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Comment by plg | Hacker News Reader

Can anyone point me to a step by step for how to get debian running on a macbook air? I've googled it and tried at least 4 different approaches, to no avail. I'm talking about a macbookair3,1 (late 2010 11").

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Try it on a VM like VirtualBox (free, OS X supported). Among the advantages, you get vastly superior hardware support, particularly with the trackpad.

Source: Running Debian Wheezy on a 2011 Air.

edit to add: Here's a quick list what running Debian on a VM gives you:

* Seamless full-screen linux with full hardware access (e.g. GPU)

* Advantage of native OS X drivers (particularly the amazing trackpad -- linux drivers crippled it in my experience)

* Instant, lag-free transition between linux/OS X -- e.g. four-finger "swipe" gesture between desktops.

* Shared linux/OS X filesystem ("shared folders")

* Zero hassle with linux wifi, custom bootloader hacks (rEFIt), etc. VirtualBox has first-class support in Debian -- everything's just an apt-get away: https://wiki.debian.org/VirtualBox

However, performance is shite. I ended up going for a native install and you can appreciate the difference. That is, if you run Gnome 3 (which is a pile of shite as well). When on other DMs, if you can call xmonad a dm, virtual box was just awesome, for exactly the reasons you mentioned.

Why would you use gnome if you've used xmonad :)I run crunchbang (debian w/ openbox) and it's awesome.

So, you're not running "awesome"? So is crunchbang now awesome? Or awesome has been renamed to crunchbang?

The naming of these is confusing :-)

Wouldn't performance be better with VMWare Fusion? I think it includes even 3D acceleration.

I'd recommend using Debian testing instead of stable for that. (testing is preferred in most personal use cases if you don't run in a corporate environment/server or similar)

http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/

I am not sure, but you may need the additional firmware files listed on that page.

I thought unstable was more geared toward personal use cases. Testing doesn't even get supported by the security team, that seems like a huge mistake to run as your personal workstation.

Where are you getting stuck?

Can't boot from a USB nor from the Debian installer cd (using USB CDROM drive)

you have to use 64 bit and know a bit about uefi. (or give up and do lubuntu)

Are Macs different enough that the amd64 Debian installer won't boot on it?

Not sure about the airs, but on the 2011 macbook pro, you could boot a lot of things from cd, but not from USB. Apple doesn't have a very good pre-boot environment if you're not running Apple software. (No PXE, either, just their proprietary netboot)

UEFI Fuck-Up. Or, try waiting 30-60 seconds until the Legacy-BIOS-Mode kicks in..

I remember when I was messing around a few years ago I had to use a bootloader called refit, which is now forked to refind at http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/

It's been too long since I used a Mac, but if someone wants to donate a recent Macbook to me I'm happy to get Debian set up and blog about it ;)

Make sure you're using the amd64 image, not the i386 one. Either the netinst or regular CD1 should work fine from a USB stick, if it's amd64.

I tried both i386 and amd64 about a week ago on my 2011 Macbook Air, and only the amd64 image booted successfully.

You shouldn't need rEFIt.

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