connector.
Very helpful ! Thank you !
Now i have tried both Solus images, and both leaves me with a black screen 1/3 into the process, any thoughts?
Thanks!
Update 1: Thanks that helped
That's a bit of a shot in the dark and beyond that I'm really not sure what to suggest unfortunately... maybe someone else has run into the same issue and can chime in.
Jared Rousselle
I was able to boot rEFIt off of USBs but no matter what OS I put on the sticks none would boot.
I also tried chainloading a custom 32bit grub boot loader from rEFIt with no success.
Pretty much for any of these images, burn them to a physical disk. USB will pretty much not work. I spent a good part of my weekend reimaging old and new USB sticks.
I don't know if this might help some of your readers with CoreDuo machines... but I started out with a 17" CoreDuo iMac 4,1 2006 with 2GB RAM. I stumbled across the link below and decided to take a shot at upgrading the processor. I installed a Core2Duo 2.33 GHz Intel T7600 and while I was in there a SSD. I ran the firmware update included in the link and sure enough iMac System Info now shows iMac5,1 with software apps running 64bit. It was a lot of effort so not sure I'd do it again.
The start up process is a bit ugly with rEFInd and Grub menus but I got Ubuntu 16.04 working well along side Snow Leopard. That said, Ubuntu performance is pretty good but not great. Ubuntu seems to need more than 2GB of memory. I'm thinking Lubuntu would be a better choice ?
http://lowendmac.com/2016/cpu-upgrade-options-for-2006-imacs/
Update 1: I had room for a third partition on my iMac so I loaded up Debian Live 9.30 and 64 KDE non-free (ran your program with no issues). Debian seemed to install but the next time I started up the iMac I couldn't see the disk under start up menu, rEFInd, or GRUB. When I log into Ubuntu I can see my files on that partition. I just can't boot that drive. I've reinstalled Debian a couple of times. Just can't seem to get it to work.
Update 2: Ok so this happened... After my last post I decided to run Ubuntu updates since I hadn't done so in a while. As the pkg upgrades were running I saw that GRUB had found the debian partition. I rebooted after the installs completed and sure enough Ubuntu, Debian and Mac OS X are now in the GRUB menu. Selected Debian and it started up the disk.
You can open the superdrive by sliding a fingernail under the top edge of the drive door and pulling it down carefully. Then there is a small pinhole bottom left of the disk tray. Push in a straightened paperclip it will click open. Use a finger on left and right edges to pull the tray out. Insert your boot DVD you burned earlier.
Now power down your system. Hold down the C key and power up. Keep it held until after the chime then let go. You should hear your DVD spinning up and starting the live session. Some GPUs might show a black screen for a while.
HTH
Update 1: Confirmed I ran the c program against Ubuntu 17.10 on three Mac Pros (2,1 and 1,1) and it booted and installed fine. Also worked with an unmodified Fedora 14 32bit boot disk I had laying around.
USB boot didn't work, without an install HDD but I'm sure it would have using a DVD or CD like Super Grub Disk or other utility disk that has the ability to detect OSes on USB as this is the method I use to install linux on other unsupported systems.
Many thanKs Matt and Thomas (author of the source c program).
Update 2: To save Matt on bandwidth costs, I'd like to add this simple snippet of info. Compiling the program took less time to do than pressing the enter key. I.e. less than a second. Running the program against a stock iso took 2 seconds approximately. So save our friend some bandwidth and use the program!
This was on a dual quad core system with 32gb or ram, but I think the program is single threaded, and nt much ram would be used. If you had a few GB of ram, you'll be fine. Plus tis way might be faster than actually downloading a modified image!
GL
I had to burn the DVD using another machine as my iMac drive had the laser calibration error. After a few attempts to get the iMac to read the disk it finally booted from the ‘Windows’ disc option and installed.
Only question now is how to have it boot directly into LM without needing to hold down the alt key?
If you're dual booting (one explanation), the easy way is to pop into OS X, System Preferences (top-left apple menu), choose Startup Disk, change it to the linux partition, then reboot.
If you're not dual-booting (did a wipe/install), after you have the boot menu (Alt), you can try holding down Control before clicking/selecting the Linux partition. This *might* permanently change the default boot drive in Apple's BIOS/boot. Not positive, but it's easy enough to do so worth a try. You'll know whether it worked on next reboot.
The other possible option would be to try manually setting the partition to an active boot partition from within Linux. A google search containing the words "ubuntu set partition boot active" will probably result in a few options. This is the messier option, but if all else fails, it's worth a shot.
Hopefully at least one of those gets you going.
Tried previously but couldn´t get Puppy or some others running due to a black screen half way through booting up. Must have been something to do with the graphics ?
Many many thanks again.
Your Lubuntu 17.04 iso on a DVD did the trick!
Note: Here is my experience as of 2/4/18 for anyone trying with a MacBook Pro 17-inch Core 2 Duo Late 2006
Not complaining! Can't thank you enough for doing this for us, just stating my test for others to know.
Lubuntu 17.10 freezes. I've tried editing the boot with "nomodeset". That gave me a light blue screen that froze instead of a frozen dark blue screen. I let it sit for 3hrs each time. Issue with the version itself.
Puppy 6.3.2 wouldn't light up the screen. I could barely see writing with a flashlight and reading glasses.
Lubuntu 17.04 loaded up fast. Things kept moving so I didn't watch the time. It was minutes.
Matt, I want sincerely thank you for doing the marvelous job converting these linux isos for us and reviving our old iMacs.
Thank so much and keep up with the great work! Much love and peace from Brazil.
Update 1: Hi Matt. I am having problems running the converted ISO of Ubuntu Mate you have provided. The system freezes, the screen saver also freezes, leaving to me the only option to reboot the system. I think it has to deal with the GPU of my iMac (X1600). Any clue for making the GPU work better?
- X1600 seems to be a more problematic card to begin with
- The iMacs that came with them were't super well designed and the X1600 has a tendency to get too hot
I guess the first thing I'd do would be get some compressed air and see if you can blow out some of the years of dust that may have accumulated inside. If the card's caked (or fan is dead... hopefully not), it's more likely to be overheating which would explain a hard freeze. May not be easy to get inside with the air (you almost have to disassemble Macs to get at the dust), but do your best.An alternative would be running a GPU stress test (I think a couple are available for Linux, GpuTest/Furmark being one). If the GPU is overheating, a stress test should get that crash happening fast. Then again, if you're overheating this just might kill the GPU completely. Come to think of it, I had a few AMD video cards from around that era die pretty fast. Maybe not the route to go.
Aside from that, a slight chance that trying a different DE (LXDE maybe?) might have an impact. I mean, I'd be surprised if driver versions were any different (that's assuming the X1600 has actually been worked on over the last few years which would also surprise me). But maybe something about the DE is driving the GPU harder or triggering some odd bug. I don't think I'd do a full wipe/install here - try a LiveDVD, prevent it from sleeping, and just let it run to see if it crashes.
Those are the places I'd start. Good luck.
Only nuisance: I'm looking at greyish Mac bootup screen for about a minute before Ubuntu actually starts its startup sequence. Which in itself takes an acceptable 1 minute or so. Would you know why that is, and what to do about it?
Tackled this tonight (it's waaay past my bedtime now). So basically Apple's firmware doesn't have a default boot drive set anymore, so it's spending that time looking for possible operating systems to boot from. If you have a Mac OS X install DVD (ideally Lion, but Snow Leopard might work if you only have your original disks), it's possible to boot from it, pop into the Mac terminal on the install disc, and set the Linux partition as the boot drive manually via "bless". Then upon restart you should be looking at closer to 5 seconds on that initial screen.
This impacts pretty much everyone doing a clean Linux install, so rather than stick all the details in the response here (or risk ballooning the main write-up further), I put together a separate write-up ( https://mattgadient.com/reducing-the-30-second-delay-when-starting-64-bit-ubuntu-in-bios-mode-on-the-old-32-bit-efi-macs/ ) with the steps if you're interested.
Nathan Hanson in the comments above got Elementary Freya going via an external USB optical drive. Process was creating an empty bootcamp partition, restarting with CMD-ALT, then it loaded the disk and he was able to continue. Note that this wasn't specific to a MacBook 2,1 (not sure what he was using).
...so if you have an external USB DVD drive kicking around, it's probably worth a shot.
Note that USB flash drives seem to be problematic. Some people have made progress with USB flash drives using 32-bit EFI bootloaders but it's easy to run into brick walls here.
The other options off the top of my head if the above won't work for you (and if you just need something at least working for now) would be:
That said, there are alternate options to adjust it, and someone's written up a guide at:
https://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2013/02/enable-auto-startup-after-power-failure.html
...it shows the OS X option, a Linux option, and an option if booted from an OS X installer.
Personally I would be inclined to use either OS X (if dual-booting), or the OS X installer (if Linux-only) with the pmset autorestart 0 command in the Mac install disk's Terminal.
The reason I'd use the Mac-ish options to set it in firmware (GUI or pmset) rather than of using the Linux option (setpci) is that there's no guarantee the device ID is consistent across all Macs, or that you won't run into other issues. Using setpci the wrong way could very well mess something up on the system that ends up being really hard to undo.
Using the Apple-provided tools on the other hand should be predictable and reliable. Note that if you ever end up resetting the PRAM or SMC, it's very possible your changes will be lost.
Seriously , I can’t thank you enough. I was able to try our your build of Fedora 26 and Lxde-Ubuntu on my still awesome ( but Google chrome stopped being supported) Macbook from 2007 ...it still flies with its fusion drive that I installed ( esp with Linux) even when compared to my 2017 Retina MabookPro....so much for “progress”.
The best part was that I was wanting to have a spare machine to try out the awesome DVDs that come with my LinuxFormat subscription and thanks to your C program , I could boot Linux Mint off the LXF233 disk without any hiccups on the same 2007 MacBook.
I am thinking i’ll blog the whole journey on Medium ...but seriously , thanks a tonne.
Success ! Many thanks.
My only problem now is the trackpad is too responsive while scrolling, and I've seen many reports of that on the internet, so it may be fixable.
I have MacBook A1181 (Core2Duo on board). And that`s my way:
1) Load from original DVD with OS X and change GPT to MBR on Disk utility.
reboot & eject DVD with OS X
2) Load from DVD with Linux Mint (your linuxmint-18.3-cinnamon-64bit-mac-mattgadient.com.iso)
3) Install with full format disk (clean install). So-o-o long :)
It`s work! But wifi is dead.
4) Connect internet cable.
5) Go to "Menu" > "Administration" > "Driver Manager" and install Broadcom driver for Ubuntu
reboot
6) Enjoy!
I'm currently running 64bit Ubuntu 17.04 on my 2007 MacBook, using the image you've so kindly provided, Thank you!
However, since it's not supported anymore - and actually things have started going awry with it - I thought I might update to Xubuntu, 18.04, again using the image you have provided. However, on reboot, my laptop won't read the DVD. I've tried lots of permutations of buttons etc. to no avail. I'm also confident that I burnt the DVD as an image correctly using Brasero. Any help you can give would be appreciated.
thank you so much for this site and the effort you put into making ISOs bootable for us!
My Macbook 2,1 was such a frustrating case... but you made it possible for me :)
The only thing i have to mention is that your "elementary OS 0.4 Loki" Image is somehow bugged or has a corrupted file.
In LiveCD or installed its the same with the CPU usage, the Gala service is taking up to 100% CPU and its not possible to work with this system. I downloaded a new version from the dev site 0.4.1 and got it past the "Select CD-Boot Type" Screen. This version runs fine without the extremely slow desktop.
To boot without your special ISO you just have to follow this guide!
https://medium.com/@mark.stanislav/fixing-select-cd-rom-boot-type-when-booting-windows-or-linux-on-a-mac-76bde5d6a593
In any case, if you can't afford to have the machine down, I'd wait on the upgrade until you've got some time to tackle things if you run into issues. Before doing it, it may be worth having an install DVD for the old version (and possibly new version) handy just in case. If you don't do backups on a regular basis, it would be a great time to back up anything important beforehand as well.
If/when you do the upgrade, reporting back with the version you went from/to and whether it was successful or not may help someone else out in the same situation (if you have the time and don't mind!).
Good luck!
Since I installed Lubuntu 17.04 on my Mac Mini 2.1 I successfully upgraded it to 17.10 and then from 17.10 18.04 recently. The move to 17.10 broke my VPN Client which is a know bug on their end. No other issues to report, 18.04 runs like a charm.
"No mountable file system"
Any ideas?
Here are my specs:
Mac Pro (1,1) 2 x 3 GHz Dual Core Intel Xeon, 6GB mem OS X Lion 10.7.5
Thanx!
Just tried Ubuntu 18.04 on a MacBook 2,1 and it worked great. Tried on a iMac 5,1 and installed fine but gives me black windows when I open an app. Any thoughts? Standard iMac with 4GB of RAM. It ran Lion ok when I started.
[When boot screen comes up, press the key to edit the boot (mine is "e"); add nomodeset on the linux line.
After it boots, edit the /etc/config/grub to have nomedeset as one of the options, and rerun grub-config.
[[typing this from memory. Specifics may actually be wrong. YMMV]]]
FYI I just successfully used your c program to modify a Clonezilla Live CD. Thanks once again for this little bit of magic!
It enabled me to get Trisquel 8.0 installed on my MacBook 2,1 and it's working very well.
Many thanks for your work and explication.
Thanks in advance for any comments.
Use a program like Burn ( http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/Pages/English/home.html ) or SimplyBurn ( https://sourceforge.net/projects/simplyburns/ ) to burn the ISO to a disk. For Burn I believe it's done via the "Copy" tab. For SimplyBurn use the "Burn Image" option. Sometimes one of the programs can be finicky - if so, try the other. You can also use another burning program if you happen to have one kicking around.
Then try booting from the disk.
If that doesn't work, try a 32-bit image (download from Ubuntu) - burn it to a disk and give it a shot - if the 32-bit one doesn't work either, then there's really no point in fiddling with these modified 64-bit images because if the 32-bit one doesn't work the 64-bit modified is guaranteed not to work. Obviously if the 32-bit one works but 64-bit one doesn't, you can opt to stick with the 32-bit one if you'd rather not keep tackling things.
However, if you're fine with running a 32-bit version, you can try writing the 32-bit ISO to a USB stick which may work. There are a few ways of doing it, but the easiest might be to use Fedora's Media Writer ( https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/download/ ). I believe it'll let you choose an ISO you've downloaded (you don't have to use Fedora), but again, there are a number of guides out there for writing an ISO to USB so take a look at a few and choose the option you're most comfortable with.
If all else fails, with a non-Air you'd have the option of pulling the drive and using a donor computer to do the Linux install (then swap the drive back into the machine), but I don't know if the Air 1,1 uses a standard 2.5" SATA drive or not (I'm guessing not, which makes this a considerably more difficult avenue to pursue).
All that said, if someone's had success with an Air maybe they'll be willing to chime in with steps they took to install.
laying around all over.
I imagine the drivers may work with one that has an apple rom but not sure let me know if anyone can confirm or has
some input about the cards w/o an apple rom.
There is a thing called plop manager you may of heard of that works pretty good.
Now I can re-deploy my mid-2007 MacBook as a handy server with built-in battery backup.
...for my macmini2,1 and it booted perfectly. A big THANK YOU from west of the Pecos.
:D
The MacPro 1,1 2006 with Xeon has me stumped. It also has a dead Super drive.
I've used etcher to make Mint19 Sticks - Won't load no matter what instructions I follow.
I've made a few DVDs. Even when I hole option, the DVD doesn't show up as a boot choice. I've even forced the Lion bootloader (boot choices) to load, and then manually spun up an external DVD, doesn't load.
I burned a DVD off this list, with this distro - Linux Mint 19 Cinnamon “Tara” (64-bit Mac)
AND IT STILL won't show up either in mac bootloader, or in Refind - Yes, I have Refind installed on the MacPro and it sees all the drives I loaded, none of which have a 32bit EFI boot on them.
The only thing I can think of is that I'm burning my ISOs to a DVD+R using OS X Sierra on a 2017 iMac. Is it possible that DVD+R is wrong? It spins up, but never loads on the Macpro.
I'm about to custom partition a USB stick and try manually making an EFI partition, but I'm not even confident that will work.
I'm a patient man when it comes to desktop Linux distros. I'm no dev or programmer, but I can get my way around linux desktop and server distros, no probs.. Beginning to tear my hair out.....
Thanks much
Time to install Kali on it and dual-boot with Windows 7
Nice work. Thank you :)
Regular boot goes to snow leopard, alt/option boot let's you select between the two (says windows). Thank you.
rEFInd can auto-detect your installed EFI boot loaders and it presents a pretty GUI menu of boot options.
I installed rEFInd after installing Kubuntu because (unlike with bootcamp) holding down the Option key when the Mac boots up does not provide an option of booting up Kubuntu.
This video also helped me with chosing the correct Kubuntu partitioning options.
Cheers,
Simon.
ubuntu
ubuntu-budgie
budgie
If no luck, hit CTRL-ALT-F2 and try to add a user via
sudo adduser mike. Edit: some of the combinations require a TTY login so try CTRL-ALT-F1 etc to see if there's a combo that bypasses that. Afterwards, CTRL-ALT-F7 should hopefully throw you back to the GUI... trial-and-error CTRL-ALT plus different Function keys if F7 doesn't do it. Log in with the new user ("mike" in this example) in that case.I want to let you know, that I was able to run isomacprog.c against a Windows 10 ISO (32 and 64 bit),
Installation of Windows 10 works on an IMac 6.1!
You have to use a DVD. Every method I used (unetbootin, rufus, LiLo, Win32Diskimager) failed.
Only caveeat: the white boot screen stays on for about 10 Seconds until Windows boots.
Mr. Gadient: Thanks for your In depth insight!
greetz!
I wasted a few DVDs before I found this page. Your LINUX MINTLinux Mint 19 Cinnamon “Tara” (64-bit Mac) – 1.9 GB worked great on my MacBook 2,1.
I'm in the same situation as you. I have bunch of iMac 5.2 (late 2006) with obsolete OS X:
https://everymac.com/systems/apple/imac/specs/imac-core-2-duo-1.83-17-inch-specs.html
You can easily check what WiFi card is in your iMac by running this command in terminal:
lspci | grep Network
In my iMac 5.2 there is BCM4311. In your iMac 5.1 it should be the same.
To make WiFi work in Linux Mint on your iMac:
1. Attention: Broadcom driver from Administration/Driver Manager doesn't work, because it is for newer Broadcom hardware. Make sure "Do not use the device" is choosed (it is disabled after fresh Mint installation).
2. Open Synaptic Package Manager
3. In the search field type: broadcom
4. Install "firmware-b43-installer" ("b43-fwcutter" will also be installed). Make sure that no other Broadcom driver is installed, because that may lead to conflitcts.
5. Reboot
Thats it. I don't know why, but it can't connect to WPA2 protected WiFi, so it must be set to less secure WPA.
I've tried bunch of linux distros, and CloudReady (ChromeOS). The fastest is CloudReady, so check it out. On the linux side I found Mint Mate to be the best. It uses less resources than Cinnamon, and it is more advanced than Xfce. I needed connect TV to iMac to play some youtube videos. My experience is that Mate is playing 720p YT videos well. On Cinnamon it was choppy, and XFCE had some problems with external display.
To reduce boot time you should bless boot partition:
https://mattgadient.com/reducing-the-30-second-delay-when-starting-64-bit-ubuntu-in-bios-mode-on-the-old-32-bit-efi-macs/
Below I'll paste my post (from September 1, 2018) which contains some useful information:
First, one important thing I’ve noticed on iMac 5.2 (white c2d model): Linux Mint Mate (as well as other linux distros, I think) is overheating this c2d machine in the upper side, and when you leave it running for a long time period, it may lead to physical LCD damage (vertical red/green/blue stripes on LCD), as on my photos below:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CSNUsi_zymtjZfCQnljndpakGwmCf0vE https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nA7noETmSJB8hbN9GSszbMnyn2KWRJy9
The same damage affected couple of iMacs (model 5.2). I think overheating is wider problem with linux on older Macs, but I don’t have knowledge to track it down and remove it. I’m curious if anyone else noticed this. Here is forum thread I found with description how to deal with it, but I don’t know if it is the perfect cure for this problem:
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=246788
I found some info and tools to control Mac fans, which may be helpful:
Macfanctld
Mbpfan
Lm-sensors
I’ve noticed also, that Mint (and other distros) on Macs is a little bit sluggish, comparing to regular PCs with the same specs: slower boot, slow loading prorgams, some lags in UI especially after system boot etc. There is some trick to make Mac booting faster, with blessing linux HD as You mentioned, but I have feeling that Linux is slower on Macs than on PCs anyway. I think that it might have something to do with slow HDD operation, but I don’t have knowledge to track down this problem and find right solution.
Finally here’s great “Easy Linux tips project”, which I recommend to anyone to speed up linux Mint on low specs Macs (with 2GB RAM or less):
https://sites.google.com/site/easylinuxtipsproject/Home
I was flummoxed as to why wifi wouldn't connect on my "new" Linux Mint computer and you provided the answer.
There's lots of relevant tips here for the newby iMac rejuvenator that would be nigh-on impossible to pin down from the web in general.
Frank
An advice to people willing to install parrot sec os: Definitely tell the installer to install grub2 on the SAME partition as the os.(Even if mentioned differently elsewhere). Saves you some lifetime.
Matt, thanks again.
1. rEFInd ISO image (mine was refind-cd-0.8.7.iso);
2. one USB drive stick;
3. an external USB CD/DVD device;
4. Mattgadient's Linux Mint DVD iso image (BTW, thanks to Matt Gadient);
5. a blank DVD media;
6. USB keyboard and mouse.
7. not mandatory, an Internet connection with an Ethernet cable or a tethering cell phone connection via USB cable.
Proceed as follows:
a. write the rEFInd onto the USB stick (I used "USB Image Writer" Linux application, which makes a bootable USB stick);
b. burn the Linux iso image onto the blank DVD;
c. attach both the USB stick, the USB DVD reader and the USB keyboard to the USB ports of the Mac;
d. boot the Mac;
e. after a while, the boot screen of rEFInd will appear. Select the DVD media as your boot device;
f. be patient: give the Linux installer the time it needs;
g. start the installation process and be *very* patient: the complete startup will take some time. Roll a spliff!;
h. choose the standard installation (Mint will install the Linux partition on /dev/disk0s2);
i. after the installation is finished, reboot your system;
l. when the rEFInd boot screen appears, choose your internal HD as boot device.
It's done!
Now you have to activate the WiFi hardware. Open "Driver Manager" application of your brand new installed Linux. You'll see that the network controller Broadcom Limited BCM4321 is unabled by defaut. Activate it by clicking the checkbox... Done!
As for the iSight webcam, I could make it work perfectly following the instructions here:
http://www.howtoeverything.net/linux/hardware/making-isight-work-ubuntu-linux-mint-and-skype
to
To reduce the startup grey screen time, the instruction you find above, right in this page, are ok. Remember to verify your Linux partition with the terminal command "diskutil list". In my case the fix command was:
bless --device /dev/disk0s2 --legacy --setBoot --verbose
------
CONCLUSIONS - With 3 GB RAM everything works like a charm. The machine is incredibly fast in comparison to Mac OS X. Boot time: 1'10"... Since the result is well beyond my expectations, I'm starting to think that an SSD SATA drive could be a good deal.
3ndriux, Milano, IT
As for the 3GB/4GB bits, it's a mix of a hardware and BIOS/EFI limitation. The platform has a max of 4GB installed memory, and reserved memory is stored/addressed within that 4GB range which results in only 3-3.5GB being available. 3GB of installed RAM will get you roughly 3GB of free RAM (reserved memory can be allocated above that address range), but 4GB of RAM will only add a couple hundred extra megabytes to that because it runs into the reserved space.
Some PC BIOSs from the era had an option to push the reserved region up to a higher address space so you could access more of the 4GB, and platforms with a max of > 4GB will tend to push reserved mem to a higher region regardless. Your Inspiron likely falls under one of these.
Just as a side-note since it looks like you might be experimenting a bit: if you install Windows on the Macbook, depending on the Windows version it'll likely report 4GB of RAM - however, it's reporting the installed RAM rather than the free RAM (if you dig deeper you'll see that not all 4GB are available).
The wifi did not worked at the beginning but I found the solution here:
https://askubuntu.com/a/447932
Then I proceeded to installed the oibaf drivers (why not?):
https://launchpad.net/~oibaf/+archive/ubuntu/graphics-drivers
The only thing I cant found a solution is for the mic, this computer has a mic or I am wrong?
Matt, Thanks SO much for hosting and setting these images up. I cant thank you enough. it's saved my old Macbook Pro 2,2.
I'm currently running Mint 19.0 and enjoying it, but Its a tad battery / resource heavy. Is there a better install for my machine that will continue to receive LTS? any suggestions would be appreciated.
The same USB drive WILL boot my Dell perfectly fine (same as you).
As many others have mentioned on here, I can confirm my iMac boots from these isos when burned to a DVD.
I've burnt 2 of your ISOs into DVDs and tried to boot but nothing: it goes from the Apple logo to a question mark folder to another "prohibition" icon and the repeats the cycle.
I've got a MacPro 1.1 but I've run the Firmware Tool to update it giving me know the fact that is a "MacPro 2.1": could this be the problem?
In that case, can I burn a "normal" Linux distro (like Linux Mint Cinnamon) to a DVD and hope to get it working?
Thanks and best regards.
To your first question, the MacPro 1,1 and 2,1 are nearly identical (if toying around with alternative CPUs you can actually flash the firmware from 1,1 to 2,1 and vice-versa). So I really doubt that's the issue. Old firmware could be problematic if Apple added bootcamp-related stuff to newer firmware but 1,1/2,1 shouldn't really matter.
To the 2nd question, a "normal" 32-bit Linux distro should work. If even the normal 32-bit ISO doesn't, my initial guesses would be that either the DVD drive has issues or the machine simply needs a firmware update (not a 1,1-to-2,1 update, but just a standard firmware update from within the MacOS system updates).
With your images I managed to recover an old iMac 5,1 Core 2 Duo 2.16, RAM 3GB, late 2006 and a MacBookAir 1,1, Core 2 Duo 1.6 Original, RAM 2 GB, late 2008 installing Linux Mint 19 XFCE.
Only on the MacBookAir I added in the /etc/default/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash video=SVIDEO-1:d" cause of the bug [drm:drm_atomic_helper_commit_cleanup_done to get rid of the initial delay.
The iMac went smoothly installed.
Thank you again ! Good job.
I try to install lubuntu 18.10 on mac mini 2.1. I can boot from the DVD (using pre-made lubuntu 18.10, downloaded from here), but after installation, the system won't boot. I'm using MBR with 2 partitions (/ and /home). What am I doing wrong? I got a grey screen with a flashing folder icon.
There are any additional steps what I need to do after installation?
Update 1: Lubuntu 18.04 works without problem.
I'm not sure I understand all the nuances of boot, but I get that there is a mismatch in the older imacs, and the images here helps with the workaround, and I'm very grateful.
In my case, I have a 2006 imac 5,1, and I couldn't get rid of the mac os partition stuck on snow leopard because my wife has some licensed software she cannot live without - even though nothing can be updated anymore. So, I ventured on dual boot. For the most part it works with xubuntu 18.04, but I seem to have a slight problem and wondered if anyone else encountered it.
But first, how I got here: I could not boot from DVD. Both the modified 64-bit version and canned 32-bit version would spin at boot, and then the DVD would get spit out. It wasn't until installed rEFIt, I was able to boot from DVD. And then during installation, I had partitioned two spaces - one for / and another for swap space. I got what appears to be a stiff warning about not reserving a partition for boot/BIOS. So I carved out another partition, and I didn't get the warning anymore. So, to recap:
sda1 - original boot partition
sda2 - mac os
sda3 - newly created boot partition because of the installation warning
sda4 - /
sda5 - swap space
Now, I don't know what the installation actually did. I don't know where grub lives, and I don't know if I'm using mbr. How would I find this out?
In any case, upon finishing the installation, everything seemed to work. I can restart to either mac os and xbuntu via rEFIt. grub is loaded when I click on the penguin icon. The next day, I tried to boot xubuntu, and it got caught in a boot loop. It would get to initializing udev, and then restart. During this boot loop, the grub timer goes to 30 seconds. I had changed the default to 5, so I'm guessing this loop isn't considered normal boot. Oh, the reason I changed the default to 3 is no other reason than xubuntu as part of system update to 18.04.2, it asked if I wanted to merge /etc/default/grub. I wanted to see the difference - and this is the difference as far as I can tell:
GRUB_DEFAULT=0
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden
GRUB_TIMEOUT=3
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
Weirdly, the only way to break the loop is to try loading the original kernel (18.04) in recovery mode from the grub boot menu, and then when that reboots, load the current kernel (18.04.2). Took awhile to realize that combination can be a workaround for now...
Otherwise, enjoying the second lease of life on the old imac. Thanks.
-
I have some updates.
I can confirm grub lives in sda3.
And after another kernel update to 4.15.0-46, there is no more boot loop. It cause me a little panic after the update because xubuntu as part of kernel update removed the old 4.15.0-20 that used to break the boot loop. I even tried to chroot to restore 4.15.0-20, only to realize that 4.15.0-46 boots on its own. Weird. Actually, I don't know if it's kernel update specifically, it may be some other package(s) that was causing the boot loop.
I was about to give up when I read that last bit on your page about using a different computer to install and then migrate the hard drive back into the Mac. Now, here is the cool part... In Linux Mint 18.1, I was able to create a bootable USB image from the modded .iso!! I was able to use an old Dell non-efi machine to boot the USB image and then install Ubuntu 18.04 in just a matter of minutes! The USB saves so much time. Just wanted you to know that your .iso can be booted from a USB stick!
Thanks for the brilliant work!
I'm trying to install ubuntu 18.04 live server, but my DVD reader seems broken, and the installer has I/O error while copying files to disk. So I tried debian 9 net install, it starts but usb keyboard doesn't work (it works with ubuntu live server).
So I created myself a ubuntu 18.04 net install image: it boots but still no keyboard.
Have you some suggestions? Something I'm doing wrong maybe..
My hardware is mac mini 2,1 (intel core 2 duo 1 GB of ram).
Thanks,
Dario
I will try again, however thank you!
I lately installed Bunsenlabs with the default Live Image, and it worked out of the box so I stayed with it, but switched to Budgie since I realy like it after Solus
The way I solved the issue of not being able to boot to lubuntu-18.04-desktop-amd64-mac-mattgadient.com.iso was to download the lubuntu-14.04.1-desktop-amd64+mac.iso and upgraded to Lubuntu 16.04. (Please wish me luck on the upgrade to Lubuntu 18.04.) The boss doesn't want to buy another computer or software. I told him I may have a solution. So his Mac is running Lubuntu 16.04! I hope to be using it this week.
Is it possible to make Ubuntu mini iso for 32 bit efi? That would be wonderful addition to your collection! I am so interested in making this myself, if it can be done.
Update 1: Done with Pop OS, already install 17.04 and upgraded to 19.04, running smooth. Thanks.
Good luck.
It should show a list of drives: msdos=MBR gpt=GPT
If it's GPT you could try a reinstall, but before going through the installation, manually partition as MBR via:or...but replace the X in /dev/sdx with the proper letter for the hard drive. Note that this will completely wipe the drive, so not a great option if you've got another installation already that you're hoping to dual-boot against.
If it's already MBR and isn't working, it's possible that 19.04 isn't firing up for some other reason in which case you may want to try a different *buntu flavor, or an older version of Lubuntu to see if you have more luck.
Update 1: In case this helps anyone else, I'll write what I did. I ended up installing Lubuntu 16.04.6 (converted the iso using the c program) using a dvd on my Macbook 2,1, and then upgrading to 18.04 using the software updater application. It wasn't obvious how to get MBR formatting using the Lubuntu installer (the first time I ended up with GPT, and it did boot). I had to run gparted from the install dvd and then use manual partitioning (swap 3GB, root - the rest). Performance is great with Lubuntu. It's lighter than Mint.
My one problem is that I still have to boot twice, as with Mint. The first time fails to load the grub screen. I have been researching this and looking at systemd logs and it sounds like it might have to do with journal flushing, but I'm not sure.
Anyways, thanks for this website.
Thank you for the good work.. I have using Ubuntu Server 16.04 from your DVD image for 2 years.. Now Im considering to upgrade to upgrade to 18.04 directly from the PPA via CLI. Is it safe? Will it broken the installation (GRUB, Kernel, etc) that makes it work with 32 EFI? Or should I fresh install with you DVD image (18.04)?
Thank you!
Newer versions tend to be a little heavier. Ubuntu also switched from Unity to GNOME in 18.04 which uses a little more RAM. Depending on whether you're starting GNOME via Xorg or Wayland (selected on login screen) may make a bit of a difference here too.
As for 64-bit options: if happy with 16.04 you could always try the 64-bit variant though it's EOL so updates could be a concern. Otherwise Lubuntu is popular for being lightweight, as is Xubuntu. Of course sticking with 32-bit distros is fine too: these MacBooks could never utilize the full 4GB of RAM anyway and practically speaking the only thing you're really going to miss out on by running 32-bit is the increased difficulty of finding 32-bit versions of software outside of distro repos. 64-bit can have some performance advantages in some cases but for average usage, going with the least memory-hungry distro you can will generally be the speediest option - if that ends up being a 32-bit distro then that's just fine.
On my 2006 original MP 1.1 flashed to 2.1, upgraded cpu to xeon 5365 3ghz, filled with 64gb ram, powered with gpu rx 470 8gb, and equipped with ssd,
as of now I'm running 18xubuntu, 19ubuntu and el-capitanOS.
Does FreeBSD, or other BSD flavors, install CD/DVD have the same story?
I should mention too that prior to installing Arch I had already updated my processores to two slaed quad core 5365's and installed 32GB of ram and I installed mac os x lion 10.7.5 on another hard drive and flash the bios from 1,1 to 2,1 and I also installed a "newer" pc graphics card (radeon hd 4650). I don't think it matters though except having a newer graphics card than the old 256 or 512mb mac ones. Some other tips are forget about using usb burn the contents of the iso to a dvd. Hold down "c" on the keyboard immediately after the chime to boot from the dvd. Sometimes if you push down the c key too early it will mess it up. It can take a while for it to boot from dvd so give it 4-5 minutes. You should hear it spinning and groaning if it's booting the dvd.
Any suggestions?
1) ./isomacprog debian-10.2.0-amd64-netinst.iso -> debian-10.2.0-amd64-netinst-mac-mattgadient.com.iso
2) Install Debian base -> done, or:
3) ./isomacprog archlinux-2019.11.01-x86_64.iso -> archlinux-2019.11.01-x86_64-mac-mattgadient.com.iso
Install Arch Linux: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide
# ip link
# ping archlinux.org
# timedatectl set-ntp true
# fdisk -l ->
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: A592282F-4A1F-45DC-9226-4856FFFEF3BD
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 2048 4095 2048 1M BIOS boot
/dev/sda2 4096 228218879 228214784 108.8G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3 228218880 234440703 6221824 3G Linux swap
# mkswap /dev/sda3
# swapon /dev/sda3
# mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda2
# mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
# pacstrap /mnt base linux linux-firmware net-tools vim terminus-font
# genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
# arch-chroot /mnt
# pacman -S grub
# grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sda
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
# ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Yakutsk /etc/localtime
# hwclock --systohc
# vim /etc/locale.gen ->
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
# locale-gen
# vim /etc/locale.conf ->
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
# vim /etc/vconsole.conf ->
LOCALE="en_US.UTF-8"
KEYMAP="ruwin_alt_sh-UTF-8"
FONT="ter-v16n"
CONSOLEMAP=""
# vim /etc/hostname ->
macbook
# vim /etc/hosts ->
127.0.0.1localhost
::1localhost
127.0.1.1macbook.localdomain macbook
# pacman -S iputils
# passwd
# pacman -S intel-ucode
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
# ifconfig
# vim /etc/systemd/network/20-wired.network ->
# Wired adapter using DHCP
[Match]
Name=enp1s0
[Network]
DHCP=ipv4
# Wired adapter using a static IP
[Match]
Name=enp1s0
[Network]
Address=192.168.1.14/24
Gateway=192.168.1.1
#DNS=192.168.1.1
DNS=8.8.8.8
DNS=8.8.4.4
# vim /etc/resolv.conf ->
nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4
# systemctl enable --now systemd-networkd.service
# ifconfig
# networkctl
exit or pressing Ctrl+d
umount -R /mnt
# swapoff /dev/sda3
# reboot
Enjoy Arch Linux install.
My daughter has a ASUS X205TA which has a 32 bit EFI.
So a lot of problems to install Linux on this computer.
Many issues...
You can see this inks :
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2254322&page=212
So 212 pages on Ubuntu forum !
My question :
Can these ISO for Appel 32 bit EFI be instaled on my ASUS X205TA ?
Or it's only impossible ?
Thanks for your answer
That said, various hardware/driver issues and hiccups that others mentioned in the thread you linked may still exist.
Happy Christmas on you and everyone else!
Regards, Markus
Thanks
thanks a lot for your cool page! I figured out an easy way to make a bootable USB stick using some of your ISO's. The process really takes only 10 minutes, even it looks like a quite a lot of text.
I have written the procedure on my webpage:
https://mesom.de/efi32boot/index.html
Stefan
- after start with "option", there are 2 DVD symbols, "Windows" + "EFI boot", selecting "EFI boot" works (selecting "Windows" ends up with black screen)
- start takes VERY LONG, fiddling around with the keyboard brought other display modes, so I could see lot of error messages, each causing some wait until time out
- installation worked, I choose 3rd party drivers for Wifi (MB 4.1 has some BCM43xx).
- entering some password will be on ASCII/QWERTY - not the chosen one - be aware when using special characters :-)
- Deutsch (Macintosh) leaves "@" on AltGr-L !
- after installation, extreme slow boot/shutdown, lots of "drm_kms_helper error"s and "flip_done timed out" - you will find lot of info in internet, for me helped:
/etc/default/grub following line modified:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash video=SVIDEO-1:d"
Well, now its a Linux machine, no more MAC OS..
New Arch .iso working great and thanks for the Archlabs .iso - very cool.
Lemme know if you need a couple more links for other .iso.
Best,
Jer
ClearLinux uses systemd-boot instead of GRUB, so the live image can't actually load. I followed the instructions to create the bootable stick and was about to actually massage some grub config files in the image itself but then realised that if it DOES install itself with systemd-boot. Confirmed this in a VM so it looks like Clear is a no go T_T
Thanks for providing help, I really appreciate it
So I'm wondering, maybe I should wait until whatever is in bionic-updates (Ubuntu18.04 updates) is folded into a future release and then try again. My machine, by the way, is a Mac Pro 1,1 with oodles of RAM. I had previously installed on a different HD, with similar results.
I have encountered the same issue as Mike running Ubuntu18.04 (w/ updates) on a MacPro 1,1 (I purchased a few days ago).
I get the double trashcan and the noisy top menu, striped background image.
Ubuntu is really slow too... Geekbench5 scores are in the 400s...
Is the Mac Pro 1,1 not fit for Ubuntu18.04?
Is Ubuntu16 a better fit?
Thank you for everything!
As I was planning to install Linux Mint on that Mini PC, I found a different way, namely a nifty tool names "YUMI UEFI". It's a windows program that creates multi-boot USB sticks, and while the former version was only BIOS compatible, the 0.0.2.0 beta version creates EFI sticks. The YUMI UEFI created stick boots either 32-bit or 64-bit – and afterwards you can boot into any Linux distro that it has added to its multi-boot menu, both 32-bit or 64-bit.
This multi-boot stick also works on my MacBook 2,1, so actually this enables me to download virtually any original Linux distro ISO (at least those that YUMI EFI supports) and create a bootable stick without actually having to burn a DVD.
… Today I published a blog post, albeit German and albeit dealing with the mentioned Mini PC, it also covers the EFI-32 situation and YUMI UEFI.
I've been using your ISOs for years on a late-2006 iMac. Decided to upgrade to 19.10 from 18.04 because I read that Gnome was quite a bit faster there, but have been greeted with a "GRUB RESCUE" terminal.
In the original post, you said that "as long as you partitioned as MBR, it should survive most distro version upgrades since they tend to equate MBR with BIOS, and GPT with EFI. This can matter if it updates the bootloader (I’ve had a GPT bootloader get borked by an upgrade before)."
Seeing as my partition is formatted GPT (is there a way to convert it to MBR without a reformat?), I'm thinking this is exactly what happened and the bootloader is now trying to load a 64bit EFI and the needs to be converted back to BIOS-mode.
What would be the easiest way to repair this? I'm thinking I'll have to boot from a Ubuntu Live disc, but what do I do from there? Will this https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair do the job?
Cheers!
Note that if I'm remembering right here, even as MBR I've had some upgrades that worked and others that killed the bootloader. LTS to LTS never bit me, but the old Macbook is long gone now so I have no idea whether that will hold moving forward or not.
In any case, good luck!
I used "C Program" to convert the Antix-19.1_386-full.iso and now it runs smoothly on my early 2006 iMac.
Thanks a lot! I bookmarked your useful and impressive site.
Everything working with Linux Mint 19.3 Cinnamon “Tricia” (64-bit Mac) on MacBook Pro 15-Inch "Core 2 Duo" 2.16 - 2006.
No problems with boot, drives, etc.
Good speed and improved hardware utilization.
Thank you Matt, for your knowledge.
Best regards,
José Branco (Portugal)
Your ubuntu studio 19.10 iso works on macpro 2,1 with a amd r9 280x card, but I could not make a reboot / shutdown. I only see a endless circle....What can i do to solve this?
Heiner Woestefeld
As a quick test, make sure you can log out / log in first. If it hangs on logout the display manager itself might be having issues. Assuming they haven't dropped X yet, try a Wayland session vs an X session in the login options to see if it only impacts 1 of them - display driver issue would be my first guess if this is the case.
Moving on...
If you're familiar with editing the grub menu, removing "quiet splash" prints out all the stuff that happens both on startup and shutdown if I'm remembering right. I usually boot all OS's utilizing a verbose mode of sorts the moment I start hitting issues.
The other alternative would be to shutdown from the CLI and see what messages crop up there. CTRL-ALT-F1 should drop you into a TTY. Log in and try shutting down from there. "sudo shutdown -h now" or "sudo poweroff" or "sudo halt", etc. I don't think you have to kill the display manager first, but not positive here.
In any case, hopefully you will see some text output that helps point to the problem. The most common cause I've found is that a certain service hangs on shutdown and SystemD gives it a lengthy timer ("a stop job is running") before manually killing it. So the system ends up "hung" for potentially 5 minutes per problematic service. If this is the case and you find the problematic service you can do a little searching to see if it's a common issue and if so whether there's a workaround or not.
I tried your tips, but nothing help to solve.
On the shutdown screen the info after "Reached target Power-off" is: rcu: INFO: rcu_preemt self-detected stall on CPU.
I made some (camera-)pictures,,,maybe it helps to find the problem?
Thanks for your answer.
Heiner
If no luck there, I'd probably suggest just manually powering off the system at that point - it certainly wouldn't be the first system in history that needed the power button held to shut off.
If manually powering off isn't an option (need shutdown via remote access or scheduled shutdowns for example), the obvious options are to either try another distro to see if it behaves a little better there, or start searching for other situations where people ran into similar issues but managed to fix them. Good luck!
for macbook pro 2,1 (model A1181) a way to make a bootable usb very simply is with the following:
1 - grab iso from this page/ made one yourself with isomacprog
2 - format your usb drive to fat32 with mbr partition table and 1 partition
3 - append boot and esp flag to that partition (easy with gparted)
4 - extract the iso content at the root of the mounted usb drive (with 7z for example)
5 - test it
worked with elementary os hera, xubuntu 18.04 (tough keyboard dont work), clonezilla.
thx very much for the isos matt btw
Back again
Just finished an install of your Ubuntu Desktop 17.04 on my Early 2006 Mac Pro 1,1,
along side MacOS Lion 10.7 with ReFind 0.11.5 as the Boot Manager,
only issue I had was not being able to obtain updates for Ubuntu,
kept failing and saying I had a network issue,
even though I could browse the web with it via firefox
I swapped out both my 1Gig Mac Edition HD 5870's for a Mac Edition 1Gig HD 5700
I found in my parts cupboard while looking for my 1Gig Mac Edition HD 4870 lol,
did the swap out before the install.
The DVD install was actually quite fast,
the live disk also run quite fast even from a DVD.
Just going to give your Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop a go now,
keep you posted on how it go's.
Ever thought of posting these as Torrents ?
Would make downloading them faster and may even take some of the work load off your server.
P.S.
I did the 17.04 install with all other HDD's removed,
Leaving only the Ubuntu destination HDD in bay 2,
that way I did not accidentally mess up my MacOS Lion install,
worked a treat 8-),
I installed ReFind after the Linux Install, so that ReFind was the Default boot manager.
Regards
Damien
have you tried resetting your PRAM?
Hold "option(alt) + Command + P + R" at start up, you can do this before you hear the start up sound,
the screen will go white first boot(but not always) then the screen will flash and the machine will reboot,
hold the key combination for up to 3 reboots for best results, then let it boot into OS X,
login, give it a few seconds to finish loading every thing,
then reboot with the DVD in the optical drive and hold the "option(alt)" key to get the boot manager,
then try booting from your DVD again.
Another trick is to reset your NVRAM,
by holding "Option(alt) + Command + N + V" at start up,
once you see all the command line code let the keys go and let the machine boot,
login, wait a few seconds for every thing to finish loading,
then reboot and hold "option(alt)" key at start up for the boot manager.
hope this helps
Any thoughts would be helpful. I am running out on errands and plan to read back through the comments when I get back but thought I would leave this in the event someone knows what is happening and can provide a response that gets me on my way.
I intend to use the Macpro as a cold storage NAS, so I'm not married to any distro on this. If another one works, that's fine.
Oh, and @Jackie -> VoidLinux runs fast enough for me on this machine!
MacBook Pro Model A1211
In my old macbook 2,1 I had lubuntu 32 bits 16.04.6 LTS
And old release that was loosing ground quickly, so I decided to go a current x64 version
As a result just downloaded the provided ISO of Lubuntu 19.04.
It was installed on top of the old 14.06 partition.
Then I updated the software to latest package of that release
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade
$ sudo apt dist-upgrade
From there I upgraded to Lubuntu 19.10
$ sudo do-release-upgrade
All working just fine :-D
Do note that I did not have luck going to "Ubuntu 19.10 Desktop (64-bit Mac) – 2.3 GB"
So I tried with Lubunto Image and I was successful.
-
Just a follow up.
From Lubuntu 19.10 I just went to Lubuntu 20.04 beta and it was successful. Fast and stable.
$ sudo do-release-upgrade -d
under Lubuntu 20.04 beta I installed the iSight firmware and all working fine.
Followed this guide from steps 1 to 7...
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/use-isight-ubuntu-38894.html
then reboot.
After that, I installed "cheese" to test the cam and all good.
$ sudo apt-get install cheese
Once again, thanks a lot for the help.
-
Update on another issue and Fix => Kworker keeps hogging up my CPU
Background:
This macbook is currently used by my 8 years old kid for his virtual school matters
Currently running Lubuntu 20.10 with 5.8 Kernel, but it also happened with Lubuntu 20.04 LTS with 5.4 Kernel.
My kid reported the issue after one of the teachers moved from Zoom to Google Meet.
The symptoms were, Loud fan (CPU fan running very fast), Audio was choppy, video and audio were out of sync. He had multiple Meet disconnections using Firefox and Chrome.
Problem:
I noticed that ACPI/IRQ9 was eating lots of CPU.
When I checked ACPI interrupts, I noticed that gpe17 had a very high trigger count.
I found the problem with this command:
grep . -r /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/
Output:
chicos@mac1:~$ grep . -r /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe1F: 0 invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe13: 0 invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe0F: 0 invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe03: 0 disabled unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe1D: 0 EN enabled unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/ff_pwr_btn: 0 EN enabled unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe11: 0 EN enabled unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe0D: 0 disabled unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe01: 0 EN enabled unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/ff_rt_clk: 0 disabled unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/ff_pmtimer: 0 STS invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe1B: 0 STS invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe0B: 0 EN enabled unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe18: 0 STS invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe08: 0 invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/error: 0
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe16: 0 invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/sci: 3491042
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe06: 0 invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe14: 0 invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe04: 0 disabled unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe1E: 0 invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe12: 0 invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe0E: 0 disabled unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe02: 0 EN enabled unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe1C: 0 invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe10: 0 STS invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe0C: 0 disabled unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe00: 0 invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe_all: 3491042
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe19: 0 STS invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe1A: 0 invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe09: 0 disabled unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe0A: 0 invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe17: 3491042 EN enabled unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/ff_gbl_lock: 0 EN enabled unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe07: 0 enabled unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/sci_not: 117
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe15: 0 invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe05: 0 invalid unmasked
/sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/ff_slp_btn: 0 invalid unmasked
Fix:
Added boot parameter acpi_mask_gpe=0x17 to GRUB and reboot.
That solved the gpe17 high CPU utilization issue
with Ubuntu/Debian add "acpi_mask_gpe=0x17" parameter to /etc/default/grub, at the end of line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT.
I edited the file using nano, but any editor will do:
Sample:
sudo nano /etc/default/grub
Sample line before edit:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
Sample line after edit:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_mask_gpe=0x17"
After the edit is complete run:
sudo update-grub
Then reboot
References:
For more details, see Linux kernel commit 9c4aa1ee which was first merged in Linux 4.10-rc3 and the bug reports linked to from there.
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=9c4aa1eecb48cfac18ed5e3aca9d9ae58fbafc11
Curiously this behaviour began with Ubuntu 20.04's move from generic 5.11 to 5.13 generic, and which was then seen later when moving from low-latency 5.13 to 5.15. I had initially thought a kernel config change may have been responsible, though I'm wondering if perhaps instead it is a CPU microcode issue. In either case we're clearly not alone in seeing this, and I hope the Ubuntu devs do something. I have entered some information here:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1973434
Just a few days ago, I decided to get my old Mac Pro 1.1 out of storage and see if there is still some value to this beast on 2023.
First of all, this site is a godsend and very inspirational. We really should try to get as much mileage out of our hardware as we can instead of throwing out perfectly usable hardware out and purchase something new...sorry, Apple!
My Mac Pro is currently running Ubuntu LTS 22.04.3 LTS. The installation went flawless without a hitch but the whole system felt sluggish, there were very noticable hickups and stuttering while trying to use the machine.
I created a FreeBSD 13 installation media and installed FreeBSD on the machine, also setup the Gnome Desktop environment and the machine ran noticeable faster.
Unfortunately, sound did not work. It did, but it was whisper quiet...couldn't fix it so decided to switch back to Linux.
Indeed, on my machine it's also IRQ9 being hit.
Strangely, adding the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_mask_gpe=0x17" to my /etc/default/grub did not permanently disable the IRQ in question.
I have to manually utter the following command each time I reboot as root:
echo "disable" > /sys/firmware/acpi/interrupts/gpe11
Is there any way to make this change permanent on Ubuntu?
The kernel parameter I need to pass on Ubuntu 22.04 is "acpi_mask_gpe=0x11" (not 0x17). Maybe check your IRQ mapping?
If you're natively EFI-booting then don't forget to use the "noefi" kernel parameter. When it comes to Ubuntu 24.04 I'll experiment with its newer kernel's ability to handle hybrid 64/32 booting yet more cleanly.
And yes, I see plenty of value left in the Mac Pro 1,1 at the end of 2023! Mine continues to used daily in a production environment. The 4x SATA drive bays, eSATA (native, but with external bracket), ECC RAM, and 2x Intel NIC make it a wonderful ZFS fileserver. Sure it's not the most efficient power-wise, but in the cooler months that's a moot point as any waste heat is dissipated into a used room.
With the AMD 5770 it's quite usable as a desktop too. Will drive 3840x2160@30Hz (including audio) over mDP and HDMI. Combined with its 2x Woodcrest X5160 even heavy websites are fine. Pretty incredible for a 2006-era machine. The only two upgrades left would be 2x Clovertown X5365 and an Mac edition HD7950, though at this point I suspect rapidly diminishing returns and higher power usage mean unless time and money is free this doesn't make sense, particularly if there's already adequate CPU and GPU performance for a sensible use-case for a 1,1 today.
Now I've just upgraded internally to 18.04 LTS, and I'm hoping it'll prove stable - so far so good!
The install needed ethernet plugged in the whole way.
I tried a bunch of other images/distros, and couldn't get any others to work. The live install environment would freeze before accomplishing anything: Elementary OS, Lubuntu 17, Ubuntu 16, LinuxMint 19 - all tried and failed. I even tried using a live environment running on an iMac, with the MacBook Pro connected via firewire target disk mode - no dice.
I did create a working Manjaro DVD, and could get it to install - but I found it was running very very buggy and unstable, and crashed regularly. After a crash it wouldn't restart, so I re-installed from disk 4x before giving that up and trying the Ubuntu 16.04 install. Maybe if you're a Manjaro expert it could work for you. Thank you for this thread!
I installed the 19.3 mint image on MacPro 1.1 twin 2.66 quadcore xeon 16GB ram - unusably slow, CPU at 100% most of the time. No idea why.
Same install on 2.1 Mac Mini 1.8 Core2 4GB RAM HUGE SUCCESS - very fast and usable machine.
Thanks for your work. If you have any suggestions for distro to use on the mac pro 1.1, I'll give it a go.
Look two comments above yours and you'll see recent posts (Nov 2023) on this. And search this page for 'Roland' and you'll see others. I appreciate your question is from 2.5 years ago - if you still have the machine it can be a super workhorse still, a fully updated Ubuntu 22.04 LTS on the HWE kernel 6.2 work a treat on it.
I now only need to get the iSight camera working.
Thanks for the site!
Btw, it was harder to change the old HD to a SDD than to get it to install - the iMac 5.1 is not easily accessible.
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/use-isight-ubuntu-38894.html
For now I'd suggest that people use the little C program provided in the write-up to mod ISOs directly.
I have a MacBook 2,1 and I'm running Lubuntu 18.04 using your method. I had installed 17.04 from CD and upgraded. I just got a SSD and would like to install on that. I tried installing the SSD and installing from the same 17.04 CD, but my the installation keeps crashing, possibly because of problems in the CD drive. I replaced the HDD for now. Can I clone or install from my HDD to the external SSD and then insert the SSD in the macbook? Any resources you can recommend?
Thanks!
Clonezilla is often used for this, it generally works well, and is generally quite straightforward as long as the new drive is larger than the old one. If the new drive is *smaller* then things can get a little trickier but you can search for guides there.
There are other options as well (I often use dd to raw copy the entire drive), but Clonezilla is likely to be the easiest method to try first as long as you can get it to boot from either a disk or USB. Note that if Clonezilla doesn't pan out and you look at other methods, keep in mind that you often can not do things on the currently mounted boot drive: writing a 32-bit Live DVD to a USB, booting from that USB, and messing with drives/partitions becomes an option there. Putting both drives in a desktop machine and using cloning software from there is another option as well.
Another option would be to try Fedora 64-bit (they made changes a couple years ago so that it shouldn't require modding).
Note that if you "load more comments" and then CTRL-F (CMD-F on Mac) and search for "imac 5,1" you'll see some of the issues other people ran into: it's possible something there might be of help. Or maybe someone will chime in who's had success on one of those machines with the details.
I was able to get a dual system (Fedora 31 and LUbunu) to boot on my iMac5,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 3GB RAM (2006).
I installed Lubuntu 18.04 on my Mac Mini 2009 and it seems to be working.
I'm extremely grateful.
I tried to read through your source code and would love to see a follow up post that explains fix/patch you are making!
This time, I installed Lubuntu 20.04 on my Mac Mini 2009 with option 2.
Thanks a lot !
I’m extremely grateful.
PS: Adding a modified clonezilla ISO would be helpful to others as people may find it useful to backup and restore their partition.
i used to put linux on my macbook 2,1 since 2012 using rEFInd for dual boot with mac os.. but i long forgat how to create those bootable mac ISO :-)
just used your instructions to create a bootable ubuntu mate 20.04 and it work great !)
thanks for the website , and for the ISO conversion program
I use an Imac 5.1 with the dual boot between Lion 10.7.5 and Lubuntu 18.04. I have successfully, option 2, installed ubuntu 20.04 but the first time it was updated, ubuntu did not start
Use for dual boot Refind
Someone tried to update ubuntu 20.04 in dual boot
What can I do?
I am trying to revive one of the infamous iMac 5,1 machines, and am trying Mint 19.3.
I manage to boot into a live system without any problems, holding down Option at boot, choosing the DVD that shows up as Windows ;-). It takes time but works reproducibly well. When trying to install out of the live system I get the Warning that no EFI partitions is present "proceed at your own risk". The installed system then fails to start.
I tried with a wiped hard disk formatted as MBR, no change...
Is there a need for a EFI partition that the installer can't generate? Could somebody please provide me with a partition scheme that works for a single boot Linux bistro?
Should I use another distro?
Thanks & best wishes
Andreas
Beyond that, a drive erase followed by a base install that has only the "/" root partition as ext4 tends to be a simplistic method that often works when manually partitioning (no separate /boot etc).
If you're in the situation where you're quite certain it's a GPT issue, you can type
parted -l(lowercase L) from a terminal window to see where things are at. msdos=MBR and gpt=GPT. If you want to actually force the partition table to be rewritten, essentially wiping all data in the process, a couple options are:or...replacing the X in sdx with the actual letter of the hard drive. At that point you should be okay unless the installer attempts to rewrite the partition table as GPT again in which case you're basically in a fight against the installer.With all that said, if you're happy to give Ubuntu a try, I'd try that with erase/install. It's usually the most hassle-free. If you continue to run into issues or prefer a distro that's a little less agreeable here, manual partition work may be required.
Transferred the iso to the Late 2006 iMac (still with its ancient Mac OS X), burned the iso onto a DVD-R Disc, Rebooted, booted off the DVD drive off the iMac and the installation began.
Don’t encrypt the hdd or account when installing, or Once it’s installed, it will keep looping back to a reboot after you enter your encryption password - instead of starting up. It will display the options for boot up, but the keyboard bizarrely won’t work.
Otherwise, installed without encryption, and yes, there’s that almost 30 second delay when you first turn it on, then it boots into Linux Mint smoothly.
Everything works so far, it even downloaded the drivers for the Built in WIFI.
Now I can browse websites flawlessly with Firefox or Chromium, play YouTube videos effortlessly, or stream videos or music from my twin WD MyCloud network storage devices using VLC media player. Linux Mint has given my 2006 iMac a new lease of life.
Installed 64 bit version as is - absolutely NO modifications made. I can live with the 30 second startup delay.
Thank you Matt Gadient, I’m very impressed! Nice work indeed!
Please help I a using a iMac 5 ,1 (second highest modale)
I have an USB device of which I can boot and it installs Ubuntu, but the resulting installation does not boot from disk. Using GRUB I tried to fix this but was unsuccessful so far.
So I just wanted to ask if I'm missing anything here? I worked with Ubunto14 -Ubuntu20 ISOs so far and none of the DVDs gets recognised during startup.
I have an imac 24" 2006 model, and after some struggles, I was able to install the latest kubuntu OS using a usb stick. However, while I can boot, enter my name and password in the welcome screen, and get to the desktop, the image will after a couple of seconds get distorted. I was able to perform updates but i am thinking i need to reinstall the original drivers for the NVIDIA card. How do I do this when I cant see anything on the desktop? Should I reinstall the OS using your modified iOS? Thanks.
I haven now a 20 inch Late 2006 IMAC with triple boot.
the Original MAC OS, Windows 10 version 2004 and elementary 5.1
Ran install with internet connected and set to install third party software. When ran the install without internet it didn't finish.
Thanks so much! I have been running Mint on a 2008 3,3 Mac Pro in 32 bit and when 20 came out in 64 only I was looking for some way to extend a perfectly good computer. Works fine only problem was with a usb wireless set up, just plugged the Ethernet in and no further problems. Thanks for getting it going, Mint is great!
Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop (64-bit Mac) – 2.0 GB
ubuntu-18.04.4-desktop-amd64-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: 1ec7f556caf83a4c14c57818b8c018cd )
to setup dual boot on my old iMac5,1. It workd like a charm. Now, I have dual boot : MacOs 10.7.5 and Ubuntu18.04. It's great. Thank you very much.
Update 1: So I gave up on usb install method, although it was promising with an old lubuntu 16.04. Still I wasn't able to get any graphics after installing (except some white artificial stripes right after install).
My last hope was with dvd install method. Unfortunately my internal drive seems not to be working or just won't read from my picked dvd-rw drives. So I went to the store to grab an external dvd drive - ASUS SDRW-08D2S-U lite, so I've tried to burn a few images of ubuntu, fedora and xubuntu, but default mac loader won't see anything bootable, finally I tried the ubuntu 16.04 matt's image loaded with rEFInd and viola, I've got myself in a livedvd!
From there on I've installed Ubuntu with erase and install option and no updates enabled (my first attempt was with it on, but it hang at some moment during installation) and got myself a bootable OC! Then I've updated and upgraded and did release upgrade to 18.04. All well there as well! (got some artifacts on login screen, just typed the password and it went fine from there on). Now I'm getting upgrade to 20.04. Fingers crossed. And it went well as I was writing this. Still have the bug with the login screen, will try to figure this one out. Other than that the system looks sick, video and sound is working, wifi too. Gonna test it for stability, but I think everything is great!
iMac 5.1 20" late 2006.
Ty so much Matt for giving us the opportunity to bring life to our old hardware!
I'm trying to get macbook 2,1 to work for lubuntu. I had 18.04 installed somehow with GPT that was working (installed from USB with Lubuntu 16.04, then upgraded to 18.04, since CD drive did not work), but a software update caused the machine to stop booting. I tried installing 16.04 again, and converting GPT to MBR, but it still would not boot.
For some reason it looks like the default installation from the USB is always GPT (for Lubuntu 16.04). I can't figure out how to get it to be MBR.
However, I tried 2-3 modified installs on my core2duo with ext dvd, and they all failed in their own special way. Most seemed to hang on disk check/post boot.
Finally, I found that all I actually needed was a debian amd64-i386 netinst burned to usb (eg debian-10.5.0-amd64-i386-netinst.iso). Selected MATE desktop and ssh, all sorted...
Thank you Matt.
Just curious though as to whether doing Lubuntu 20.04 LTS is in the pipe. Lubuntu 20.04 has switched to the LXQT desktop, which uses a little more RAM than LXDE it looks like, but not all that much more.
Thanks very much for this project. It's a huge help! The original owner of this iMac was going to send it to the Apple Recycle Store. I rescued it from that fate with your help!
If I download regular 64 bit os image from other distro sites and copy bootia32.efi file to boot/efi folder, I can see boot option but from there nothing happens..
I succeeded only with deepin 15.11 image directly imaged to usb, that one worked and booted and installed correctly (with no wifi internet).
My question is; why I cannot boot your image files on this imac late 2006? Am I missing something here?
Thanks
Can I use these images?
Thanks!
Working:
1) mattgadient ISO Ubuntu 18.04 -> upgraded to 20.04.
Comments: Takes some quite time to (re)boot, requires a bit of patience. A great plus is that wifi adapter Qualcomm Atheros AR5418 on this model is quite capable and can be programmed to do many many unusual things. Later macs with other wifi brands and not-so-good drivers can't even do half of what this chip can. Another plus with Gnome is that you can configure the macbook97 keyboard functionality with gnome-tweaks and add the compose key, which is called 'Multi-key' or right-Apple-Key, and Alt-Gr key, which is called 'ISO_Level3_Shift' or Number Enter can be remapped to to bring out those extra characters international keyboards have.
2) Fedora 32 ISO (which supportw 32-bit EFI from scratch), downloaded straight from Fedora and put on a USB stick with Fedoras own Media Writer (usb-creator-gkt and unetbootin does not create a great booting usb unfortunately, which Fedora also points out can be the case...)
Comment: Without Nvidia drivers, it does work well (will dare to test Nvidia legacy 340 drivers), is considerably faster than Ubuntu 20.04 gnome, but maybe not so user friendly as Ubuntu 20.04 and a far cry from Budgie user friendliness. Fedora 32 uses Wayland, making it impossible to install plank for instance. At first sight, there does not seem to be a network manager like Debian "ifupdown" that can detect when an internet connection is lost. Not sure about alternatives. NetworkManager is configurable though. Fedora supports gnome-tweaks, so you can remap macbook97 keyboard keys here as well.
Not working:
3) Ubuntu Budgie 20.04 ISO, downloaded straigt from Budgie -> modified with Option 2 above and put on a USB-stick, does boot and does finish install, but after you reboot you can't get it to boot. There is a workaround to install 32-bit EFI after the installation using chroot and forcing grub-update, which works on non-lvm-encrypted partition, but I didn't get it to work on lvm-encrypted-partition. At the grub prompt you see the partitions as (hd0,gpt1...2...3) but no matter what was tried as boot arguments, it didn't want to become a persisitent solution. See:
https://discourse.ubuntubudgie.org/t/32bit-efi-bootloader/4079
Apparently it should work with burning a "mattgadient Ubuntu Budgie 20.04 ISO", but I can't find that one as of now to test it. Otherwise, Budgie is kind of user friendly for newbies and would suit an old mac just fine.
Conclusion: Seems that Fedora 32 (currently installed, learning to tweak it) is working without any needed modification from a USB-stick, while Ubuntu 20.04 (and probably also Budgie 20.04) needs the burned ISO on a DVD-disk to install. If someone who knows how to properly patch the Budgie install ISO so it really works for an install could upload a working 20.04 ISO, it would be appreciated, as it would give this mac another 5 years of life. I have tried to mod Budgie 20.04.1 ISO myself, but it does not boot after install. Tried to fix it, but didn't succeed. Need your help with creating this Budgie 20.04 ISO.
Working:
"mattgadient Ubuntu Budgie 18.04 ISO" burned on a DVD-disk -> upgraded to 20.04 "the Debian way", changen /etc/apt/sources.list "bionic" to "focal", within an hour it updated "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade" + a lot of tweaks such as complete reinstall of all budgie-* packages.
Fix the keyboard issue related to keyboard type "macbook97" which lacks the right Alt-key and instead has a Keypad Enter key looking like:
_ ("dash")
^ ("over roof")
sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
# Select:
# MacBookPro (Intl.)
# Country of origin: (select your language)
# Keyboard: your language (Macintosh)
# AltGr: Keypad Enter key
# Compose key: Right Logo key
The /etc/default/keyboard file:
----
XKBMODEL="macbook79"
XKBLAYOUT=""
XKBVARIANT="mac"
XKBOPTIONS="lv3:enter_switch,compose:rwin,terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"
BACKSPACE="guess"
----
Reboot to make keyboard changes.
Comment: Budgie desktop feels a bit quicker than Fedora 32 Gnome, although comparable responsiveness. Suggesting to create a new "mattgadient-ISO" for Budgie 20.04 since it seems to work on this machine and probably on other machines as well.
Update 1: Thanks very much for your reply!! Yes, it is the MacBook Pro 2.2 MBP 3,1; sorry for the typo 3,2.... I tried all key combinations and when using the PRAM reset every time I got the Mac running. Now the trouble started months and months ago when I could not use Mac in a normal Apple way and tried to install Linux instead. I used Virtual Box and installed Xubuntu 14.04, then 16.04, then 18.04 but starting up was a problem every time. Then I saw the articles on your side and downloaded the Ubuntu 20.04 with the 32 bits EFI with the above result. Once booted the MacBook Pro runs well, but sometimes I have to start four or more times to get the GRUB screen. I know it is to do something with the NVIDIA G84M videosystem. How do I boot with "nomodeset" ? Ed
Update 2: Hi Matt, sorry to ask you how to switch to nomodeset. Of course I knew that but I was so fed up with the Mac because of the time already spent that I forgot about it. I tried it with the first Ubuntu GRUB line and it worked. Before that I had to go to Advanced options first and then to recovery mode... But now I still have to use these peculiar key combinations before I can start Ubuntu. Anyway, I am one step further because I don't have to use recovery mode.... Maybe you can provide me with another trick to find a solution for the strange start procedure. To be even more exact: at the moment I still use Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS on the MacBook Pro 2007. Thanks again!
Update 3: Hello Matt, I added "nomodeset" in Grub and guess what? The old MacBook Pro is booting Ubuntu 20.04.1 without any key combinations now and is running fine!! Thank you very, very much for your help and keep up the good work!!!! With kindest regards, Ed.
That said, I've never used the bootIA32.efi bits myself and can't help there. If using the images I have here (which do not utilize bootIA32.efi), to troubleshoot I'd suggest trying Ubuntu 16.04 first - you may have to boot with "nomodeset" on every boot due to the proprietary graphics drivers not being included in new releases. If you get something working then give 18.04 or 20.04 a try. Alternately you could grab the *really* old Ubuntu "mac" editions (say 12.04) directly from Ubuntu's site but I don't know how far along they'll let you upgrade...
Late adopter ...
Everything works admirably with Mint 20 except for some slowdowns which I suspect are due to the nvidia graphics card driver.
It's a little better in xfce but not crazy for a quadri xéon cpu.
If I see correctly, the nvidia driver version (309) required for Gforce 7300 GT is not supported by the current kernel ...
Do you have any suggestions for improving this?
Thanks for the work anyway!!!
Jean-Luc
Found that 20.04 with the simple graphics option worked.
I am Pierre from France (sorry for my english). I am presently using Linux Mint Tricia cinnamon running on a late 2006 iMac model (64-bit Mac with a 32-bit EFI, Core2Duo). Worked great, thanks you so much to your iso. Do you think it is possible to upgrade to Ulyana 20 following the offocial Linux procedure.
Thank you in advance
Pierre Nicolas
I used the isomacprog.c command on a pop os iso, I was able to boot from this and run the installer, but when it was time to reboot I just get a white screen with a grey blinking folder. I had rEFINED installed prior to all this.
Any suggestions much appreciated.
Thanks Stuart
I've tried to mod the Kali distro with your script but the usb won't boot and I don't know why ...
I did find it a bit hit and miss to start with but I suspect the superdrive is feeling its age. Try, try again seemed to be the answer. In respect of which, how risky is the "bless" boot-shortening procedure? I like the sound of it, but on the other hand I've got a working computer now and should the flaky superdrive finally die I'd have no way back if things went wrong.
installing
xubuntu-18.04.4-desktop-amd64-mac-mattgadient.com.iso
on a Sandisk USB thumbdrive worked like a charm on iMac 5,1
Thank you so much!!
Without it, old iMac would have been useless
Cheers,
Oliver
Lubuntu 16.04 works great from DVD and was installed successfully on late 2006 iMac with IntelCore2duo.
For all out there with „broken“ Superdrives:
I thought mine was broken, too. It did not read any burnt DVD. But, curiously had no problem with FILM DVDs.
The superdrive did neither read nor burn DVD+R nor rewriteables. It did also not write on DVD-R, BUT read DVD-R burnt in my Laptop flawlessly.
Maybe the superdrive does not accept DVD+R or rewriteables (any more?) Or were they never supported?
Cheers,
Oliver
It helped me out. Thank you very much, not being very computer literate I was still able to give life back to my Mac.
Thanks a lot!
I'll try to install Ubuntu to a MacBookPro 2,1 (17 inches), with Ubuntu.
Cheers,
Jordi
1.- Downloaded a copy of PuppyLinux (Fossapup64. 9.5)
2.- Run YUMI in my mac using Wine and making a liveUSB with it in an old, 4 Gb pendrive (Sony). It works just in some old pendrives...why??? I don't really know...
3.- Attach the pendrive to MBP and boot. Automatically it will boot into the multiboot partition and start GRUB with several choices
4.- One choice is to boot with nomodeset
5.- And everything is now working from the USB
Problems: this version is only compatible with EFI booted from the pendrive; A installation with EFI in a HDD is not supporte yet, but at least it works!!!
As Matt insisted, is the "nomdeset" in GRUB the solution. But, I do not know why, with Matt's ISO's I never get until GRUB. Computer got stopped prior to fully charge GRUB...
Does anyone know how to tinker with the ISO image to include such a menu as in Puppylinux???
Hope this will help some people to get back to work and old MBP Core2Duo 2,2 as mine...
Regards!!
I used Stefan's page to create a bootable EFI USB, which was detected. I did not have rEFInd or rEFIt installed on the old OS X partition, the native bootloader found the stick. Booted into the installation medium, and wiped the hard drive. I had to do this multiple times, trying different partition table formats each time.
DOS didn't work for me and dropped into kernel panic after install, even after manually editing files in /boot. What eventually worked perfectly was a blank GPT partition table (use fdisk). Mint automatically formatted a partition to EFI, and ran through the install. It hung at some minor step toward the end (WiFi driver IIRC). Booted down, pulled out the USB, booted up again.
MacBook booted into the GRUB2 shell. Ran:
> set root =(hd0,gpt2) #this was where / was located. Might vary depending on install, search around using TAB to find it
> linux /vmlinux root=/dev/sda2
> initrd /initrd.img
> boot
It then boots correctly. Login, then
$ sudo update-grub
And install complete. I'm not sure why GPT works and DOS doesn't: after a lot of head banging, the best I could do with a DOS install was use the live USB's GRUB to boot into it. That was okay, but it's not a good idea for the boot process to be dependant on an external device.
Great job!
Paul
thanks a lot for your effort, I'm finally running Lubuntu 18.04 on my almost 15 years old macbookpro 2,2 !!
I had to follow Live CD on an USB Stick (32-bit EFI, 64-bit Linux) tutorial to make it boot, and I hade to install 16.04 and then upgrade to 18.04 but it works!!
cheers,
Vlad
1. Download iso above (I used mint 20, I assume others will work the same)
2. Format your flash drive, mac os extended journaled and guid partition map (I used disk utility on my macbook pro to do this)
3. Use Etcher from https://www.balena.io/etcher/ to create bootable by running etcher, selecting the iso downloaded from above, and the newly formatted usb drive.
4. Hold Option/Alt key while booting the macbook and when the boot drive menu comes up insert the usb, boot from it, preview the distro, and install it.
5. After install the wifi driver needs to be installed, and in linux mint 20 the built in driver utility did this, but I did have to connect an ethernet cable for internet access to download the driver. After the driver and reboot the wifi works as it should.
Enjoy your macbook, and thank you for the ISO help above, greatly appreciated!
First of all, thank you for the ISO. I tried to create an ISO with your script, but could you explain what you mean by "Save it as "isomacprog.c" (remove the ".txt"), and compile it"? Also, I downloaded isomacprog. I can't launch it... I am under linux.
I got it! The ISO is downloading. I hope I can try to install it. Thanks a lot. I think you're saving a bunch of people.
Grazie mille!
1. An official 64-bit Debian ISO. One build of Debian is packaged with a 32-bit UEFI bootloader. Go to "https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/"; and under the "CD" header click on the "multi-arch" link. This works straight out of the box if you flash the ISO straight to USB.
2. The modified ISO for Elementary OS also works for USB boot. As others have mentioned, Elementary OS can be sluggish for older machines. I found this to be the case with my Macbook Core 2 Duo Late 2006.
I ultimately chose Debian with the Xfce desktop -- it has a light memory footprint and you can modify the desktop to look like Mac OS.
(Previously I had your version of Mint 17.2 and did not have similar issues)
If this really becomes an issue, would have to go back to Mint with cinamon is it okay if I pick the latest version of Mint ?
Any feedback to resolve this would be welcome - else for now I am quite happy !
thanks for the great work in breathing life into older machines - especially during these pandemic times, when ever hardware repairs would take quite some time
the output of uname -a is as below (just incase you are interested)
Linux 5.8.0-55-generic #62~20.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jun 2 08:55:04 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Been running for a couple of hours, and if any issues, will update.
I am now updating 20. After that I can upgrade to 20.1. The HDD did not have a Mac os on it, and I do not have a Mac DVD so I can create the EFI that way.
I did download and burn with simplyburns on DVD , first under mac os x 1.6.8.
Then boot on DVD using alt .
Time of blank screen also reduced to few seconds compare to 30s (note that my EFI isk was disk0s3).
a big thank you
BR
JCB
Lot's of trouble getting to the HDD on the iMac. I wanted to see if my wife can use Linuxmint on the iMac. If so I will go to the trouble of switching out the drives. I do want to keep the mac OS on the original drive.
Thank You Matt !
Also I think the instruction could get confusing. Stating GPT the main problem and changing it to MBR, should solve everything, is not accurate. MBR was not designed for Linux in the first place.
Sure, it takes a long time(3min+) to start, but, man this is a great machine. Encodes 4k video with no problems (1/2 hour with cuts and transitions took about 3 hours). Firmware updates, Drivers for Video card, CUDA works. I can't even get the box to heat up. CPU max temp has been under 95C. Using Ubuntu for 8 or more years, until I picked up this Mac Pro for $80 us.
Thank you mattgadient.com
I firstly installed Linux Mint 19 on the laptop and was able to boot just fine with that. After I finished installing Mint, I went in and replaced the install, since that is an option on Manjaro. This got it booting just fine on my laptop. Manjaro seems a little sluggish, but what do you expect on a 15 year old laptop?
Thank you again for this awesome guide. It has helped me keep this old MacBook alive and kicking. It is still a somewhat daily use machine for me since I can run Linux on it just fine.
I have run into a number of issues when using this version. My Internal DVD has developed problems and I am trying to repair it.
When booting up it take a long time. Also when logging in,that being prompted for a log in and a password the Mac's Internal Keyboard works just fine.
After booting into Linux the internal keyboard does not work correctly. I have to plug-in an external Mac Keyboard to the USB port and then I can get
the internal keyboard to work again. Google Chrome does not work correctly with youtube. After a while it blanks out the screen.
There are some drivers that don't get loaded.
With the new Zorin OS 16 Core and Lite, My Mid-2007 Mac-mini with 32-bit EFI works almost out the the box in GPT/EFI mode. The only caveat is the Installer usb must be formatted in GPT with a FAT32 partition. One can us either Etcher or Start-up Disk Creator. Check out the .iso and Zorinos.com
I kept this laptop around mainly for nostalgia but it also ran GarageBand 6 from time to time on Lion. My process was to install Snow Leopard (for that Rosetta goodness!). I keep an image on an external HD and just Super Duper'd it onto the internal drive - a 120Gb SSD in my case. I then used disk utility to shrink the mac partition down to the 50Gb mark.
Booting from Matt's Ubuntu 20.04 image was painless and installing to the free 70Gb space worked absolutely fine. Rebooting holding down Option listed the Ubuntu install as Windows.
Everything works perfectly. I get the odd artefact when transitions occur (hey, it's a GMA 950!). Modern websites work fine and there's no lags or stutters. When it comes down to browser choice it's basically Firefox or 'Chromium-based browser + who you want to sync your bookmarks/credentials with' - I've installed Edge! YouTube videos play perfectly. Using VLC to stream a 1080p video from my NAS was also flawless (although running VLC full screen caused it to lock up even though playback was still fine).
My next steps are to install VSCode + .Net 6 and nginx and turn this into a dev box.
Again - thank you so much Matt for putting this together. Happy holiday!
It is essential to read the grub documentation before attempting this. Possible? Yes. Easy? No. Worth it? Hmmmm, maybe.
Next I will stick another drive in there and install Void which I run on my Mac Pro G5 (PowerMac 7,2). Too bad Void is dropping support for big endian glibc versions.
Thanks for this great site!
I almost never write comments on websites, but I really do owe you a huge thank you. I am a fellow Canadian who is also trying to keep old tech alive and useful. I'm a high school computer science teacher, and my class has been refurbishing old laptops and desktop PC's, installing ElementaryOS on them, and donating them to members of the community who need access to a real computer.
We've just had about 6 old Macbook 1,1 Core2Duos donated to our school, and the old Mac OSX 10.6 is too old to be really useful for people today. I had tried many various methods of installing different distributions of linux on the Macbooks, but your solution worked very well. I initially tried using your ElementaryOS ISO on a USB, but it didn't work (as your instructions said). However, once I burned it onto a DVD, it worked like a charm. The only thing is in the boot menu, I had 3 options. I could choose to boot to MacOS, Windows, or EFI. I originally chose "Windows" and the ElementaryOS started up and installed, but wouldn't boot later. So, I tried installing again using the "EFI" boot option and everything worked perfectly.
Thanks again for your wonderful bunch of tools. I'm going to try to install on one of the original iMac C2D as well.
As installed:
Linux MacPro 5.10.0-9-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5.10.70-1 (20201-9-30) x86_64 GNU/LINUX
After update:
Linux MacPro 5.10.0-10-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 5.10.84-1 (20201-12-08) x86_64 GNU/LINUX
1. my thanks to you Matt for this page. My criticism is not directed against you at all and also not against S. Stechert, whose page is also very helpful.
2. i only want to report my experiences here. So I started with your Lubuntu 20.04-ISO. Install everything super. Only after the restart the OS does not come up. You report this case under:
If the installation goes well, but the system does not boot from the hard drive after installation, there is a good chance,
Yes, the 20.04 Lubuntu sets up a GPT. So started several attempts to get the Lubuntu 20.04 to set up an MBR. I did not succeed. Perhaps I am too little Linux fox. Then I tried the "Fedora 31 XFCE Live (64-bit Mac) - 1.4 GB". Also it does not boot from the harddisk. Then Lubuntu 18.04. Also no success.
Then I read that you tested the following versions yourself:
"I have personally only used/tested Ubuntu 16.04, 17.10 and Fedora 24." (If you can read, you have a clear advantage).
So I said to myself: well the 16.04 version is old hat in 2022, but the main thing is that it runs. And indeed Lubuntu 16.04 starts from harddisk. Also set up an MBR.
Then I made the attempt and installed the same Lubuntu 16.04 under a VM on my main machine. And then "updated" it to 20.04 via 18.04. Both newer versions left it at the MBR.
I then "updated" the iMac to 18.04. I got the version from the Lubuntu site and converted it with isomacprog. (This is faster than downloading from your server.) And from this ISO I did the update to 18.04 via the 16.04 software update. And oh wonder the update set up a GPT, but even more oh wonder. Lubuntu 18.04 still boots from the hard drive. So I don't understand why it works now and why under the VM the type of the boot parttion wasn't changed and on the iMac it was. You probably have to be a Linux god to understand this.
Disclaimer: I am not knowledgeable on the topic given that this was my first Linux install. It took a couple of weeks of research combined with trial and error. Below I have descripted the applied steps for future refference.
1) Download the pre-modded disk image: lubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: 78967d5a57240acf0a6edb975a519da3 )
2) Burn image to DVD in accordance with option 1 from the article. I have tried to install Lubuntu using a flash drive for almost two weeks but none of the methods resulted in a detectable or bootable drive (rEFInd resulted in detecting the flash drive but was unable to boot).
3) Boot Lubuntu and install using the EraseDisk option.
4) Reboot the computer during which the DVD is removed. It is expected that you only see a flashin folder with a question mark meaning the computer cannot find a bootable drive.
5) Turn the compter off. Insert the DVD and turn the computer on to open Lubuntu from the LiveDVD environment.
6) In accordance with option 1 in the article, it turned out that the disklabel type was GPT instead of DOS (even while the Lubuntu installer specified MDOS partitioning scheme). This was found using the 'sudo fdisk -l' command in the command line.
7) In accordance with option 1 in the article, the partitioning scheme was changed to DOS using the 'parted /dev/sda mklabel msdos' command in the command line.
8) After this command the 'sudo fdisk -l' command confirmed the partitioning scheme had indeed changed. Lubuntu was installed again using the EraseDisk option.
9) After reboot the computer no longer had the flashing folder with a question mark, but instead only showed a black screen. So the DVD was again used to boot the computer in the LiveDVD environment.
10) In the command line the 'sudo fdisk -t dos /dev/sda' command was used. After pressing 'm' the options are visualised. The first options under 'DOS' are 'toggle a bootable flag' and 'toggle the dos compatibility flag', 'a' and 'c' respectively. I have enabled both of these flags.
11) Reboot the computer and it should boot into Lubuntu without the need of the DVD.
It is quite possible this could have been done in a more efficient manner. But this is just the report of what worked for me, eventually...
Mac Pro 1.1 2006
I've downloaded the linux mint 20 iso, burned it on a dvd. On boot I hold the alt key and see the El Capitan SSD, Recovery and a "Windows" DVD. I choose the DVD and hit enter and... nothing happens. After a while the machine boots on the El Capitan SSD.
Any clue?
Thanx a lot
https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/multi-arch/iso-cd/debian-11.2.0-amd64-i386-netinst.iso
When booted, ALT(=option) pressed, three options are presented:
1. WIndows
2. EFI
3. EFI
Option 2, i.e. first EFI from the left, installs the 64-bit version (along with an EFI partition). Because of the final writing of the bootloader it should be crucial that the installation (suggestion: choose Gnome and not XFCE(like me) right away) runs with a working I-net connection (Airport was detected).
You could try old PowerPC versions of Debian (Debian 8 Jesse or older should handle 256 MB RAM - version 7.11.0 can be found at https://cdimage.debian.org/mirror/cdimage/archive/7.11.0/powerpc/iso-cd/ ) or Ubuntu (Ubuntu 7.04 or older - version 6.06.2 LTS images can be found at http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/dapper/ ).
Using the modern internet on these older distros is not likely to work.
There may be other (better) options, but nothing that I'm personally aware of.
I tried to modify the latest Linux distribution Emmabuntüs DE4 (Debian) with the small tool program according to your instructions, but it doesn't work because an error message always comes up in the terminal. It runs on Debian. I then installed MX Wildflower 21.1 Linux Debian on the MacBook 2.1 as a replacement, which worked, but the isight webcam didn't work during operation. I then installed the isight Linux Firmware Tool 1.6-4 .deb via the package manager and then Cheese because it wasn't included. But the isight webcam is not recognized. But since I like Emmabuntüs DE4 very much, would it be possible for you to modify the ISO here and post it here with a working isight webcam (package)????
That would be really nice if it were possible for you and you get the message.
Greetings from Germany
Ralf
Thank you very much for the modified Emmabuntüs DE 4 version ;-) and your quick reply to my letter. Since Emmabuntüs brings so many programs with it, I find it very successful in terms of operation. As for the iSight webcam, I haven't gotten it to work yet. I had loaded and installed the Mint 20 version you posted here for testing, which worked great on a USB stick. Also installed the iSight firmware 1.6-4 again and Cheese. But no success under Mint either. Someone who sold such a MacBook 2.1 with Mint wrote me that everything would work for him, including the camera. Is a heavy chunk the little thing ;-)
So thank you for modifying Emmabuntüs ;-)
Best regards
Ralph
wanted to contact me again because I had two questions...I got the modified Emmabuntüs from you to run on the old MacBook 2.1, but with obstacles...
I wrote your Emmabuntüs ISO on the MacBook 2.1 with your modified Mint 20 which I had installed on the MacBook 2.1 to a USB stick which worked. I then took the stick and restarted the MacBook to select it, which also worked. But then came the problem that it wasn't recognized correctly when booting and ultimately got stuck because the MacBook 2.1 probably couldn't cope with the stick. It was a standard "INTENSO" stick.
I also tested it on Windows and everything was fine.
Ok...second try...I again installed the modified Emmabuntüs ISO with Linux Mint 20 on the MacBook 2.1 on memory but this time on a normal SD card. (Size 2 x 3 centimeters) (I have an adapter stick, normal USB at the front and a slot at the back where you can insert an SD card).
I then used this to boot and lo and behold everything worked.
So where is the problem with the MacBook 2.1 that it doesn't work with normal sticks but with an SD card???
And the second question is...I got the original OSX CDs that were probably delivered with it at the time. It is two CDs version Mac OS version 10.5.2 which would be Leopard.
I put this into the CD drive and was able to start it using the CD symbol. Then I selected the language German and pressed "Next". And then the message "Software cannot be installed on this MacBook" came up.
Was still able to bring the disk to Mac format hfs journaled++ using the utility at the top of the taskbar shown but after rebooting it all started again.
What problem does the MacBook have with installing these original OS X CDs???
Thank you in advance for your answer and I wish you a nice Thursday ;-)
Many greetings
2) Installers sometimes get unhappy if the drive was previously partitioned in a manner they don't expect. If the Mac OS X installer/disk_utility is having trouble wiping the partition table and re-partitioning to GPT or hybrid GPT for an OS X install, you may want to low-level format the drive with "dd" or do an hdparm "secure erase" (search web for how-to) so that the Mac OS X installer doesn't get so confused.
0.000000] microcode: microcode updated early to revision 0x60f, date = 2010-09-29
[ 0.000000] Linux version 5.13.0-44-generic (buildd@lcy02-amd64-107) (gcc (Ubuntu 9.4.0-1ubuntu1~20.04.1) 9.4.0, GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Ubuntu) 2.34) #49~20.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Wed May 18 18:44:28 UTC 2022 (Ubuntu 5.13.0-44.49~20.04.1-generic 5.13.19)
[ 0.000000] Command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.13.0-44-generic root=UUID=eb3880e9-9343-46a3-9b33-9dfa95654f54 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
[ 0.000000] KERNEL supported cpus:
[ 0.000000] Intel GenuineIntel
[ 0.000000] AMD AuthenticAMD
[ 0.000000] Hygon HygonGenuine31.882814] wl: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
[ 31.882830] wl: module license 'MIXED/Proprietary' taints kernel.
[ 31.882833] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
[ 31.895996] wl: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel
[ 0.000000] Centaur CentaurHauls
[ 0.000000] zhaoxin Shanghai
[ 0.000000] x86/fpu: x87 FPU will use FXSAVE
[ 0.000000] BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
31.882814] wl: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
[ 31.882830] wl: module license 'MIXED/Proprietary' taints kernel.
[ 31.882833] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
[ 31.895996] wl: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel
120.021475] traps: light-locker[1269] trap int3 ip:7f54cbe22295 sp:7ffd2d0728e0 error:0 in libglib-2.0.so.0.6400.6[7f54cbde6000+84000]
[ 325.872016] perf: interrupt took too long (2512 > 2500), lowering kernel.perf_event_max_sample_rate to 79500
I am going to try Ubuntu 20.04 Desktop (64-bit Mac) – 2.6 GB from your site.
I have Ubuntu 20.04 running in VPS and in a Fusion VM, so once there I know how to do what I want to do.
My question is this... Using the DVD from this site, is it going to boot the DVD into a live session running in memory and then give me the option to install? or is it just going straight to install?
Thanks for the help. Glad I found your site.
Dennis
Thanks for responding so quickly.
Dennis
If I wait long enough, it proceeds to boot.
Lots of thrashing the DVD to get things loaded.
I was going to install Ubuntu 22.04, but probably will do LUbuntu 22.04 instead.
Thank you for your help.
Dennis
Dug up the DVI to hdmi plug and plugged a monitor.
Powered up with with the 20.04 DVD inserted.
Got the select OS prompt. I chose Windows and it booted from the DVD.
The resulting screen had two icons at the very bottom. The one on the left was a rectangle, then a dash?, then a circle with a person in it.
I powered of and back on and boots back to Lion.
I have now connected a usb mouse to the keyboard and will try again.
Dennis
I left him this message...
Trying to install Ubuntu 22.04 to a MacMini2.1.
Used your procedure to create a USB Flash on a 32GB Flash.
It helps to remove power completely, rather than just using the power button.
The USB boots although it takes a long time. I get to the Try Ubuntu and Install Ubuntu screen.
I tried the Try Ubuntu and it seems to run ok, so I rebooted and ran the Install Ubuntu. It appears to have installed correctly.
Rebooting cold gets to a screen with a flashing folder with a question mark.
What now?
Dennis
Any idea what the flashing folder with the question mark means?
Thanks!
Thanks
After burning a few ISOs to DVD and messing about with USB Flash installs, I now have a stable Macmini2.1 running Ubuntu 20.04.
What it took was going back to your Ubuntu 16.04. It installed a 32bit EFI which would boot.
I completely updated 16.04. Then in the update app it gave me the option of installing 18.04, so I did that. The results was a bootable 18.04.
I fully updated 18.04, and it presented an option of installing 20.04, so I did that. Results is still bootable.
20.04 has now been fully updated, and boots fine.
20.04 Updater doesn't present an option to install 222.04, but I imagine there is one.
I have installed RealVNC Connect and that works. I can hit the machine securely from anywhere in the world.
Thanks again.
Dennis
If security updates are the prime motivator for upgrades, note that the Ubuntu LTS releases have 10-year ESM available (free for personal use on 3 computers), so 16.04 and 18.04 can get security updates until 2026 and 2028 respectively ( https://ubuntu.com/advantage ).
Today the Updater gives me the option of updating to 22.04.1. The other upgrades didn't mess with the 32 bit EFI from your 16.04 DVD.
What do you think the odds are that the 22.04.1 is going to wreck the 32 bit EFI?
At least I now know now how to get to where I am now.
I really appreciate your effort that got me to this point.
Dennis
With the hard drive in this thing finally starting to throw up some bad sectors and needing replacing, I'll probably upgrade it to Lubuntu 20.04LTS at some point soon or else try your instructions to make my own optical disk for Debian 11. Again, many, many thanks!!! You have helped so many people!!!!
I just have a quick Question...would you be able to provide the current Linux Mint 21 "Vanessa" Cinnamon Editionin the modified version here for download if there is still Space? This will be supported until 2027 and I think many Users of your Website would then have some peace and quiet with reinstalling the System for the next few Years.
Many thanks in advance
Ralf
for your guide I am very grateful!
However, in my case I run into a problem: I have already burned various ISOs pre-modified by you as well as self-modified on a DVD.
However, these DVDs are always ejected from the iMac 5.1 and a boot via the options button is not possible. Analogously I tried it with rEFIt, unfortunately also no success...
Do you have any idea what this could be?
Thanks a lot!
thanks for your advice.
I bought DVD blanks from another brand - they were accepted by iMac 5.1!
After hours of trying I tried to install Lubuntu 20 - without success (despite MBR partitioning etc no boot possible)...
After that I used your modified Lubuntu 18 version - with success!
Afterwards I will try to upgrade to Lubuntu 20.
Thanks for your guide and the helpful comments!
Lukas
A follow up.
Updater in 20.04 the other day popped up the option of updating to 22.04.1.
I had installed Paragon Software's HFS+ driver and got it to working with my Drobo Gen2.
I let the updater run and things got almost done and it threw a few errors from usrmerge.
The updater had not handled some symlinks correctly related to the Paragon HFS+ driver. Paragon has their own NTFS driver as a part of the HFS+ package. Ubuntu is using NTFS-3g.
Anyway I had to execute two lines of code as root...
ln -fs /usr/sbin/mount.paragon-ufsd /sbin/mount.ntfs
/usr/lib/usrmerge/convert-usrmerge
They completed normally and then I was able to update all to current.
Things are working great thanks to the start I got from you.
just wanted to thank you for modifying and providing the latest Linux Mint 21 Version.
I'm sure it will work fine on my old MacBook 2.1 white from 2006.
I Think many others can use it for many Years as Mint 21 will be supported with Updates until 2027.
So thanks again for your Time and Effort...your Work here is of great value to so many around the World... ;-)
Many Greetings Ralf
Once upon a time here was an Ubuntu Budgie ISO on the now dead server. Budgie is on many old machines the best tradeoff between usability and performance in the Ubuntu family. Older people seem to prefer Ubuntu Budgie over Ubuntu Xfce and Ubuntu MATE. Linux Mint Cinnamon is an alternative, but Linux Mint tends to run very slow on old hardware. However, Manjaro is fast, and it offers Cinnamon as well.
Once upon a time there maybe was a Manjaro Cinnamon ISO, not sure about that. From April 2022, many machines that previously had support in Ubuntu, such as Chromebooks and some graphic cards, wifi cards, no longer have Ubuntu support. It is unclear why support was dropped between 20.04 and 22.04. Manjaro steps in and provides support for those machines. Manjaro GNOME and KDE Plasma is very nice and also tend to be perceived as a bit slower on old machines, meanwhile Cinnamon runs very fast on old hardware and has a very attractive small memory footprint plus Cinnamon is a bit easier for users than Manjaro Xfce and Manjaro Budgie desktops, which are not as nice looking as Ubuntu Budgie straight from the box. Things can of course be changed, but Cinnamon is ok to use from start, which makes it a good choice for the coming year(s). It is also attractive since it is a rolling release without need to upgrade to new releases, such as with Ubuntu, Fedora and Linux Mint.
Older people seem to figure out Cinnamon (and Budgie) quite fast compared to other desktops such as GNOME, which is perceived as more difficult to learn for some reason.
OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is of course also interesting, but tends to be very slow on old hardware compared to Manjaro (Cinnamon, Xfce) that makes old hardware function better than it did when it was bought brand new some fifteen years before.
In the thread there is a lot of interest in USB-stick-installer.
Has anyone succeeded with an USB-stick install?
If yes, would those who made it work be willing to share a full recipe/tutorial on how to get it to work?
One day the DVD-drive may give up... and the USB alternative might be the only remedy.
Why is the USB-stick possibility such a difficult alternative compared to burning a DVD ISO?
Is it due to different USB-brands being blocked?
Is there a similar issue with external DVD drives as with external USB-sticks?
A few years ago I'd been running Win10 on it but that had eventually bloated out to make it too sluggish to continue. I then tried putting it back to Snow Leopard which was nice and snappy and fun for the memories but not really practical so it had sat in a box for a while.
I'm interested to see how I get on with this version of Linux as the hardware all seems to be in good condition despite it's age.
Thanks for keeping options open for equipment that has no right to be in use anymore 😁
I recently bought a Pro Version of the Same Free OS and converted it so that it will run on a 2008 MacBook. The Size of the ISO is over 5.4 GB so it
requires a Dual Layer DVD programmed with the iso. When I tried to install it on my MacBook I received 34 file errors. The Actual converted iso
was installed on VirtualBox with out error. The Converted ISO seemed to work correctly if installed in VirtualBox and receive no errors.
At this point I have to assume that the problem was either the Blank DL DVD or the program that wrote the iso image to a Dual Layer DVD.
Is there some issue in writing the Converted ISO to a Dual Layer DVD?
Thank You
problem when trying to create a DL+r Install disk for Zorin-16-16.2-Pro 5,4GB. I used a different program to create the Install disk and it worked just fine.
That is what I am working from right now. It was not your program isomacprog. It was K3B corrupting some of files. The actual converted image
was tested in in VirtualBox 6.0 and had no problem unless you consider the fact that it runs in molasses mode 256,that is it runs very slowly.
I have run into some problems with certain Kernel errors like a tainted kernel errors and DRM errors when using a Apple Cinema Display 20-inch
Widescreen. I have purchased a number of 2008 White Apple MacBooks with Core 2 Duo and are in the process of fixing all of them.
There seems to be an internal problem with BIOS not working Correctly. Also I purchased a 2010 White unibody Macbook had needs a logic board
placement.
Thank Yoy
So starting with 22.10 was worth a try, but since it was unsuccessful you will probably have to experiment with other distros or older distros.
I would suggest you try 16.04 (or maybe even 14.04) as they have very high success rates. If it works, you can then experiment by upgrading to 18.04, 20.04, etc. However, if even 14.04 fails, the only thing I can think of would be to reinstall MacOS and run the firmware updater before trying again (if I remember correctly, the latest firmware had improved support for booting other OS's).
The "demo" worked well on both, but starting the computer then from its internal drive showed just a question mark. Seems that the 32bit bootloader was not insstalled.
I have then installed Mint Xfce 21,1 which seems to work well - but the Elementary OS has a much nicer appearance...
Thank you for any ideas, Christian
I boot, I get to the installation options of grub, select any distro, it boots.... and then hangs at "switching to radeon from EFI VGA"
I read a few things, and it tells me I need to press "e" and add "text nomodeset nosplash debug" to the line in grub which says linux. But no line here says linux. It just says:
setparams $whatever distro you choose
set gfxpayload=keep
configfile /multiboot/$whatever distro you choose/grub.cfg
What am I doing wrong? Is there a distro on this page that does NOT have this issue? Or do I have to boot from DVD to get this done? USB does not work?
My MacMini 2.1 runs fine on Lubuntu 22.04. OpenSuse TumbleWeed is faster, but I can't boot directly on this distribution. I have to use an rEFInd CD.
It is possible to use Ventoy to test your ISOs. Ventoy starts perfectly on my MacMini 2.1 despite the error message and allows me to access my iso collection. You have to select the grub2 mode when starting the ISO.
Concerning the problem of updating the distribution and overwriting the content of the /boot/efi partition, I think TumbleWeed is the solution because it is a rolling update. There is never a need to reinstall. Updates are done over time.
Thank you very much for detailed post above !!!
I'm agree with Paolo LMDE Elsie is faster than Lubuntu 22.04 on my macmini2.1 despite of Cinnamon desktop against lxQT. It's because of snap applications embedded with Lubuntu.
As I was unable to boot directly to OpenSuse Tumbleweed, I've switched to LMDE.
Hello Matt and all those who stop by again and own an old MacBook white 2.1 and got it working.
Since I use Linux Mint (20 and now Mint Cinnamon 21 64-bit) the integrated iSight video camera does not work.
Cheese is installed but the program does not find it.
I have already installed the iSight firmware integrated in Linux Mint Synaptics but nothing happens.
Then continue to install "git" to this here from the Internet where it worked with others on a MacBook certainly newer design but unfortunately not with me.
$ cd /etc/local/src
$ git clone https://github.com/patjak/bcwc_pcie.git
$ cd bcwc_pcie/firmware
$ sudo make
$ sudo make install
$ cd ..
$ sudo make
$ sudo install
$ sudo depmod
$ sudo modprobe -r bdc_pci
$ sudo modprobe facetimehd
would anyone have an idea how to run this iSight camera on Linux Mint on the MacBook 2.1 that Cheese recognizes it?????
In general, the problem with these Mac Web Cams and Linux is known which is probably due to the driver. Maybe there is someone who can help????
Best regards from Germany: Ralf
you can install it on debian with: sudo apt install isight-firmware-tools
Thank you for the information (robx on May 16, 2023) on how to install the iSight Firmware. Unfortunately, it didn't work that way. The directory: /System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBVideoSupport.kext/Contents/MacOS/AppleUSBVideoSupport does not exist because the hard disk has Linux Mint 21 on it and I have already installed the current iSight Firmware via the package sources. When I start the Program for Webcams "Cheese" it says that the device is not recognized.
I used the Terminal Command "lsusb" to display all USB devices in MackBook 2.1 white and the iSight interface was Displayed but it said "no Firmware available".
So it doesn't work.
Anyway, thanks for the help
Many greetings: Ralf
Or you can download the file as a standalone (you may have to be careful, as I cannot verify the safety of all known sources..)
Hi Nathan, hello Matt as they allow for the helpful exchange of information.
Thank you Nathan for the helpful information. Through your message and further research on the internet, I have finally understood how it works to install the iSight webcam driver in Linux-Mint 21.2 on my MacBook white 2.1 so that the webcam works.
The "AppleUSBVideoSupport" file and the Linux "iSight Firmware Tool" belong together. I found quickly the "AppleUSBVideoSupport" file on the internet and it finally worked.
Here is a quick guide for all those who do not have a webcam function with the Linux program "Cheese" on their MacBook 2.1 2009 or earlier.
Quick Start Guide for iSight Webcam Driver:
The AppleUSBVideoSupport file from the Internet or from a
Mac OSX Partition OSX 10.5
/System/Library/Extensions/IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleUSBVideoSupport.kext/Contents/MacOS/AppleUSBVideoSupport
to the Downloads folder.
Then install the Linux "iSight Firmware Tools" via Synaptics where
the path to the "AppleUSBVideoSupport" file must be set.
Change the displayed path to the ones below if you select the
AppleUSBVideoSupport file.
/home/YourUsername/Downloads/AppleUSBVideoSupport
Click "Next" in the installation window.
The Apple iSight webcam driver will then be installed and then the
Shut down your MacBook properly.
(Don't restart it as a "reboot" and don't log out).
Turn your computer back on and test your iSight camera.
Many Greetings from Germany and thank you for the Help
basically you use the debian multiarch iso, you partition the HD in the MBR mode and after installing debian and the AMD firmware you get a working penguin! very important: deactivate wayland (as written in the guide)!
the only problem i get is some crazy multicolored pixel on the display and the suspension is not working correctly - I might have done some mistake since the github guy wrote the suspension should work. I encourage you to give it a try, in one month I'll try to update to debian 12.
I've just used your isomacprog to mod a ubuntu mate 22.04 iso and successfully installed it on my late 2006 white iMac 6,1. Great!
Two comments that might be of help to others.
-The native install STILL insists on loading the dud "Linux STA wireless driver". This is very confusing because it sees the wifi network and allows to enter the passkey and reports that all is well, but then only provides internet access in a here today gone tomorrow fashion. You have to click "Do not use this device" in "Additional Drivers" and manually install the "firmware-b43-installer" from Broadcom. All very odd since "Additional Drivers" now reports that "this device is not working" only now you have reliable internet access. No credit to me reporting this one. I'm standing on the shoulders of giants here. Just thought it was worthwhile pointing out that this still remains a problem. I suspect that this is encountered by others outside of the old Mac arena.
-If you have an extended keyboard I would suggest steering well clear of using the number pad when setting up your Linux passwords etc. I'm not sure of the details but it can get awfully confusing if these keys are/not numlocked.
the process that causes it to peg 1 core changes. sometimes its GNOME, but if i open brave itll be that process.
there are instances where itll start to multicore just fine. the issue gets worse when 2 GPUs are installed. if i plug in the display cable to the second GPU it gets 10x worse. (Quadro k5000) but taking that one out and installing a RADEON HD 5870 makes it better but not 100%. its lagging as i type this comment.
i used the modification program to modify my own download of linux (mint 21)
i originally tried the most current version of ubuntu LTS (as of July 2023) it was basically unusable.
when i do the fast benchmark on cpu-x i get a score of just over 3 million after 60 seconds (only can test 4 or 8 cores). which is comparable to a laptop i have with the same version of linux installed (just not modified) and that machine behaves much better.
open to suggestions.
thanks
I suspect it's a kernel config issue. The behaviour started with 20.04 kernel 5.13 generic, at which point I 'solved' it by moving to 5.13 low latency to fix it. However the problem then started to appear in 5.15 low latency too, along with 6.2 generic and 6.2 low latency. I suspect a config change was first introduced in 5.13 generic which then propagated to all later versions.
Unfortunately despite a lot of searching I don't have a solution. The commonly-recommended "intel_iommu=off" kernel param at boot doesn't help.
Thank you!
I tried to compile the Debian image on download (). Two years ago, I'd already done this for other iso's, and it worked. This time, whatever the computer, it tells me "Cannot read 4 bytes from my-linux-mac.iso".
What's the problem?
Best regards, Rémi.
http://releases.ubuntu.com/bionic/ubuntu-18.04.1-desktop-amd64.isotohttp://releases.ubuntu.com/bionic/ubuntu-18.04.6-desktop-amd64.iso. I will update the article.This won't expose EFI variables under /sys/firmware/efi/efivars, but it will allow an otherwise EFI-only clean boot.
Thanks Matt and others.
I would like to add my current state of aproach, maybe you can ad one tip to your post.
My system is a MacBook Pro2,2 with 2x 2GB Ram
(Here come the handy tip :)
I use ventoy (https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html) as a bootable usb stick, unfortunatly only available for windows. Once a stick is set up, you are able to copy .iso files onto the usb stick and boot them.
As an install media I achived booting into live cd mode with your prepared versions of
Lubuntu 22.04 LXQT (only showed 3GB Ram)
Lubuntu 20.04.1 LXQT
Ubuntu 22.04 Desktop (found 64bit and 4GB Ram)
Elementary OS 5.1 “Hera”
Once ventoy booted you can select an .iso to boot into.
Then I had to select grub2 instead of normal boot.
In grub2 menu I use safe graphics mode - or "nomodeset" as a grub parameter.
Now be patient and wait... usb2 you know.
After a while, you may see a warning like "no ums support in radeon module" (https://askubuntu.com/questions/827678/) ... don't worry ... just wait ...
Then your selected live cd environment will show up.
I installed Ubuntu 22.04 Desktop onto my ssd. Afterwards I had to ad bootia32.efi /EFI/BOOT folder to see my ssd as a selectable boot target during bootup.
Now I have to figure out, how to ad grub2 and I guess grub-efi-ia32 and a config to point at my installation. (at the moment grub menu greets me without any entry and switches to grub bash). Still working through the comments.
Thanks and good to see that this post is still kept up to date :)
You should be able to install the 32bit GRUB to your install like so.
https://vrtxd.wordpress.com/2022/06/21/upcycling-a-macbook-from-2006-to-run-linux/
https://web.archive.org/web/20230327110759/https://heeris.id.au/2014/ubuntu-plus-mac-pure-efi-boot/
However if you have swapped the CPU to a Core 2/T7xxx chip you may want to look at the 64bit solution as you’ll end up with a kernel mismatch..
I had already installed MX-Linux 23 in 32bits on an iMac 2006 2Gb of memory
and I just followed your tutorial to modify an MX-Linux 23 x64 iso to install on a MacPro 1.1 that I had upgraded to 2.1
dual Xeon X5355 processor
32Gb of memory
1 GTX 670 2GB + the original graphics card for startup (advantage of Linux which allows you to choose which card used for the LiveCD)
120GB SSD for the system and 2 1TB HDDs for data and shared data since it will serve as a home sharing server
only Apple iSight without function
Linux Mint 21 Cinnamon "Vanessa" (64-bit Mac) - 2.3 GB
linuxmint-21-cinnamon-64bit-mac-mattgadient.com.iso ( md5: 2c308dcae479525651ae96cc662d6543 ) on a DVD.
Press ALT to boot and install Linux Mint 21. Then update to Linux Mint 21.3 . I also loaded Linux Mint 22, but it does not run perfectly.
Linux Mint 21.2 ran best.
DualBoot also works. OS X 10.7.5 Lion + Linux Mint 21.3 works well.
It looks great but some things are not clear for my macmini 2.1 : should I erase the disk and make it fat32 , then install refind and then boot on the CD ? Or something else?
Thank you !
I had to reinstall mac OS leopard -> Lubuntu 18.04 (regular iso) -> Lubuntu 20.04 (matt .iso). I could not upgrade to 22.04 but everything seems to work fine.
Big thank you Matt !
DVD-boot was slow, there was times when I thought it had frozen but it managed to launch to dekstop. Installation to SSD went without glitches, but again took ages.
Wi-Fi gave errors on boot, but that is probably fixable with drivers.
iMac5.1 4GB RAM 120GB SSD
Can you please create an iso image of ZorinOS 17.1 Core and LMDE 6 (Linux Mint Debian Edition) for the iMac5.1 here?
Thank you very much
Best regards
Torsten Klaus
I tried the CDs with linux mint 21 and ubuntu 22.04. Load the CD, but the graphics card driver crashes (fb0: switching to radeon from EFI VGA) with mint, and (fb: switching to radeonrmfb from EFI VGA) with ubuntu. Tried with "nosplash debug nomodeset" option, same result. Tried booting from USB with other distro (by Yumi EFI32). I don't know what to do anymore. Any suggestions? Thanks.
apt install xserver-xorg-video-radeonWhen the boot from dvd starts you have to go to the advanced options and choose failsafe and proceed with the installation
Later I also installed kde
Good luck
Ubuntu: 8.1, 14.04, 22.04
Mint: 17, 18, 20.2, 21, 21.3, 22
Zorin: 17.1
- do not work.
32bit test:
mint lmde6 i386 – does not work
MX-23.3 – work but video is not synchronized (even with ctrl+alt+1 or 2)
mint 14 – WORK, screen ok, automatically sees HFS+, only does not see the wireless card (fixable problem).
Virtualbox with 64bit linux images – do not work (soon I will try Mint 14 32bit)
USB creators:
Rufus - does not work
Balena Etcher – does not work
Linux USB Writer – does not work
YUMI Efi32 – WORK
Windows 64bit:
Vista, 7 home, 7 ultimate, 8, 8.1, 10 (1709), 10 (1809) – do not work
Windows 32bit:
Vista – WORK
The keyboard must be Apple original. Generic ones do not allow you to enter in the boot options.
These were my attempts on my iMac 5.1 late 2006.
I hope they can be useful to someone.
After installing Mint14 in a partition (it's functional but too old) and trying the flop with Virtual Box, I have done other research. With my fast SSD mounted (Samsung) and 4 MB RAM, I have leave Snow Leopard, Apps and so on, unchanged. I have installed “VMWARE FUSION 5” for Mac. It's an old version that works very well (version dedicated to Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion). Don't try the last one version. I have loaded several operating systems into the virtual machine and test them. I haven't tried all, but two work perfectly, fast and fluid, and don't overheat processor and GPU (from 46°C to 51°C).
The first was WIN7 Home Basic 64bit. During the quick installation, Windows recognizes VMWare and installs specific tools. Once installed, I have downloaded the latest version of Firefox and everything works perfectly, even YouTube in full screen. I tried to install Win10 home 64bit but installation failed locked (not enough RAM?). I tried Win10 home basic 32bit, installs it, but until searches wi-fi, freezes it (can continued on wired ethernet?). I didn't want to try Win8 or Win8.1, 7 is enough for me.
Linux is a different matter. Immediately I tried Linux Mint 22 64bit. Installed, it crashed. MX 23.3 i386 32bit: at the first screen it died and didn't install (other boot options needed?). I have installed Linux Mint 18.2 32 bit. It works straight away. Replace Firefox_130.0.tar.bz and everything works great. Keep in mind that VMWare Fusion 5 has many installation options for Linux (for Mint use Ubuntu).
Considerations: I found Win7 more fluid (dedicated tools for VMWare?), but Linux works well too. Then, You can quickly do all tests you want: VMWare works with internal or external CD/DVD, USB drive, ISO on hdd or pen drive. I found it to be most practical solution to save my iMac 5.1 from landfill. I use Snow Leopard and, if I need anything else, I run the virtual machine in few seconds.
If you have a Core2Duo T7400 2.16GHz, you can also replace it with T9500 2.6GHz.