is it a macbook pro?
https://www.plop.at/en/ploplinux/macbook/index.html

This is what I'm assuming it is (possibly different processor, of course)...

yes the white one. tried a bunch od stuff vis usb pendrive and notta. so i am not wasting anymore time. oh well. 20,000 more gray hairs. lucky i still have hair.

thanks huys. time to move on.

will try debian on a thinkpad when i can get an extra one.

Linux on older MacBook Pro - my recent experience
 

Here are my experiences, just what worked for me, may not for everyone! I wanted to put Linux on a MacBook Pro c. 2008 from a garage sale. Has Core Duo Intel. Help from LinuxQuestions and other websites got me to it. The answers are to be found online but for me they were buried in so much info that they are hard to find.

Here are notes I took to help me remember. The absolute key is the string "nomodeset" in the boot sequence. Without it you will not start Linux, just a few lines of text and then nothing.

- To boot from a USB drive hold down “Option” key during boot, choose “EFI disk.”

- When the USB presents you with a GRUB screen, highlight main entry and hit “e” for edit.

- Add the string “nomodeset” between ro and splash in the text then F10 to continue. If you don’t edit this, it won’t start!

- Best to install with the wired network.

- When you reboot the first time to new install, you will have to do the nomodeset thing again.

- After install, IMMEDIATELY add an apple fan controller by opening a terminal and typing: sudo apt-get install macfanctld (assumes Debian-based distro). Listen to the fan start right up!

- Then edit the grub.cfg file (in /boot/grub; edit as root) to include the nomodeset so you don’t have to keep editing the boot sequence every time you start.

- Must use “additional drivers” to get the driver for the internal Broadcom WiFi card.

- Don’t try using the third-party graphics drivers! If you do, you may have to do it all over again.

- Useful to install soon if not in your distro:
- Grub-customiser
- Gparted
- Synaptic

- For making it dual-boot easily to Mac OSX, the utility rEFInd may be used. I didn't find it very useful.

- Otherwise, to boot as OSX hold the Option key during boot, choose the OSX partition to boot from.

Good luck!

I installed openSUSE 15.0 on a 2007 iMac with Core2Duo last summer. Afterward I added Snow Leopard, and later still, openSUSE 15.1 beta. Wireless I never tried, as I have gigabit ethernet and don't like having all those extra electrons flying about. Originally I was booting with uEFInd, but after upgrading MacOS to El Capitan, I never got rEFInd to work again except from a CD. Getting it all figured out was a herculean time gobbler, but it now boots and runs openSUSE and El Capitan well enough from Grub EFI.