Installing Ubuntu, linux, on an Mac Mini (2018) and MacBookAir (2010)

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It's almost become a sport to revive old Macs..... 😉

This short post will address some obstacles found during install of a new OS.
  • The Mac Mini:s WiFi controller wasn't found !
  • The MacBook Air didn't manage to do a USB boot with Ubuntu !

Install
Please check out this Blog post which explains the whole install and also is an easy start with Ubuntu. After information about "Packet Managers" some apps are installed.

Some thoughts and tips, after you done the installation, that are Apple specific are found here.

Please note !!! that if you have a Mac with he T2 security chip, like the Mac mini 2018, you can’t boot, by default, from en external or removable media without changing security.

Mac Mini 8.1, 2018

I did an install with Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS to get fresh hardware for my Home Assistant OS.


The OS install was made with network cable connected so it took some time before I discovered that the Broadcom BCM4364 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter wasn't up and running. 


There are information on the WEB about Broadcom adapters but the one used in this Mac was harder to find. 


It ended up with instructions from this post. Just follow the commands below.


lspci -nn | grep 0280

03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4364 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:4464] (rev 03)


wget https://github.com/NoaHimesaka1873/apple-bcm-firmware/releases/download/v14.0/apple-bcm-firmware-14.0-1-any.pkg.tar.zst


tar --use-compress-program=unzstd -xvf apple-bcm-firmware-14.0-1-any.pkg.tar.zst

sudo cp -r usr/lib/firmware/brcm /lib/firmware/

rm -r usr .BUILDINFO .MTREE .PKGINFO

sudo reboot


MacBook Air 3.1, 2010

As said this Mac didn't even do an USB boot with Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS so instead of solving the problem, "digging a rabbit hole", I just turned to another Linux distribution Linux Mint Cinnamon which just worked out of the box.


Comments

  1. Anonymous27 October 2025 at 19:11

    easier way is to do:
    sudo pacman -U apple-bcm-firmware-14.0-1-any.pkg.tar.zst

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Pyssel i livet27 October 2025 at 22:55

      Thanks ! How do you know which package to install ?

      Delete

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