Installing Ubuntu on MacBook 2.1

Installing Ubuntu from a live USB on a Macbook 2.1 is quite difficult. Here are my attempts.

1. Introduction

The Mabook 2.1 serie is difficult to deal with because of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface, (UEFI) of the computer. It is in 32bits, and the CPU is a 64bits one. Therefore, there are two choices:

• Installing the 32 bits version of Lubuntu, and not using the computer at its maximum performance. (to check : One advantage is to be able to install Lubuntu alongside other EFI systems.) (installing Ubuntu in EFI mode).
• Installing a 64 bits version of Lubuntu, and finding a workaround for the UEFI.

2. Standard Lubuntu install

To perform the installation of Lubuntu on a Macbook 2.1, the following steps are necessary:

• Preparing the boot media,
• booting on it,
• installing the system.

2.a. Preparation of the Lubuntu CD and boot

Booting from a CD or DVD seems the easiest way to boot on Live Ubuntu. No blank DVDs were available at the time of the install. So burning a CD with an alternate iso (see Ubuntu wiki for more information) could do the trick. But, the alternate iso of Lubuntu 18.04 is 717 Mo large, too much for a CD.

Booting from a mini.iso (see Lubuntu minimal install for more information) burned on a CD doesn't work either. A strange prompt is displayed with two numbered items without description:

1.
2.
Select CD-ROM boot option: |

According to this article the Macbook isn't able to read multi-catalog disk image. A multi-catalog disk image allows a linux distro to boot either in BIOS or EFI mode. By changing the disk image to be BIOS only, the Macbook is able to boot on it.

It is straightforward to fix a mini.iso using the proposed program and then to burn it on a CD for an install on Macbook 2.1.

The CD appears on the boot menu when the option key is pressed. Using the c key doesn't work.

2.b. Installation using the mini.iso

Installing with the minimal iso is more difficult than with standard install. But by following the wiki It is fairly easy. Nonetheless, two things are not so easy to deal with:

• If a GUID Partition Table (GPT) is used, one EFI partition of about 500Mo must be created. Once created in the free space, the option EFI Partition System must be selected. For manual partitioning see this wiki.
• At the end of the installation, the installer asks for extra package. Be sure to select the wanted package (like lubuntu-desktop) with the space bar before hitting the enter key. If this step is forgotten, then after the first boot make a sudo apt-get install lubuntu-desktop to add the desktop.

2.c. Side notes about the installation

Using an old CD of Ubuntu 11.04, the Macbook was able to boot on Live Ubuntu. One can upgrade the system to the wanted version, but as stated here this method is not practical. Indeed the upgrader can only install the above version (for example 11.10 upgrade for a 11.04 system). Upgrading from an unsupported version of Ubuntu is not easy since the servers are not available anymore.

2.d. Other options

German website with specific instruction to build a live image of Linux for this specific Mac era mesom.de

Informations for grub boot options (nomodeset, acpi=off, noapic, nolapic...) :
ask ubuntu Grub Option

3. Tweaking the system for the Macbook

The standard installation of Lubuntu performs well on a Macbook 2.1, but some tweaks are necessary to use it at its maximum.

3.a. Graphics drivers

The Macbook 2.1 serie doesn't use a graphic card but a chipset, and more precisely the Intel GMA 945, OpenGL 1.4 hardware compatible chipset. By default in Lubuntu, the ppa graphics-drivers provides open-source drivers for graphic chipset. But Oibaf ppa (oibaf/graphics-drivers) provides up to date open-source graphics drivers and option to use software renderer OpenGL for old hardware.

To run an OpenGL program (in this case glxgears -info) with gallium llvmpipe software render:

$ LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 glxgears -info

The following softwares run successfully with this option:

3.b. Official Mactel support page

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IntelMacSupport https://wiki.debian.org/MacBook

3.c. Icon theme

The new Papirus theme used in Lubuntu is really nice. To install it, go to https://github.com/PapirusDevelopmentTeam/papirus-icon-theme.