Trying to turn an old MacBook into a Chromebook (or similar)

[servodude]

Got it working!!

I reformatted the usb stick this time choosing MS-DOS (FAT) as the format.

Damn I should have thought of that when the USB key thing popped up before
- I've be stung myself recently with exFAT being the default on large SD cards when plugging them in to small board linux PCs

Hopefully that should be a thing of the past soon (i think the new MS licensing applies post kernel 5.07)

Anyways very well done - and now you've done it once you'll be able to try out a variety of new OS to bring the laptop back in to service
- I've heard mac users can find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_OS quite familiar (or Zorin)

Have fun
- sd

[Fluke]

Excellent!

Most USB flash drives come pre-formatted exFAT these days and you're right they should have mentioned it in the tutorial that it needed to be FAT (although they did mention FAT for the Mac drives partition / formatting...).

It was while I was reformatting the stick I'd used to create the Chrome installer, as I needed it to transfer some files from new to old, that I spotted the format drop down menu, I noticed that the bottom one was the format required to set up the partitions, ahhh I thought, I wonder. Perhaps obvious in hindsight but I just used the nearest stick that I had with enough capacity, didn't even check what the format was. That is definitely something they could mention.

You can multi partition external USB flash/SSD's if needed with different file systems on each. There's free apps that will do it although you might need to pay to get the full range of file system options.
On Windows I use the free...https://www.partitionwizard.com/free-pa ... nager.html
Have a search for Mac/Linux equivalents.

This is useful to know as I'm currently using up a 16gb stick for the Ubuntu installer, would rEFInd know which partition it was looking for though?

If you get any operational issues with Linux like display/sound et al on the Mac it might be driver related - have a search for more optimised drivers via the official Linux distro website forums. https://ubuntuforums.org/forum.php
Avoid random search engine links to 'drivers' as it's a good way of potentially getting malware installed.

I haven't installed yet, still trying it out from the USB, on the up side I've successfully printed out a document - great. Couldn't work out how to scan though. I'm hoping for an equivalent utility to Mac's 'printers and scanners' which allows you to choose what type of scan it is, where it's to be scanned to etc. Any pointers?

More importantly though is wifi, there's no option to enable you to set up wifi which I assume is because there's no driver for it. I've looked under hardware and drivers but can't find anything that says this is how you install a wireless driver. I've got a BT hub. Any help there would be much appreciated.

Once I know I can do that I'll go ahead and do a duel boot installation. To be honest I don't need the MacOS, I'd already restored it to factory settings anyway as I was planning on giving the laptop away once the new OS was up and running. But I'll do the duel boot for now since that is what's recommended.

I'm actually wishing I could hang onto it as I'd really like to get to know Ubuntu/Linux, it looks great!

[kiloran]

I'm actually wishing I could hang onto it as I'd really like to get to know Ubuntu/Linux, it looks great!

If you install Oracle VM VirtualBox on your own PC, you can install as many operating systems as you like.
https://www.virtualbox.org/

--kiloran

[ReformedCharacter]

I'm actually wishing I could hang onto it as I'd really like to get to know Ubuntu/Linux, it looks great!

If you install Oracle VM VirtualBox on your own PC, you can install as many operating systems as you like.
https://www.virtualbox.org/

--kiloran

Oracle VirtualBox is excellent as is the fact that there are a huge number of ready made VirtualBox images available for downloading, for example:

https://www.osboxes.org/virtualbox-images/

https://virtualboxes.org/images/

RC

[Infrasonic]

In no particular order...

Scanning - I've got no experience there other than you need to research SANE...https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Scanners

With any new printer/scanners make sure they have CUPS/IPP support otherwise they won't print with Linux...https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUPS

I cleverly managed to buy an HP LaserJet Pro M15a mono printer a couple of years ago very cheap in a liquidation sale - only to discover it didn't have CUPS/IPP, so wouldn't print from my Android phone or Chromebook or the Linux container or via cloud print solutions...
One of only about 5 models in their entire range that was like that...

Multiboot from USB - no idea about rEFInd minutiae as I have never delved under the hood with Macs, but the best multi boot solution I've ever found that mostly works is Ventoy - seen mixed reports about it with older Macs though...https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html

There is also an uber geek hardware option for USB multiboot aimed at sysadmins/developers which is...http://en.iodd.kr/wiki/index.php/IoddMINI

You can try out literally hundreds of Linux distros online via your browser to see which GUI/Layout you prefer....https://distrotest.net/index.php
They aren't fully functional (for obvious security reasons) but once you have a shortlist try from live USB or install natively/dual boot or VM (e.g VirtualBox). VM's will require more resources so might be a bit slower on a low powered machine than native/dual boot.

I use a small external 500GB SSD (Samsung T5) as they are more reliable and designed for persistence (more writes) rather than cheap USB flash drives. The more recent T7's with the fingerprint reader are worth looking at as you can encrypt/decrypt independent of any OS limitations and won't have to remember a password if you don't want to.

[Fluke]

I've just done a whole load of linux and managed to install a wifi driver and it worked first time. Given every single hurdle I've crashed into on this journey I wasn't expecting that. OK I was copying the code from here but even so.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx?action=show&redirect=WifiDocs%2FDevice%2FAirportExtreme

[Infrasonic]

If you're messing about in the terminal with bash scripts one time saver to remember is that you can toggle (↑) for previous command scripts and it will save them across boots (if installed persistently).

Once you've got a few regulars in there like update

Code: Select all

 sudo apt update

or update upgrade and install - yes

Code: Select all

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

You can just toggle away.

There's quite a few Linux GUI app alternatives to command line procedures as well which can speed up the learning process.

If you stick within the Debian/Ubuntu Linux forks to experiment with then the bash script syntax should be pretty much similar for all of them. Go more off piste and wider variations start to creep in - which can get confusing.

[Fluke]

OK I've installed it onto the partition and all looks well. Now, while I was testing it out on the USB I noticed the screen would freeze from time to time while in the middle of something eg while in the web browser, sometimes it would free itself up but sometimes not and I'd have to reboot.

I hoped this would be because I was running it from the USB but I'm just now in the middle of configuring an email account in the Thunderbird mail app and it's done it again. Could this be a memory thing? It's still running the original 4 Gb of RAM, I could upgrade, I need a new battery anyway. Is there another driver I should know about? Is there something I can do to unfreeze it that's less drastic than pressing the off button?

[servodude]

OK I've installed it onto the partition and all looks well. Now, while I was testing it out on the USB I noticed the screen would freeze from time to time while in the middle of something eg while in the web browser, sometimes it would free itself up but sometimes not and I'd have to reboot.

I hoped this would be because I was running it from the USB but I'm just now in the middle of configuring an email account in the Thunderbird mail app and it's done it again. Could this be a memory thing? It's still running the original 4 Gb of RAM, I could upgrade, I need a new battery anyway. Is there another driver I should know about? Is there something I can do to unfreeze it that's less drastic than pressing the off button?

4Gb ram should be fine for most distros

If you're up for command line stuff I think Alt+CMD+ Fn# (eg F4)
should open a shell console to allow you to see what's running and possibly locked up
- and Alt+CMD+Bckspc should kill the X server running (doing the graphic UI)

once you've got access to a terminal you can use: top and ps to see what's running
- and kill or killall to stop stuff

I will say that for all its great stuff - most Linux distros are pretty old fashioned at letting you know something is going on under the covers (just lacking the intuitive nuanced feedback of some other OS)
- and relies on you going and having a look yourself
-sd

[Infrasonic]

OK I've installed it onto the partition and all looks well. Now, while I was testing it out on the USB I noticed the screen would freeze from time to time while in the middle of something eg while in the web browser, sometimes it would free itself up but sometimes not and I'd have to reboot.

I hoped this would be because I was running it from the USB but I'm just now in the middle of configuring an email account in the Thunderbird mail app and it's done it again. Could this be a memory thing? It's still running the original 4 Gb of RAM, I could upgrade, I need a new battery anyway. Is there another driver I should know about? Is there something I can do to unfreeze it that's less drastic than pressing the off button?

Graphics driver would be my first thought.

Edit: Here's 20 CL monitoring options...https://www.tecmint.com/command-line-to ... rformance/

4GB of RAM should be fine for basic office/browsing use, if you want to experiment with VM's then I'd get more. (I have 16GB in my desktop PC mostly to help with VM performance.)
If you're buying bits for it then get an SSD and swap it out for the HDD (assuming it's an easy job), it will make a big difference to performance as the latency is much lower.

[Fluke]

Graphics driver would be my first thought.

Edit: Here's 20 CL monitoring options...https://www.tecmint.com/command-line-to ... rformance/

4GB of RAM should be fine for basic office/browsing use, if you want to experiment with VM's then I'd get more. (I have 16GB in my desktop PC mostly to help with VM performance.)
If you're buying bits for it then get an SSD and swap it out for the HDD (assuming it's an easy job), it will make a big difference to performance as the latency is much lower.

OK well I think I'll leave any upgrading for a while until I'm sure it works ok. The freezing tends to unfreeze if you leave it long enough and I've been in and out of all sorts of windows since and it hasn't hung since. I'll keep and eye and see how it goes.

One small niggle is that while I selected the English(UK) keyboard during set up, and I've checked again in settings, some of the symbols are the wrong way round, e.g. the " is above the number 2 instead of the @ symbol. I don't know where my backslash has gone but I've got a hash symbol in it's place. What's all that about?

[kiloran]

One small niggle is that while I selected the English(UK) keyboard during set up, and I've checked again in settings, some of the symbols are the wrong way round, e.g. the " is above the number 2 instead of the @ symbol.

Isn't that normal for a UK keyboard? The " is above 2 on my keyboard

--kiloran

[Fluke]

One small niggle is that while I selected the English(UK) keyboard during set up, and I've checked again in settings, some of the symbols are the wrong way round, e.g. the " is above the number 2 instead of the @ symbol.

Isn't that normal for a UK keyboard? The " is above 2 on my keyboard

--kiloran

Ah could be, not on the Mac, old or new. Oh well not an insurmountable problem. Unless there's a UK keyboard for Macs that I can map to?

[Fluke]

I'm actually wishing I could hang onto it as I'd really like to get to know Ubuntu/Linux, it looks great!

If you install Oracle VM VirtualBox on your own PC, you can install as many operating systems as you like.
https://www.virtualbox.org/

--kiloran

Oracle VirtualBox is excellent as is the fact that there are a huge number of ready made VirtualBox images available for downloading, for example:

https://www.osboxes.org/virtualbox-images/

https://virtualboxes.org/images/

RC

Thanks for this btw Kiloran, I'd definitely like to give this a try.

[servodude]

One small niggle is that while I selected the English(UK) keyboard during set up, and I've checked again in settings, some of the symbols are the wrong way round, e.g. the " is above the number 2 instead of the @ symbol.

Isn't that normal for a UK keyboard? The " is above 2 on my keyboard

--kiloran

Ah could be, not on the Mac, old or new. Oh well not an insurmountable problem. Unless there's a UK keyboard for Macs that I can map to?

There is in Ubuntu (keyboard -> layout settings -> English (UK, Macintosh))

If it's not there in whichever distro you have it's probably possible to add it

-sd

[Fluke]

There is in Ubuntu (keyboard -> layout settings -> English (UK, Macintosh))

If it's not there in whichever distro you have it's probably possible to add it

-sd

Thanks sd I will give this a go today. In the mean time I've been trying to boot up so that I've got the option of Ubuntu and MacOS, the instructions say to hold down the option key while booting and you will be presented with the choice, but that doesn't work. Any suggestions? Do I maybe need to go back to the USB somehow?

[servodude]

There is in Ubuntu (keyboard -> layout settings -> English (UK, Macintosh))

If it's not there in whichever distro you have it's probably possible to add it

-sd

Thanks sd I will give this a go today. In the mean time I've been trying to boot up so that I've got the option of Ubuntu and MacOS, the instructions say to hold down the option key while booting and you will be presented with the choice, but that doesn't work. Any suggestions? Do I maybe need to go back to the USB somehow?

Ooh. That could be complicated; it depends on where your macOS resides (which partition) and what your bootloader is (often Grub with Ubuntu stuff on PC)
Basically the "bootloader" runs first and you can interrupt its normal process to redirect to a different operating system (using a different part of the hard drive for its "root" drive)

The stuff that runs from the USB can certainly be used to configure the boot loader stuff on the main drive - and you can also put different OS in different places

-sd

[Fluke]

Ooh. That could be complicated; it depends on where your macOS resides (which partition) and what your bootloader is (often Grub with Ubuntu stuff on PC)
Basically the "bootloader" runs first and you can interrupt its normal process to redirect to a different operating system (using a different part of the hard drive for its "root" drive)

The stuff that runs from the USB can certainly be used to configure the boot loader stuff on the main drive - and you can also put different OS in different places

-sd

Crikey yes that does sound complicated. It's on the same partition it was on namely Macintosh HD, I grabbed some of the spare space from that to create the Ubuntu and Swap partitions. Tbh I don't really need to get into MacOS other than to get to the battery/power adaptor settings as I've just put a new battery in and I'm following a yt video re how to charge it up and calibrate it. Perhaps an easier question to ask is can this be done in Ubuntu, I had a quick google but couldn't find anything.

[Infrasonic]

This dual boot install guide is from 2018...https://www.maketecheasier.com/install- ... buntu-mac/

...Setting Up Boot Order
Upon completion, your Mac will likely boot into Ubuntu automatically. If so, the GRUB bootloader has taken over: we need to reassert rEFInd’s control. Follow the instructions in *this guide to use efibootmgr from within Ubuntu to solve the problem.

There might be a shortcut, though. If you only have rEFInd and Ubuntu installed, this Ubuntu Terminal command should set you right. However, circumstances vary, so don’t just run it blindly:

Code: Select all

sudo efibootmgr -o 0000,0080

* https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/bootco ... efibootmgr

Edit: I've also seen references to rEFInd plus, another fork which has more features apparently - maybe have a look at a comparison review and see if it fixes known boot issues?

[servodude]

Ooh. That could be complicated; it depends on where your macOS resides (which partition) and what your bootloader is (often Grub with Ubuntu stuff on PC)
Basically the "bootloader" runs first and you can interrupt its normal process to redirect to a different operating system (using a different part of the hard drive for its "root" drive)

The stuff that runs from the USB can certainly be used to configure the boot loader stuff on the main drive - and you can also put different OS in different places

-sd

Crikey yes that does sound complicated. It's on the same partition it was on namely Macintosh HD, I grabbed some of the spare space from that to create the Ubuntu and Swap partitions. Tbh I don't really need to get into MacOS other than to get to the battery/power adaptor settings as I've just put a new battery in and I'm following a yt video re how to charge it up and calibrate it. Perhaps an easier question to ask is can this be done in Ubuntu, I had a quick google but couldn't find anything.

It's not actually that "difficult" to get your head around; it's "complicated" only in that there's no one way to do things (and hence to infer what might work for any given installation)

I've not personally run a dual boot with MacOS but I've done a few with windows; and too many custom distros for dedicated hardware

If the MacOS still exists on the drive the problem becomes how do you let the bootloader know about it or use a different bootloader
(And it looks like there's been some good advice while I was writing this)

-sd