Great, you have what you were looking to install on one of your Macbooks (Mint 19).
I'm currently on a project with Windows laptops. Probably not useful in this forum, but may install Mint on one of them.

Was Ubuntu interesting enough to try on one of the Macbooks ? Particularly the 2007 model ?

I hope you will succeed in what you want to achieve. However, please don't think you can actually work on an Apple G4 laptop. For instance, you won't be able to use a browser in any meaningful way in 2020 because of the speed and memory limitations.

Before you put in too much time please read my LQ blog post I wrote yesterday about this very subject.

Macbooks and other laptops from 2007 make attractive doorstops. Unfortunately, they aren't useful for much more, unless you have some specific software to run, and won't use it on the internet.

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If I remember correctly you need to just press the Option key on your Mac when pressing the power button, that should give you an option screen where you can choose to boot from the USB stick.

I have a Macbook 2006 (macbook 2,1) that has a 64-bit CPU and a 32-bit EFI.
On my own experience, it was easier to install Linux when I left a very Small OSX Lion partition on the system.

As I recall I started by wiping the whole machine, then I installed lion.
Then I installed the rEFInd Boot Manager
https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

After it was working fine, I used BootCamp Assistant to create a Windows partition.
I left a minimal Lion partition behind just for convenience.

I installed Ubuntu on that "Windows partition", I initially installed Lubuntu 18.10 x64 but I have bee upgrading the laptop periodically.
Currently I'm running Lubuntu 20.10 with Kernel 5.8

I followed this approach because BootCamp emualates BIOS.
Using mattgadient software or using one of his preconfigured releases, you can boot Linux x64 from BIOS.
https://mattgadient.com/linux-dvd-im...e-2006-models/

the problem with these early macs is that EFI partition is located in HPFS+ partition.
Also for the boot strap you need EFI32 boot loader.
It is possible to manually configure EFI Boot loader and x64 Linux, but Is not standard.
So so I could not find a pre-caned released that would allow me to do this out of the box.
I found a procedure that allowed me to do just that, manually setup an EFI32 loader, confugured all to boot x64 linux, After several trys, I got it to work, but I dropped that solution as I was worried that a future release will override the manual configuration, rendering the system inaccessible until it gets manually fixed again.

So I followed mattgadient recommendations and I used his software to strips UEFI boot loader out of the Linux ISO, leaving only the BIOS loader.
I think you have the link from previous posts, but for completeness here it is again:
https://mattgadient.com/linux-dvd-im...e-2006-models/

Note that I had good luck with Lubuntu. So you might try that ISO.

Once Lubuntu boot, almost all hardware was recognized. The only problem was the web cam.
I ended extracting the iSight firmware from the OSX Lion partition. I followed this guide from steps 1 to 7…
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/use-...ntu-38894.html

Another problem that I faced this year, was high CPU utilization from ACPI/IRQ9 kworker.

When I checked ACPI interrupts, I noticed that gpe17 had a very high trigger count.
I found the problem with this command:
output:
You can see that gpe17 is very high.

to fix that issue I added boot parameter acpi_mask_gpe=0x17 to GRUB and reboot.
with Ubuntu/Debian add "acpi_mask_gpe=0x17" parameter to /etc/default/grub, at the end of line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT.

I edited the file using nano, but any editor will do:

Sample line before edit:
Sample line after edit:
then I ran the following to activate the setting:
and reboot

References:
For more details, see Linux kernel commit 9c4aa1ee which was first merged in Linux 4.10-rc3 and the bug reports linked to from there.
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux...9d9ae58fbafc11

My old Macbook 2006, after upgrading to 4GB RAM (3.2GB usable), adding an older SSD that I had laying around and installing Lubuntu, has become the personal School at home laptop for my 8 years old kid.

Zoom and Google Meet (under Chrome) run just fine. And the transition from MS Office to LibreOffice took him around a Week.
For this use case, this old laptop is a fine tool.

By the way, he recently discovered SuperTux, so at least that game is playable on this old hardware.

This snippet from your earlier post that you said came from apple might just be what you need. Apparently they gave you a way to remove the bios password protection and key blocking. If you follow their suggestion then afterward you may be able to boot from USB according to several of the suggestions given above.

^ That's what you get for thread hijacking, ofbarea.
Start your own thread with a(nother) full problem description.

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Thought I had replied to this.
My older machine - the one I cannot do anything with (still, as of 2020 November) is not a G4, it is a macbook 2, 1, white plastic body, core 2 duo running at about 2.0 ghz and it has 3GB RAM and Samsung (or maybe Intel) SSD.
Thanks for the reply anyway.

Unsure whether I have responded to the same point elsewhere in the forum (likely on the other Linux forum).
Anyway... the machine does not respond to the alt/option key.
It has no operating system on it, which I have been lead to believe is (with a Linux USB in it) not a problem.

I have used Mac OS / X 10.6 (its OEM), Maybe Windows at some point, and Cloudready's Chrome O/S successfully.
Now, however, it does not respond at all except to Mac OS X 10.6 on a SATA SSD USB drive.
No recovery options or similar are available at all.
No 'net recovery... nothing.

Thanks

I have in the past successfully USB booted it from
1. its original OS (OS X 10.4 OEM) DVD optical drive.
2. my retail OS X 10.6 DVD optical drive.
3. Cloudready's Chrome OS (approx version 65 or thereabouts)
4. Perhaps, if I am not mistaken, Windows 7 on a bootcamp partition (though it is more likely that the memory of doing that is in fact the memory of doing it hundreds of times on my later 2011 macbook pro i5.

No it responds to nothing except my USB SATA SSD with retail OS X 10.6 on it.
No alt/option recovery or similar.
Only alt/option with the above-mentioned USB SATA works at all.
I may have butchered it by using Chrome OS, which, having no uninstall option, necessitated wiping the SSD to get rid of Chrome OS.
As you may have seen (I get mixed up with what I write on each of two Linux forums I use, this one and the Mint forum), I have also carefully followed the instructions for: Rufus USB making with Matt Gadient's modified Mint 19.3 iso, but with no success. Still no response with the alt/option and that, though the USB must be good as my 2011 boots from it.
Now have the original Linux repository version of Mint 20 on the USB, which my 2011 macbook pro i5 boots from, but the machine in question (2007 core 2 duo white plastic MacBook) will not respond to that of course as it's a 64-bit boot-loader / boot manager version.
Perhaps it has hardware problems, but if so, how then does it boot from the above-mentioned SATA?

Thank you very much.

Hi Matthew,

Some updates on my work with my Macbook, early 2011 laptop running Linux:

1. I replaced the original hard drive with a gaming-oriented solid state drive (SSD) from Team Group. I bought the SSD from Newegg.com, and the price for a 512 GB 2.5" drive was less than USD$60. This may get cheaper as the months continue, and storage drives get larger and better.

2. Instead of running the installer for the early 2011 default of Mountain Lion, I chose the option to restore the MacOS version of Mountain Lion with High Sierra.

Apparently, the default MacOS version for your 2007 Macbook will have a version earlier than Mountain Lion, to which will be installed from a DVD or multiple CDs that was issued with your Macbook. Some MacOS default installers have network install capabilities, but this could be an immature network firmware version, and may not work if your network is not the same vintage as 2007's TCP/IP stack programming paradigm. Does this mean that network install is not possible ? Yes and No: Yes, if your network is 10/100 ethernet, and no, if you try to use Wi-fi connectivity. Ethernet existed in 2007, and the installer was still able to fit on two 700MB/650MB compact disks. If you search on ebay for 2007 MacOS disk, you will get some hits. The 2007 vintage disks were selling for less than USD$20 from the ones I found.

To be sure, once your 2007 Macbook has an operating system (any system from 2007), then you have some more steps to install Mint 19 or later to the 2007 Macbook. Best case scenario, MacOS is installed successfully, then search for Linux operating systems that can boot under the 2007 Macbook.

If you care to search on Google, here is what someone else has found with loading their 2007 Macbook with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/ques...-white-via-usb

Thanks for replying.
Not sure whether you replied to something I have forgotten writing or whether you misunderstood what I wrote.
No worries, here is an update.

2011 MB Pro now runs Mint 20 as the only O/S.
Encountered problems trying to install Mint alongside Windows (trying to kill OS X but not the Windows install that ran alongside it).
Encountered too many to list here and now.
Probably as I am not savvy enough to know the ins+outs of making partitioned drives of GNU/Linux and W7 / OS X work together.
The workaround for the time being, as I have W10 on my wife's PC and on my desk at work, is to have Mint and only Mint on the 2011 MB Pro.
So far it seems that, despite having run all updates, the Firefox browser under Mint is less responsive by far than Chrome under W7.
Not big enough an issue to switch back to W7 / OS X.
Will buy an SSD cradle and replace the optical drive to keep the Mint drive and W7 / OS X drives separate, rather than partitioned on one physical drive.

2007 MacBook (not pro) currently inoperative.
As per above and other posts on Linux Mint site, I need to know for sure (not just roughly) how to edit a Mint iso (32 bit booting into 64 bit OS) and more immediately whether the 2007 machine is alive as it were. Last I recall (not touched it for a while) it will boot from my OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard USB-SATA-HDD, but not from the HDD if inserted into the HDD bay; not from either the OEM OS X 10.4 DVD or the retail OS X 10.6 DVD.
It will no longer boot from the Cloudready Chrome OS live USB, but it did for months.
It will not boot from the (Matt Gadient) modified Mint 19.3 Live USB with a 32 bit boot something-or-other modification made to it by him.
Trying to EFI / UEFI boot (alt key on start-up) results in either a dead screen and no response at all or a folder icon with a question mark in it, unless, as stated above, I insert the OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard USB-SATA-HDD

No rush.
Now thinking about a Raspberry Pi 4B 8GB model to run Raspberry Pi OS or Ubuntu Pi as a reliable but simple desktop machine while I 'play' (fekk around) with the two old MacBooks while learning more.

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The first issue to your problem is there is no HDD in the MacBook to read. You need a storage location with at least 20GB to install the system (This applies for every computer). It sounds like you would like to install the latest version of macOS on the system itself, so I would first put an actual HDD inside.

I beg to differ. Puppy can run perfectly normal (fast), with USB or CD/DVD only.
There maybe are others, like Tails - but I never tried.