Putting Linux on a Mid 2012 MacBook Air

Katharinas Mid 2012 MacBook Air is a powerful machine with great I/O that has served her well for years. But now it has been on the list of obsolete Mac products for a while and become excruciatingly slow. Time to replace macOS 10.15 Catalina with Linux Ubuntu 24.04.2 and breath some new life into that thing!

1. Downloaded the latest LTS version of Ubuntu.
2. Turned the ISO file into a bootable USB thumb drive with sudo sh -c 'cat ubuntu-24.04.2-desktop-amd64.iso > /dev/sda; sync'. A root shell is needed for the redirection.
3. Made a backup of the MacBook and restarted it. Pressing alt/option during startup opens the startup manager.
4. For some reason, I had to use the left USB port. Trying the right one yielded the error unable to find a live medium containing a live file system.
5. Installation went smoothly! Time to update (sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y) and customize (install packages and snaps, add online accounts) the system.

The whole process was a lot easier that I anticipated, and the machine’s performance under Linux is promising. So far, we only got into two issues: (1) We had to install 1Password manually because the Snap Store version had issues. (2) We are unclear how to wake the MacBook from sleep/hibernation. I think this superuser answer on a MacBook’s incorrect suspension behavior fixed that, though.