Question is title.
In the past I’ve installed many distros on many older PCs, but never used linux properly (although slowly moving over to avoid win11). I’ve also had a heap of history with windows installs.
A family member has been testing Mint on an old laptop and is going well. This is a trial run before I update their iMac laptop (not sure what one but no longer supposed by OS updates).
I’ve never booted to an iMac BIOS or installed over top of apple.
- Is this going to be like installing over windows?
- What issues can I expect?
- Should I consider another distro?
Asking here as searching results in AI bullshit websites.
This depends on which iMac it is. If it’s an Intel iMac, it is slightly easier, and if it’s an Apple Silicon iMac, it will be a bit more difficult. If it’s a Silicon, you’d need to use Asahi Linux, or have varying support. If it’s Intel, I’m pretty sure it’s similiar to installing on a PC, but can’t say for sure. I’ll look into it more
Yeah… to my knowledge it’s the same as a “normal” UEFI system, but instead of pressing esc or f12 you hold the alt or option key on startup. Then select your USB, and boot. I’d strongly advise you test everything before installing.
I installed Fedora on a 2015 MacBook pro. It works well, though the camera doesn’t work and bt is bonky, to say the least - but I couldn’t care less about that.
Linux runs fine on Intel Macs. There are a couple peculiarities you’ll want to be aware of, though.
- Ventoy doesn’t work as an installer. The boot menu will come up, but any ISO you choose will hang
- Not all distros will recognize the wireless card and install the firmware (Be prepared to install it using a USB to Ethernet adapter)
- Same goes for the iSight web cam
Other than those initial hiccups, everything works pretty flawlessly.
Fedora has always had good Mac support in my experience. Should just be able to hold option key at boot and select the USB.
If you want to continue dual booting I’d use the Mac’s recovery mode to shrink the partition so it leaves space first. Other than that it should be just like normal. Hold option to get the boot menu.
I was quite successful running EndeavourOS on my Macbook Pro 2016, but not everything works perfectly. Still, performance under Linux seems a little better.
First check what year the Mac is. If it is 2014 and below, it will be easier. If it’s over, look online for much more detailed info. Especially batery management, hybernation, wifi, etc. And make sure you can connect ethernet and external keyboard if needed during install.
I had to uninstall broadcom-wl, bc it did not work, but the default (brcmfmac) works like charm.
It would help if you got the model right, and an exact one at that. As the others said, “iMac” isn’t a mac laptop, but an AIO desktop.
From the thread I gather you have some model of MacBook Air, that looks like this:
I run linux on one of these. Everything worked out of the box, except for wireless. See my 2-part adventure for how I solved it.
Mac “bios” isn’t exactly how you’d expect from PCs. Hold down alt key during startup to enter boot menu, and you’re good to go.
If your family member was a mac user before, they might be most comfortable on Gnome, as it has aped many ui features from mac os. It has a similar dock, fluid trackpad-friendly navigation that works the same way, and more.
