Challenges installing Ubuntu 22.04 on ancient Macbook Pro from 2011 ( El Capitan )

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Challenges installing Ubuntu 22.04 on ancient Macbook Pro from 2011 ( El Capitan )

It took me a whole day to try make a bootable USB stick. Finally what worked is I formatted the stick on the Mac with FAT file system. Then I plugged this into my linux desktop and used "unetbootin" to write the iso file to the boot partition on the USB stick.

Now when I plug this into the Mac it shows me the options below. But eventually fails with some weird error about not being able to mount some file system. Not sure if the problem is with how I created the bootable stick or am I installing too new a version of Ubuntu? Should I try Ubuntu 18? Couldn't find any documentation on what release is certified with Mac.

MacBook Pro

Posted on Dec 8, 2022 11:49 AM

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Answer 1

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HWTech

Level 9

66,710 points

Dec 21, 2022 06:59 AM in response to thisisalloneword

Unfortunately dropping into a BusyBox interface is something which is hard to troubleshoot.

Try using another USB stick for the bootable Linux USB installer. The quality of USB sticks are extremely poor, plus Macs can be very picky about the drives used for booting.

Also try using Etcher (Mac/Windows/Linux) to create the Linux USB boot disk. Years ago I noticed that Unetbootin slightly changed a boot image booted, so I stopped using it. Etcher just pushes the image directly onto the drive with no modifications.

You may want to verify the downloaded .iso file is not damaged by verifying its checksum. Most Linux sites provide these checksum values on the download page. You may also want to try a different distribution like Kubuntu, or even better Linux Mint to see if their bootable installers work. You can also try booting Knoppix, which I have found will boot just about any system out there, but I would not install Knoppix since it is an extremely customized distribution meant to only be used from the USB stick (yes, they provide an install option, but trust me you don't want to use Knoppix everyday due to the extreme customization the developer did to it). FYI, the default Ubuntu is not a good choice for older computers because the regular Ubuntu requires a lot of resources.

It is possible you have a hardware issue with this laptop.

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Answer 2

a brody

Level 10

85,245 points

Dec 17, 2022 04:25 PM in response to thisisalloneword

Intel CPU Macs use a special EFI fimware that is designed just to handle Windows through Boot Camp and Mac OS on a standard boot. Other operating systems may need virtualization like VMware, VirtualBox, or Parallels. Virtualbox should still have some older El Capitan compatible builds out there.

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Answer 3

Dec 21, 2022 01:07 PM in response to HWTech

Thanks for the tips. I decided not to spend any more time on this machine and try and sell it on ebay. Installing OS on new machines is often a big challenge. Doing it on a 10+ year old machine is of course going to be more difficult. Wish there was an easier way to do it besides the whole "usb bootable image" method.. Seems very error prone and non standard.. Good to know about etcher. Will keep in mind for the future..

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Challenges installing Ubuntu 22.04 on ancient Macbook Pro from 2011 ( El Capitan )

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