Installed Ubuntu 17.10 on a 2009 MacBook Pro Recently I decided that I'd like an upgrade in the laptop division. I was running with an MSI laptop that I built myself a couple years back with 8GB of RAM, a Haswell mobile processor (integrated graphics) and a 256GB SSD. Download Ubuntu (64-bit) for Linux to run an operating system that is based on community development. Ubuntu (64-bit) has had 2 updates within the past 6 months. Macbook pro 7,1 and ubuntu 14.04 trusty tahr this page aims to describe the steps needed, to fully enable all features of the macbookpro 7,1 release date, mid 2010 when using ubuntu 14.04, codename 'trusty tahr'. Recently i switched from a macbook pro late 2013 to a new mbp 2018, and i setup virtualbox with same settings on the new computer. I had an old 17 inch MacBook Pro from 2009 (college) lying around and I figured it’d be a fun challenge to install Linux on it. I had never installed or even used Linux before (to my knowledge). I also, confusingly, hadn’t found a clean, step-by-step guide for doing this, so I promised I’d write my process out as thoroughly but simply as I could once I got it done. Very happy with the results here. Installed 17.10 onto a 1tb HD I poached out of another machine. Everything worked out of the box including the Broadcom wifi card. If you've got a MacBook/Pro that you can't upgrade to HighSierra, I highly recommend doing this to extend the life of these fully functional machines.
- Download Ubuntu 17.10 Macbook Pro 13.3
- Install Ubuntu Macbook Pro
- Download Ubuntu 17.10 Macbook Pro 2020
Running a Linux distro from USB drive can be very useful, you can do almost anything just like from an installed operating system. It’s an easy way to run something on Linux or just see how Ubuntu works, the biggest disadvantage is that the USB flash drives are much slower than SSD drives. In this tutorial we will create a bootable USB drive in macOS and test it on MacBook Air.
Test environment: macOS 10.13.1
Download ISO: Ubuntu 16.04
Create the bootable USB drive (MBR/UEFI scheme)
a.) Identify the USB drive, in my example the device is /dev/disk2.
b.) Erase the /dev/disk2, create one big partition /dev/disk2s1 and format as FAT32 with the label “UBUNTU”. All data on /dev/disk2 will be destroyed!
diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk2 1 MBR FAT32 UBUNTU R
c.) Mount the Ubuntu ISO image.
mkdir /Volumes/UBUNTUISO/
hdiutil attach -nomount ubuntu-16.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso
d.) Copy the Ubuntu installation files to the USB drive, it might take a few minutes.
cp -Rv /Volumes/UBUNTUISO/ /Volumes/UBUNTU/
e.) Unmount the USB drive.
Download Ubuntu 17.10 Macbook Pro 13.3
* Note The bootable USB drive will work only on systems with UEFI firmware.
Run Ubuntu
a.) Turn on your MacBook and press the Option (⌥) key, you should see the Startup Manager, which allows you to boot from other disks.
b.) Select the USB drive and press Enter.
c.) When Grub loads, select “Try Ubuntu without installing” and press Enter.
I got my hands on a Mac Pro at work over the holiday, and the first thing I did was install Ubuntu Linux on it. Everything went smoothly using the new 7.10 version of Ubuntu, so I wanted to post how I did it:
[Note: I’m assuming below that you’re running OS 10.5 and have already run Software Update to make sure your Mac software is current]
1. Download the Ubuntu 7.10 64-bit install disk from here.
Install Ubuntu Macbook Pro
2. Burn the Ubuntu ISO to a CD.
3. Download and install rEFIt. (Do this in OS X). I had to use their manual install. Don’t worry, it’s not hard; you just have to copy a folder from one location to another, then enter two lines into a Terminal window.
4. Run BootCamp (It’s in your Applications -> Utilities directory). Use it to partition your Mac Pro’s hard drive to make room for Linux. You can set the partition sizes to whatever you want; I left 100 GB for my Mac OS and 140 GB for Ubuntu. When the partitioning is done, quit BootCamp. Don’t let it to do anything else.
5. Insert the Ubuntu CD you made into your Superdrive and reboot. rEFIt should pop up and let you choose to boot from the CD. Do that.
6. Choose the first option from the Ubuntu CD menu. When Ubuntu boots, play around with it for a while to make sure it sees your hardware properly. I have an ATI X1900 video card that Ubuntu found and worked with perfectly; I can’t vouch for Nvidia cards, so make sure you can set your screen resolution okay.
Download Ubuntu 17.10 Macbook Pro 2020
7. When you’re satisfied that Ubuntu can “see” your hardware okay, double-click the “Install Ubuntu” icon on the desktop.
8. Okay, now comes the one scary part. Follow the install wizard’s instructions until you get to the partitioner. Choose Manual. When you see a list of partitions, find the one you made using BootCamp (you can tell from its size) and delete it. Now create a new partition of type ext3 using the rest of your available hard drive space. Set the mount point to “/”. You’ll get some warning about not having a swap partition. Ignore it, you’ll be fine.
9. Click through the rest of the installer and let it chug away.
10. When it tells you to remove the CD and reboot, do what it says. rEFIt should come up again and see your Linux install. Select it, watch Ubuntu boot, and enjoy your new Linux system!
That seems like a lot of work, but really it’s mostly just clicking a few default options and watching the installers run.
If you run into problems, or just want more information, check out this blog on running Linux on the Mac Pro, or the thorough Gentoo Linux Wiki page, or this helpful post on the Apple Forums.