Linux on a MacBook6,1 (White) - Full Documentation

Recently, I have been experimenting with Linux on Intel Macs, with the most recent machine being the 2009 A1342 MacBook. This documentation assumes some familiarity with Linux beforehand, and can be used on other MacBooks (specifically models with an NVIDIA card) with some modifications. The specs of my specific machine are as follows:

- 2.26GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7550 (Penryn)

- 6GB DDR3 (8GB wouldn't work for some reason)

- Nvidia Geforce 9400M Graphics

- 250GB SSD

- Linux Mint 22 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard (dual-booted)

Part 0: What works

Everything! Well, except for external monitors, which don't work correctly. Most of the hardware works out of the box, but some needs some tweaking to work or to work well. We'll get into that in this article.

Part 1: Initial information

Pretty much every modern Linux distribution will technically work on this MacBook, however, there are some caveats that you should be aware of:

- This documentation (specifically steps related to partitioning and installation) assumes that you are using an Ubuntu-based distribution. Most other steps will work on all distributions.

- If your distribution uses systemd-boot instead of GRUB for the bootloader (Pop!_OS) you will experience graphics driver stability issues and no sleep/wake support. This will be experienced by default when using GRUB, but there's a way to fix it (keep reading).

- This guide uses the open-source "nouveau" driver as a substitute for the unsupported, proprietary official NVIDIA driver. The official driver does not work on any Linux kernel versions later than 5.10 without patches (untested by me), were removed from most distribution repositories, and have many known security vulnerabilities! They don't offer any additional functionality compared to nouveau on the 9400M, and they should only be used as a last resort if all else fails.

Part 2: Resizing Mac OS X

Linux can be easily dual-booted on any MacBook model. However, since Linux can't reliably resize HFS+ partitions (or at least the Ubuntu installer can't), it's best to resize the partition from within Mac OS X. Dual booting is recommended when running Linux on MacBooks so that you have a fallback in case something goes haywire. However, if you don't want to dual boot, you can skip this section.

Note: resizing partitions with Disk Utility is dangerous and could cause data corruption. If you have any important files on your MacBook (I don't know why you'd store important data on a computer from 2009, but hey, whatever floats your boat) back them up.

Steps to resize the macOS partition:

1. Boot the MacBook into Recovery Mode by holding Command-R at startup (10.7+) or a Mac OS X Install DVD/USB (10.6).

2. Go to Disk Utility (Utilities -> Disk Utility in Snow Leopard, Disk Utility in the Recovery menu in all other versions)

3. Select the whole disk. (In macOS Sierra or later, go to the "View" menu and select "Show All Devices.") 

4. Go to the "Partition" tab or button.

5. Choose the size of your partition, format it as MS-DOS (FAT) and name it any way you want (you'll be reformatting it later), then select "Apply."

6. Once the formatting is complete, restart your Mac.

Part 3: Creating the Linux USB

This can be done on any computer, and is very simple. Using a DVD is also supported, but not recommended because of speed.

WARNING: This process will erase ALL DATA on your USB drive!

1. Download an ISO of your favorite Linux distribution.

2. Flash the USB drive using your favorite USB flashing software. If you're flashing on macOS, use balenaEtcher.

    2a) If you are using an old version of Mac OS X that doesn't support balenaEtcher, use the "dd" command in macOS. See this link for a tutorial on how to use dd.

3. That's it!

Part 4: Booting the Linux live USB

Unfortunately, there is currently a bug in the GRUB 2.06 boot loader where the GRUB menu is not visible. This is not present in older versions of GRUB and doesn't affect the OS or dual booting in any way. If your distribution of choice uses GRUB 2.04 (such as Debian 11) everything will work perfectly, but your system will still boot with 2.06.

Turn on the MacBook while holding down the Alt/Option key to enter the startup manager, insert your USB installer, then use the arrows or mouse to select it. Press Enter and you will be greeted with either a GRUB menu or a black screen. In either case, press enter to boot into Linux. After about 20-30 seconds you should see Linux beginning to load; if it doesn't, try pressing Enter and waiting again. 

PRO TIP: If you only see the Linux distribution logo and want to see what it's doing, press Fn and any function key to show the verbose text.

Once the boot process is complete, if you are dual booting, select "Try without installing" if applicable (unless you're using a KDE-based or non-Ubuntu-based distribution), because we need to remove the empty partition from the disk.

Once you're at a desktop, open GParted (it's installed on most distros). Select your internal hard drive from the list on the top right, find the partition you created in part 2, and delete it. Now use the checkmark icon to apply changes.

Once that's complete, run the installer program and follow the steps. When you get to the step about partitioning, either select "Install <distro name> alongside Mac OS X" or "Replace a partition" (in which case select the FAT partition created earlier in the process). If you aren't dual-booting, just erase the entire disk.

If you don't get an option to "Install alongside", make sure you've actually deleted the partition using GParted. It's not enough to just format as "Free Space" under Mac OS X. If no OSes are detected, then macOS is installed on APFS (you're either using OpenCore, dosdude1's Catalina Patcher, or a different Mac model) and you have to manually create partitions under "Something Else". You need an Ext4 partition with the mount point of "/" and a "swap" virtual memory partition. 

From there, installation should proceed as normal. Once it finishes, restart, and boot into your new system. You are now ready for the postinstall process.

Part 5: Accessing Mac OS X

Hold Option at startup to pick between Linux and Mac OS X (Linux will be listed as EFI Boot. you may see a "Windows" entry, that can be ignored).

Part 6: WiFi

WiFi works out of the box on kernels that bundle the open-source brcmsmac driver with official Broadcom firmware (such as Ubuntu and derivatives). You can use the fully official Broadcom drivers by installing the bcmwl-kernel-source package on Ubuntu, but they don't seem any better. On Debian, you must first add the contrib and non-free repositories, then install broadcom-sta-dkms while connected to Ethernet for WiFi to work.

Part 7: Graphics, GRUB, and sleep/wake 

Note: If your MacBook doesn't contain an NVIDIA GPU, these steps are unnecessary since everything should be working out of the box.

As mentioned earlier, NVIDIA graphics are controlled by the open source nouveau driver. However, by default, this driver is rather unstable in EFI mode, and sleep/wake will cause a freeze. To fix these problems, open the Terminal and type sudo nano /etc/default/grub to open the GRUB configuration file. Set the GRUB_TIMEOUT to 0 (default will probably be 5 or 10), add "init_on_alloc=0" to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT section, and add a new line containing GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true. Add another new line (or uncomment the existing line) containing GRUB_TERMINAL=console (only necessary on version 2.06 or later). Press Ctrl-x then y then Return to leave the configuration file. This will make the boot process 5-10 seconds faster by automatically booting Linux, allow you to see the GRUB menu if ESC is pressed at boot, and fix the sleep-wake issue and other video driver problems.

 

Next, type sudo nano /etc/grub.d/01_enable_vga.conf, then paste the following code into there. This will fix some GPU issues (specifically certain freezing under load), and allow the proprietary drivers to work on supported kernels.

WARNING!! IF YOUR MACBOOK IS NOT THE EXACT MODEL HERE (MACBOOK6,1), PLEASE SEE THIS FORUM POST FOR INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO GENERATE THESE PCI SETTINGS. YOUR PCI SETTINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT AND USING THESE UNMODIFIED COULD CAUSE DAMAGE TO THE HARDWARE AND/OR INABILITY TO BOOT!

 

cat << EOF
setpci -s "00:15.0" 3e.b=8
setpci -s "04:00.0" 04.b=7
EOF

Press Ctrl-x then y then Return again.

In order to fully prevent GRUB from picking up on Mac OS X (and not even being able to boot into it), the permissions for the OS Prober script need to be changed to make it non-executable due to a bug in Ubuntu's GRUB. The VGA enabler script also must be marked as executable.

sudo chmod 644 /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober
sudo chmod 755 /etc/grub.d/01_enable_vga.conf 

sudo update-grub

reboot

 

Graphics should now be fully stable! I ran Minecraft for over an hour without any freezes or lockups, and this entire post was written completely on this MacBook on Linux Mint.

Bonus: Cinnamon Desktop Environment Sleep Fix

If you are using the Cinnamon desktop environment (Linux Mint), shutting the lid will not put the MacBook to sleep. To fix this, open the Power Management settings and enable "Perform lid-closed action even with external monitors attached". Sleep/wake should now work perfectly