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Linux Mint on a Macbook Air 2013 11 inch
This is how I installed Linux Mint on my old MacBook Air 2013 11 inch laptop. I ran into some issues that are important to consider and correct before starting to enjoy. But after that, it works amazing. I also bought and installed a new battery. It runs now for 6 to 7 hours with work and watching movies.
I followed the Linux Mint Tutorial. For this I downloaded the latest Linux Mint version and used Etcher on Windows.
To boot with the Live USB, click the Option (Alt) key while booting. From there I ran into the first issue. When you boot Live Linux Mint, and try to install it, it didn't find the hard drive. I found that the issue has to do with Intel Virtualization On in Linux, we need to set this to OFF. So first, boot using the Live Linux Mint and during the boot loader (the black screen where it shows you what to boot) you have to click e then insert intel_iommu=off right before the -- in one of the lines. Then click F10 or in my case the "volume down" key. After that it will load the Live Linux Mint, the HDD will appear and then you can install Linux Mint on the right HDD.
When I tried to boot after installation, it went right to BusyBox, telling me something was wrong. I forgot to save the error message, but the Internet said it was because the laptop was trying to boot using the USB and not the HDD. This was a common error apparently, so we need to fix the Boot loader.
So I again booted using the Live Linux Mint USB, and make sure to use the intel fix again otherwise it won't work.
We need WiFi for this and you will notice it doesn't have when you start, because of the lack of Broadcomm Drivers. If you have ethernet, you can use it. What I did was to use Device Manager and install the Broadcomm Drivers. After that, connected to my WiFi.
Inside Mint, go to Administration>Boot Repairand run the Standard repair. It should appear and run, otherwise, it means it didn't find the HDD again.
After the repair, reboot. It said Ubuntu instead of Linux Mint in the Boot loader, no matter. And then it didn't boot again, it went to BusyBox with another error. This error meant the HDD was not found, meaning the line intel_iommu=off was not in the grub. So I fixed the boot loader error, now I just needed to turn of Intel Virtualization so it can boot using the HDD.
For this, once I was in the boot loader and it said Ubuntu, click e for emacs and add intel_iommu=off in the line where it says linux at the end after it says quite and splash. Then click F10 again. It booted fine, but I needed to make a permanent change to Grub.
Once it booted correctly, I installed WiFi again as before, because I only did it in the live USB. Then went to the terminal and sudo nano /etc/default/grub. Added the line intel_iommu=off on the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line, inside the quotes and right after quite splash.
Saved the file with nano and finally updated Grub
sudo update-grub
After that, booted again and now everything worked normally.
Ran into a similar problem to this
Building module:
Cleaning build area...
make -j8 KERNELRELEASE=6.17.0-14-generic KVER=6.17.0-14-generic...(bad exit stat
us: 2)
Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 6.17.0-14-generic (x86_64)
Consult /var/lib/dkms/broadcom-sta/6.30.223.271/build/make.log for more informat
ion.
dkms autoinstall on 6.17.0-14-generic/x86_64 failed for broadcom-sta(10)
Error! One or more modules failed to install during autoinstall.
Refer to previous errors for more information.
* dkms: autoinstall for kernel 6.17.0-14-generic
...fail!
run-parts: /etc/kernel/header_postinst.d/dkms exited with return code 11
dpkg: error processing package linux-headers-6.17.0-14-generic (--configure):
installed linux-headers-6.17.0-14-generic package post-installation script subp
rocess returned error exit status 11
Setting up linux-headers-6.17.0-19-generic (6.17.0-19.19~24.04.2) ...
/etc/kernel/header_postinst.d/dkms:
* dkms: running auto installation service for kernel 6.17.0-19-generic
It seems the broadcom drivers for MacBook Air were not up to date and wouldn't automatically update.
I found the solution here: Solution
Which was just to download the newest codecs, then install.
wget https://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/restricted/b/broadcom-sta/broadcom-sta-dkms_6.30.223.271-23ubuntu1.2_all.deb
sudo apt install ./broadcom-sta-dkms_6.30.223.271-23ubuntu1.2_all.deb
This solved all my issues.
So far, the MacMint experiment is a success, it injected new life to an old computer and it is now my travel laptop.