Resolved Linux Mint 20 XFCE Misadventures on a 2010 MBA

[TheShortTimer]

I've mentioned on numerous occasions that Linux Mint is my favourite desktop distro, so I decided to see how it fares on a 2010 MBA as an additional OS alongside El Capitan and Snow Leopard. I went with the XFCE version because it's lighter on resources and I only have 2GB RAM to play with. To get things underway, I created a Live USB drive using UNetbootin in El Capitan:

This was unsuccessful - instead of loading the Linux Mint options screen, the installer booted to a Gnu Grub command line screen. Back to the drawing board... Following the steps in this article, I used the Terminal to create my Live USB drive and very easily too.

In what appeared to be sign that the procedure had gone according to plan, the presence of the USB drive now produced this reaction from MacOS:

I ejected the stick, plugged it into the MBA and powered it up with the option key held down.

Hurrah, we have life-signs!

Short lived life-signs! The screen went blank for several minutes during which you have no idea whether the computer has hung and or encountered some issue. Not good. It took a number of attempts before I paid attention to the flashing light of the USB drive which suggested that some kind of activity was underway and I decided to just wait and see what would happen.

Life returned to the screen albeit briefly...

Several more minutes followed with a repeat of the black screen and no indication of what was happening behind the scenes and then signs of life reappeared...

Ok, I've made it to the desktop - let's see what Linux Mint's Live USB environment is capable of!

Being able to play one of my favourite films out of the box is enough to win me over.

From here, I decided to wade into the deep end install the OS onto the SSD. I created a 4GB swap file and a 100GB partition after re-learning the Linux set up process.

This was where the problems began: when prompted to remove the physical media and press the enter key, I did so but nothing happened - the MBA failed to restart and I ended up having to force a cold restart by holding down the power button.

Upon restart and during subsequent boots, there was no sign of a Grub boot menu and instead I was greeted with this error message every time I fired up the computer:

The volume and brightness keys were recognised, which is definitely a huge plus in its favour:

All the power management options appear to function perfectly. The main problems were episodes with loud fans that were unheard of whilst running MacOS and the strange absence of the Grub menu which meant I had to hold down option every time the MBA booted so I could select El Capitan or Snow Leopard, otherwise it went straight to Linux Mint.

I performed an integrity check on the USB stick and it reported that one file had an issue. Unfortunately it didn't identify the problematic file.

Taking this into consideration, I felt it was best to erase the swap and OS partitions and start from scratch by downloading the ISO anew. (I'd used JDownloader2 so I'm surprised that the image has an issue.) I'll update this once I've managed to make another attempt but I'd appreciate any advice in the meanwhile.

 

[Hughmac]

Thanks very much for taking this on @TheShortTimer

My own experience installing Mint 20 on the exatct same machine was similar in that Unebuntin failed first time, but I reformatted my flash drive as FAT32 with GUID partition scheme and was successful.
I then installed rEFind in Mac OS using sudo in Terminal and rebooted, where you are presented with a new boot screen that included some Linux options from the flash drive.

I believe I chose the first of these options which presented a static screen with blue text, and after waiting a while I realised that I had to hit the return key.
There followed a verbose output all the way to the desktop and I was able to install Mint alongside Mac OS.
Having detected rEFind on the system I was asked if I wanted to place grub on the Linux partition as a chainloader which I did.
I also found that when exiting the installer drive I had to hard stop the system, but on rebooting rEFind kicked in with all bootable partitions and Mint was easily started.

One more thing, as they say , I found that if I changed the NVidia drivers to the recommended one I then lost brightness control, so I have kept the open source one.

Hope this helps,

Cheers

Hugh

 

[Hughmac]

Correction:- I ended up restoring the hacked 64 bit Mint ISO to a GUID FAT32 USB stick in Disk Utility, and it boots OK (takes a while to get going though) on the MBA.

Also, Mint 20 being 64 bit only and Apple not allowing such things to boot on these machines, I downloaded my ISO from https://mattgadient.com/linux-dvd-images-and-how-to-for-32-bit-efi-macs-late-2006-models/ - the ISO has been hacked to disable EFI checks.

Cheers

Hugh

 

[Amethyst1]

Also, Mint 20 being 64 bit only and Apple not allowing such things to boot on these machines […]

The 2010 MBA does have 64bit EFI though.

 

[Hughmac]

No, it is a 64bit processor with a 32bit EFI, and it won't allow Mint 20 to boot; Mint 19 32bit yes though

Cheers

Hugh

 

[Amethyst1]

No, it is a 64bit processor with a 32bit EFI,

If it was 32bit EFI, versions of OS X newer than Lion wouldn't boot. I just checked my 2010 MBA and ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree reports

"firmware-abi" = <"EFI64">

Check it yourself if you don't believe me.

 

[Hughmac]

Sorry if I am wrong; I was just reading from the link I gave above, but either way a 64bit Linux will not boot without some manipulation of the ISO.

Cheers

Hugh

 

[Amethyst1]

Sorry if I am wrong;

No need to be, it's all fine.

 

[Hughmac]

Maybe I'm wrong all around, because it was my C2D 2006 iMac that needed a hacked ISO to boot Mint 20 64bit, and I think I assumed the C2D Air late 2010 would be the same

Cheers

Hugh

 

[TheShortTimer]

Thanks very much for taking this on @TheShortTimer

What can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment.

My own experience installing Mint 20 on the exatct same machine was similar in that Unebuntin failed first time, but I reformatted my flash drive as FAT32 with GUID partition scheme and was successful.

Ah, I'll keep that in mind for the future. Thanks for the tip!

I then installed rEFind in Mac OS using sudo in Terminal and rebooted, where you are presented with a new boot screen that included some Linux options from the flash drive.

I believe I chose the first of these options which presented a static screen with blue text, and after waiting a while I realised that I had to hit the return key.
There followed a verbose output all the way to the desktop and I was able to install Mint alongside Mac OS.
Having detected rEFind on the system I was asked if I wanted to place grub on the Linux partition as a chainloader which I did.
I also found that when exiting the installer drive I had to hard stop the system, but on rebooting rEFind kicked in with all bootable partitions and Mint was easily started.

No wonder I had problems with Grub. This guide to installing rEFInd looks pretty thorough and well written.

One more thing, as they say , I found that if I changed the NVidia drivers to the recommended one I then lost brightness control, so I have kept the open source one.

I'm also certain that the recommended NVidia driver introduced screen-tearing during video playback that wasn't present under the open source driver. I'll examine this further when I reinstall the OS.

Hope this helps,

It definitely does.

Maybe I'm wrong all around, because it was my C2D 2006 iMac that needed a hacked ISO to boot Mint 20 64bit, and I think I assumed the C2D Air late 2010 would be the same

Cheers

Hugh

It's also confirmed on EveryMac that the 2010 MBA has a 64 bit EFI. Don't forget, as @Amethyst1 has pointed out, if the EFI was 32 bit then the machine would be in the same predicament as the Mac Pro 1,1 and require a workaround for El Capitan etc to install. As further evidence, I didn't need to hack the 64bit version of Linux Mint 20 in order for it to run, I downloaded the untampered release and just needed to write the ISO correctly to the USB device with DD in Terminal.

You're more right than you are wrong.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Update time: when I attempted to reboot into the Recovery Mode with CMD & R, I was taken to the Internet Recovery Mode instead. The solution was to access the recovery partition at boot by holding down option and from there I was able to start working.

With the SIP disabled, I returned to El Capitan and used the automatic installer, which only required me to navigate to the downloaded folder using Terminal and then type:

./refind-install

Next, I rebooted back into the Recovery Mode to re-enable the SIP.

Time to see if my handiwork has been successful...

Hooray! rEFInd is working and I can select Snow Leopard or El Capitan and there's also a number of other options which come to think of it, Apple should've provided within their own boot manager.

Next, I'll reinstall Linux Mint and hopefully I should have an easier time than on my previous attempt.

 

[TheShortTimer]

This doesn't appear to be working out...

There followed a verbose output all the way to the desktop and I was able to install Mint alongside Mac OS.
Having detected rEFind on the system I was asked if I wanted to place grub on the Linux partition as a chainloader which I did.

The Linux Mint installer didn't notify me that it had detected rEFInd, which meant in turn I wasn't asked about where to place Grub. After completing the installation and rebooting, I heard the chime and instead of rEFInd I was presented with this error message from before.

Linux Mint then booted. This was repeated every time I rebooted the computer - rEFInd made no appearance. With option held down, I was able to access the EFI partition that contains rEFInd and this error message was displayed:

After a few minutes, the computer reboots and eventually loads Linux Mint.

Any ideas as to what's happening here?

 

[TheShortTimer]

Persistence and perseverance can reap dividends.

I reinstalled the rEFInd boot manager and there was a very interesting - and welcome development. As you can see within the Terminal window, it detected the presence of Linux and made the necessary readjustments!

Upon rebooting, rEFInd was waiting for me and with a few additions.

Selecting Grub failed to trigger the Linux boot menu.

Instead, it went straight to loading Linux Mint. I don't know why but I'm not complaining, the main thing is that rEFInd was restored and I can switch between MacOS and Linux Mint at boot. I can also cut out the Grub process and choose Linux Mint directly from the menu.

A few seconds later and here we are!

I've rebooted several times and everything appears to be fine. I can access Snow Leopard, El Capitan and Linux Mint and switch between them without any problems. One of my first priorities will be to edit the rEFInd config file and disable its timer! Things hadn't gone quite according to plan with setting up Linux Mint but I got there in the end, courtesy of trial and error. I hope that this workaround is helpful to others who encounter this strange issue.

Although the mission is definitely accomplished, I'll update this thread periodically with my ongoing experiences and any useful tips in case others are curious about following suit.

 

[Hughmac]

I was going to say just re-install rEFind but you found that out.
You can install rEFIND from Mint package manager as well without having to go back into the recovery partition and disabling SIP

Also you should install the program to redo grub, which will allow you to put grub on the mint partition as chainloader ( I can't remember what it's called), but it's on the installer flash drive anyway if you need it.
Edit:- It's called Repair Boot I think...

Cheers

Hugh

 

[TheShortTimer]

I was going to say just re-install rEFind but you found that out.
You can install rEFIND from Mint package manager as well without having to go back into the recovery partition and disabling SIP

Also you should install the program to redo grub, which will allow you to put grub on the mint partition as chainloader ( I can't remember what it's called), but it's on the installer flash drive anyway if you need it.

Edit:- It's called Repair Boot I think...

Boot Repair.

Unfortunately it caused more harm than good because it failed and also took rEFInd out of commission once more and I had to reinstall it again.

This time, rEFInd has an additional choice of the Tux but it doesn't load the Grub menu and I really don't think that I'll need it because I can access Linux Mint from rEFInd anyway. Thanks though.

 

[Hughmac]

Sorry, I should have made it more clear - you need to use the advanced options from Boot Repair to force grub onto your Linux Partition...

That shouldn't then take out rEFind.

Cheers

Hugh

 

[TheShortTimer]

It didn't work...

 

[Hughmac]

If you can currently access all your OS partitions with rEFind then probably best to leave it at that

Sorry I'm not helping much.

Cheers

Hugh

 

[TheShortTimer]

I've had a chance to play around with it and here are my likes:

• The hardware (with one exception) works out of the box.
• I was able to configure the desktop/UI to my liking.
• It runs very snappily on a modestly specced machine.

Dislikes:

• Hibernation is broken. Even after being enabled with a fix it remains broken and when you attempt to resume the session the OS reboots from scratch and everything you were working on is lost. If this were a desktop computer it wouldn't be an issue but on a laptop it's a deal breaker because if the battery runs out, your work/session will be lost. In contrast, hibernation worked immediately with Debian but unfortunately the MBA's hardware doesn't appear to be fully supported and it's a much harder OS to use.
• The fan is noticeably louder under Linux Mint than MacOS and sometimes it's quite noisy. Just watching a standard definition video spurs the fan into action - which would never occur with Snow Leopard or the more resource demanding El Capitan. This makes me wonder what's going on under the hood when Linux Mint is tasked with a relatively lightweight load and whether the computer is at risk of overheating.

I'll ask on the Linux Mint forum and see if they have any recommendations but as it stands, without the hibernation functionality it's really not a viable on a laptop if you're in situations where you can't always have your machine connected to mains. Which is a shame because it definitely has promise.

Edited to add: I found a fairly conclusive answer on the Linux Mint forum.

Actuallly hibernation was removed as an option in Mint 20, and while this may not be what you want to hear, I think it was a good idea. Hibernation in Linux is so unreliable that it's been a running joke for years. As mentioned you can get it to work but it's not a simple straightforward thing. See:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... 20-and-pre

https://www.fosslinux.com/45454/enable- ... x-mint.htm

I'd just forget about hibernation because the above linked ways are extremely unlikely to make hibernating any more reliable than it was before. In fact the usual expert advice for ubuntu users with hibernating problems was to just disable it.

"Forget about hibernation"? That pretty much rules out Linux Mint!

I'll give Debian another stab and see if its hardware issues can be resolved.

 

[Hughmac]

I believe you have to disable hibernation but allow suspend (sleep). On my MBA of exactly the same model I got it working the same as with Mac OS, but on the Cinnamon desktop rather than XFCE, i.e if you shut the lid the laptop goes to sleep, and when you open up again it resumes.

I will boot onto Mint on my current MBA which is the same hardware except for the RAM being 4GB, and post a screenshot of my power settings if it helps.

Cheers

Hugh

 

[Hughmac]

Here you go - these are my power management settings for the Cinnamon desktop, although there are no hibernation options, just suspend.

I seem to remember quite a while ago I had Mint 19 XFCE on a white MacBook, and it took quite a lot of effort to get the power settings to work, but in the end I got it going OK without having to do any Terminal commands.

Cheers

Hugh

 

[TheShortTimer]

Thanks @Hughmac.

Does suspending protect your work/session if/when the battery runs out, as opposed to hibernation where your session is saved to disk and then restored when the laptop is connected to the mains?

Edited to add: I've found the answer.

Suspend does not turn off your computer. It puts the computer and all peripherals on a low power consumption mode. If the battery runs out or the computer turns off for some reason, the current session and unsaved changes will be lost.
Hibernate saves the state of your computer to the hard disk and completely powers off. When resuming, the saved state is restored to RAM.

That means if the battery runs out whilst the laptop is in suspend mode you've lost the session.

 

[Hughmac]

The short answer is that I don't let my laptop run down, but in all honesty I've had it happen in OS X and the thing just goes into hibernation until I can quickly connect a power supply.
Will that happen in Mint? I just don't know

Cheers

Hugh

 

[TheShortTimer]

The short answer is that I don't let my laptop run down, but in all honesty I've had it happen in OS X and the thing just goes into hibernation until I can quickly connect a power supply.
Will that happen in Mint? I just don't know

Cheers

Hugh

I'd wager that with Mint, your session will be lost if the battery runs out before you're able to connect the PSU because suspend/sleep under OS X automatically activates hibernation when the battery is depleted, whereas suspend/sleep under Mint does not include that protection.

As a comparison, Debian 10 (XFCE) has a fully functional hibernation option but unfortunately in many other crucial ways, the OS doesn't work as well on the MBA as Linux Mint does.

On a side note, whilst playing around with Debian, I discovered that its Grub actually works on my computer unlike the Linux Mint version but it overwrites the rEFInd boot manager, however it does allow you to select Snow Leopard and El Capitan.

Curiously, there's a hibernate option available within the Linux Mint Live USB session!

I wonder what it would involve to carry it over to an installed version...

 

[TheShortTimer]

A lengthy post follows...

I've been forced to concede defeat - a very kind soul devised a measure to activate the hibernation mode but it has to be triggered manually by the user and there doesn't appear to be any way to tie it into the power management options, which limits its functionality. A few suggestions were made on Linux Mint forum but none of them worked. The fan, which is silent under macOS, runs at full speed on Linux Mint - even when there's no activity and there's a vertical glitch on the left-hand side of the screen. Selecting the recommended Nvidia driver rectifies this but as I mentioned in an earlier post, it then introduces screen-tearing problems. Great!

There's hardly a shortage of distros, so I tried a few others in order to see whether I'd have better luck elsewhere. Debian suffered from screen-tearing and the unofficial non-free version that provides "extra support for some awkward hardware" still failed to fully support the MBA's hardware and couldn't access any updates! Manjaro Linux was also unable to hibernate and repeatedly caused the MBA to completely lock up when playing a MKV file that is trouble free with other operating systems.

Finally, I gave Fedora a go and the same problems were present, plus a few bugs that indicated a failure of basic pre-release testing. I managed to come up with a workaround but it struck me that this was a repeat of my experiences with Linux from over a decade ago in that I was spending more time attempting to fix problems than actually using my computer and getting on with doing things that I enjoy. Fedora, Debian, Linux Mint and Manjaro Linux were all afflicted with the same vertical glitch, which points towards an issue with the Linux kernel and the MBA's Nvidia GPU. It made me ponder: what's the point of struggling with all of this when I don't need to struggle with macOS?

When I finally sort out my 2006 Mac Pro, I'd definitely install Linux Mint on it alongside El Capitan because I wouldn't need hibernation on a desktop computer and so it would presumably work perfectly within that hardware environment but for the meantime, Linux is a no go on my MBA. I erased the partition with a view to replacing Linux Mint with High Sierra but this required a bit of fiddling and creative troubleshooting.

From El Capitan, I downloaded the High Sierra installer but it refused to proceed and informed me that the newly created HFS+ partition could not be used to start up the computer. However it didn't give me the option to convert it to APFS if that is what was required. Google is our friend and it led me to this solution that will skip converting your drive to APFS. From the Terminal, I typed:

/Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --converttoapfs NO

This didn't work. Terminal reported the following error message:

"You may not install to this volume because the computer is missing a firmware partition."

HMmmmm what's a firmware partition? I don't recall ever encountering this before. After some dogged Googling for answers, I found this remedy that was far easier and comprehensible than what I'd come across elsewhere. Ironically, with the help of GParted on the Linux Mint Live USB, I followed the instructions to reformat the EFI partition with FAT32, apply the label of "EFI" and set the boot flags to "boot" and "esp."

Next, I rebooted to El Capitan and ran the command from Terminal again. This time it was successful, High Sierra installed!

The only hitch was that the High Sierra installer neglected to prompt me to choose the destination and it upgraded the El Capitan partition instead. Ah well, it just meant that I had to rename the partition to High Sierra and reinstall El Capitan on the spare partition. Only, I couldn't get El Capitan to reinstall: the 10.11 recovery partition software repeatedly failed to proceed.

Every single time I attempted to get the installation underway, it stalled here:

I resorted to my El Capitan USB installer but it no longer appears to work and hangs indefinitely at the Apple logo with the progress bar at maximum. It then occurred to me that I was ignoring the most obvious solution: boot to Snow Leopard, download the El Capitan installer and run it from there. This did the trick, it asked me for the target partition and carried out the reinstallation.

Initial observations with High Sierra:

We're all aware that the 2010 2GB C2D MBA is to say the least, a modestly specced machine but in the right hands it's still highly capable. Contrary to my expectations, High Sierra runs very well and I didn't notice any decrease in performance compared to that with carrying out the same tasks with El Capitan. All of the programs which ran under El Capitan (and prior to that, Snow Leopard) have retained compatibility under High Sierra.

A major improvement that immediately stood out was drive management. One of my external HDDs has a problematic NTFS partition that isn't detected under Windows and whilst it's accessible with macOS, previous versions were unable to search for filenames using Finder - I had to manually browse through the drive for them instead. With High Sierra this is no longer the case and it's a very welcome development.

Anything else will be shared in the High Sierra thread but I'm just pleased that despite Linux not working out for me, there was a positive outcome to this episode.