Trouble Installing Ubuntu on Old MacBook Air

Hello, I recently purchased a new 2024 MacBook Air, and I’m absolutely loving it! However, I also have my old mid-2014 MacBook Air, which is still in great condition. Instead of letting it go to waste, I thought I would install Ubuntu on it to keep it current and give it a new lease on life.


I’m attempting to install Ubuntu MATE 24.04 on the 2014 MacBook Air, but I’ve hit a roadblock. While I successfully created a bootable USB (using Etcher) and can boot into the Ubuntu installer, the internal SSD is not detected during installation. The installer only shows the USB drive as an available option.


The internal SSD is physically fine—I’ve verified this—but it seems the issue might be related to Apple’s system configuration or firmware. I’ve read that others have successfully installed Linux (including Ubuntu) on older MacBooks, so I know it’s possible.


Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

• Booting into the Ubuntu installer via USB (EFI boot works fine).

• Checking disk visibility in tools like GParted within the live environment—still no sign of the internal SSD.

• Researching potential solutions, including modifying GRUB parameters (e.g., adding `intel_iommu=off`), but this hasn’t resolved the issue.


I’m reaching out here to see if anyone in the Apple Community has encountered this issue while trying to install Linux on a MacBook Air or similar model. Specifically:

1. Are there any macOS-specific settings or firmware adjustments I should make before attempting installation?

2. Could this be related to how Apple configures its SSDs or file systems (e.g., APFS)?

3. Has anyone successfully installed Linux on this model and can share tips or workarounds?


Any guidance would be greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance for your help!


Thank you for your help.

iPhone 13, iOS 18

Posted on Feb 17, 2025 6:31 AM

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Feb 18, 2025 8:39 AM in response to Cord13

Cord13 wrote:

Thanks for your reply—I really appreciate it. I was hoping to avoid installing rEFInd since my goal was to completely replace the outdated macOS with Ubuntu. However, it seems a normal installation isn’t possible, so I’ll seriously consider your advice.

rEFInd is only needed if you are dual booting, otherwise the default Ubuntu bootloader will be fine.


I had hoped the bootable USB with Ubuntu would simply wipe the old MacBook and install a fresh copy of Ubuntu, but the installer doesn’t detect the hard drive for some reason.

It can & should be able to do so. I haven't tried installing Ubuntu in a while so I forget the how the installer presents the drives to the user. There is usually an option to use the while drive which would have the installer completely erase the destination drive.


Are you saying the installer is not showing any physical drives other than the USB stick for the Ubuntu installer?


Is your internal SSD an original Apple OEM SSD or a third party SSD?


Can you take a picture of the Ubuntu installer on the disk selection screen & post it here?


It’s frustrating, and the other workarounds seem overly complicated. Your suggestion might be the simplest solution, though I wish I didn’t need two partitions or dual OS setups. The MacBook is old, and I just wanted to give it as much new life as possible.

Ubuntu or any Linux distribution can work just fine on an older Intel Mac (non-USB-C anyway) without macOS being required.


Before you erase the Mac, I highly recommend you first create a bootable macOS USB installer now while you still can just in case you have issues using Internet Recovery Mode. If you ever decide to go back, it may make things easier.



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Feb 17, 2025 5:12 PM in response to Cord13

The few times I've done something similar (and this was only to play with multiboot options, mind you), my best success was to keep macOS to maintain the standard EFI and Recovery partitions, then more or less:

  1. Re-partition the drive from Disk Utility to shrink the macOS partition down to a minimal amount (say 20GB or so);
  2. Format the new partition for Linux as MSDOS;
  3. Boot into the Linux Installer and install it into the MSDOS partition (using the installer to reformat the partition);
  4. Install rEFInd and use it to set Linux as the boot OS, boot into macOS using the option key only if needed.


There is more nuance to it - but there are plenty of online guides that can fill in the details.

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Feb 18, 2025 5:55 AM in response to g_wolfman

Thanks for your reply—I really appreciate it. I was hoping to avoid installing rEFInd since my goal was to completely replace the outdated macOS with Ubuntu. However, it seems a normal installation isn’t possible, so I’ll seriously consider your advice.


I had hoped the bootable USB with Ubuntu would simply wipe the old MacBook and install a fresh copy of Ubuntu, but the installer doesn’t detect the hard drive for some reason.


It’s frustrating, and the other workarounds seem overly complicated. Your suggestion might be the simplest solution, though I wish I didn’t need two partitions or dual OS setups. The MacBook is old, and I just wanted to give it as much new life as possible.


Thanks again for your help!

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Feb 18, 2025 11:30 AM in response to HWTech

Thank you for your quick response. Due to my schedule, I won’t be able to provide a photo of the SSD installation screen for the next day or two.


To answer your questions:


1. Yes, the installer only detects the USB drive. The SSD is not recognized, even though I’ve confirmed it’s working.

2. The SSD is the original Apple OEM drive.


Thanks again for your help.

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Feb 19, 2025 11:58 AM in response to Cord13

As HWTech says, what you want to do ought to be possible - it just seems not to be for you for some obscure reason...really a modern Ubuntu installer ought to recognize a HFS+ or APFS formatted drive just fine.


I suppose one thing you could try is to create a macOS USB Installer as HWTech suggests, use that to erase and reformat the SSD into something like MSDOS or EXFAT, and then try the Ubuntu installer and see if it recognizes the drive in that format...



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Feb 19, 2025 1:19 PM in response to Cord13

Cord13 wrote:

Thank you for the suggestion, g_wolfman. I know it’s a long shot, but using Disk Utility on my Mac to create the installer instead of Etcher seems logical. Hopefully, the Mac will create an installer that recognizes a Mac SSD.

You created the installer correctly by using Etcher. That should not be the issue here.


That Ubuntu installer layout screen is much different than the last one I saw a few years ago. How about trying to install Linux Mint to see how that works out. It is based on Ubuntu, but has some differences. It would be interesting to compare how the installer behaves. I haven't tried Linux Mint in a while either as I tend to focus on Debian instead.


What happens when you boot to the "Live" mode to see how Ubuntu runs from the USB stick image. It will be slow, but the goal is you will be booted into a full OS so you can have access to a full GUI interface and some more utilities than are available while booted to the installer. After booting Ubuntu into "Live" mode, open a terminal window and issue the following commands to get a bit more information about the system.


List the block devices such as SSDs:

sudo  lsblk  -f


Show the system boot log (filtering out just the problem stuff):

Not sure if this will work since it appears it may be a new option, but worth a try since it is less typing:

sudo  dmesg  --level=warn+


If the previous command failed, then use this one instead (must be no spaces between the level items):

sudo  dmesg  --level=emerg,alert,crit,err,warn


The information from both of these commands may provide some clues. Of course, the problem could be just with the installer itself, but at least this will confirm what the Linux kernel is seeing as regards to the hardware of this laptop.

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Feb 23, 2025 5:31 PM in response to HWTech

The last command worked and I received a message that says:


Mds cpu bug present and set on, data leak possible, see https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/hw-vuln/mds.html for more details.


I haven’t had a chance to read the article yet I terminated the Ubuntu install and let it boot back up into Big Sur.

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Feb 24, 2025 6:43 PM in response to Cord13

There are a lot of known CPU bugs especially with the Intel CPUs (all CPUs have bugs/vulnerabilities), but that is probably not the problem, however, I cannot say since I can't see the error or its context. Many of those CPU bugs are not much of an issue for personal systems, but are a huge issue for shared systems.


You can also try looking at those logs without any options to see where the system stalls or breaks down.

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Feb 25, 2025 3:15 PM in response to Cord13

I've never seen that before, but I thought the problem was that the Ubuntu installer was not seeing your internal SSD?


Are there any more issues listed?


Your picture cuts off right at the detecting at least one SATA or USB drive (sda). As long as the installer is booting and working, then I would not bother with the GPU issue until you confirm Ubuntu has an issue after installation is complete.


You may also need to review the boot log without any filters just to get more details in case the drives are being detected. It has been a while since I filtered for internal drive entries, but you can try the following to see if it narrows down the log entries to just USB & ATA/AHCI devices, unfortunately I don't have access to a Linux system to confirm the "-Ht" options are correct:

sudo  dmesg  -Ht  |  grep -iE '^ata|^sd|^ahci'
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Trouble Installing Ubuntu on Old MacBook Air

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