has anyone installed debian on an old mac laptop
 

i have tried to try debian on an old macbook and i have no luck trying to run it live let alone install it. has anyone been able to do - and no i am not a command line guy Just am old guy who has run linux for close to 15 yrs now.

(From another retired guy): The big question: How old?

At a certain point Apple gave up on the PPC, and switched to Intel c. 2006. It would be a big search to find anything before that, or any ppc distro not in EOL. To be sure, historic distros are there for download, the kernel even supports 68k cpus(!) and some models which were never sold, but were just dirty thoughts to be implanted in various brands of FPGA or ASIC. Today, it's x86, or Arm.
The big limitation is wafer fab size on old stuff. That limits speed, using more current generating more heat. Presuming Motorola was fully up to date on wafer fab tech (which they had no reason to be), we're talking 90-130nm wafer fab; Today's chips are as low as 12 nm, and AMD has already demo'ed cpus of 7nm.

Make it clear what you have, and you say you also have linux on something else?

Old dude here also. GED. No college.
Don't be bashful.
We don't read minds.

https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=493393
https://ubuntuforums.org/forumdispla...%20USB%20Stick

intel cor2 duo is all i can say. old white macbook. plastic.

thank you both

- sorry for the quick response - just in the middle of a bucn of stuff.

Core duo should be easy peasy for Debian.

https://wiki.debian.org/MacBook

another good page because it shows links to mac laptops and you can figure out what you have maybe.

https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Apple

just gossip for has anyone done this with debian

https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comm...7_with_debian/

Good luck with it.

Maybe you need a debian live iso?

https://www.debian.org/CD/live/

Did you get your live iso from there and check md5sum of downoaded iso before making boot usb or dvd?

Edit: in case you don't know. You can grab what you need from the amd64 link list of isos

https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd...64/iso-hybrid/

Thanks - got the live non-free debian 64 iso but no luck re" using the dvd i burned.

i did look at the various instructions for the macbook on the wiki page and way to complex re: command line stuff for me to work with and also there are way too many to choose from regarding which macbook i actually have. got a hold of one that was left over from a someone so i figured that would be great to try debian on it. I wanted to start live to see what worked as such and then install the iso works on my thinkpad. so it is a good iso.Knowing as little as i do regarding reminal - it is frustrating. i am not the sharpest tool in the shed re: linux. Other stuff - razor sharp.

How old is it? Is it a PPC or Intel Macbook?

an intel machine. tried to find the age but no luck. i have been trying for the last week or so and lloking at all sorts of stuff but cannot make a dent. i always stayed away from macs because i knew there were hassles.

i run a couple of laptops with linux that are rock stable for personal and biz/office. my wife also has one i set p for her to use. got a hold of this macbook so i figured ok core 2 duo - useless as it is - everything is so old browser is so old you cannot load a lot of pages.. i have always been interested in debian since i have ran 3 based on debian for the last decade plus as such. so why not - i have always been intimifated by debian for reasons - so i figured now is my chance. i never dual bottoed or ran virtual so i wanted to run pure debian on it's own. and do not want to medd up my 2 that run perfectly.

so for all of you trying to help - that is my story.

i also want to say that if i can't so be it - maybe i can get another laptop not a mac and run debian. really was very curious to see how it runs and how stable it really is.

thank you all so very much!!!!!!!!

Can it boot from usb? if yes did you try debian live from usb?

i tired via usb with an external HD. no luck. usb stick - i do not have any other than 1 back up and not usre the formate is correct. when i plugged t in - said cannot read contents or some such - so not sure if that will answer your question.

I had a gnome iso but downloading the lxde version and will try with unetbootin to create the usb iso and will try it out. I will get back to you later - thanks all.

I used Debian on a MacBook that looked the same as yours. Worked fine, except I never did get the wifi working (and it was an old one from work that we were getting rid of so I was just playing with it, so didn't REALLY try that hard).

any tips to get it booted and installed?

you may try Plop bootmanager says it can boot usb/cd/etc even without bios support?
https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/intro.html

I used to have to use it on my old pc to boot usb