Mac Mini 2018

Tiitu

I spent many days trying to figure out how to get Linux working on my 2018 Mac Mini and 2008 Macbook Pro, which appear to be particularly difficult. ... I.e., if you want to install Linux, do NOT at least buy a 2018 Mac MIni nor a 2008 Macbook Pro, no matter how good Macs they may be!

Installing Linux on a newer Intel Mac (e.g. 2018)

Shut down. Press Cmd - Alt and bootup. Select Utilities - Terminal.
Disable system integrity protection: csrutil disable

Install Solus Budgie without problems by enabling Solus to install onto the entire disk.
Or, check this: https://getsol.us/articles/installation/disks/en/.

PS. Debian did not work. Ubuntu did not work. Clear Linux did not work etc. etc.

Extra: Bootloader

Download rEFInd. Open Mac Terminal.
Drag the refind-installl file from the rEFInd directory onto the Terminal.
Install Linux. Reboot pressing Alt.
Sometimes Linux will overwrite rEFInd and you may then need to reinstall rEFInd.

Axios

I went throught months of reading about macs and linux I have a 2012 mac pro retina great machine but in the end decided to keep it mac I wont go past mojave with it will use till it dies...lol. Even though linux did run good on it with live I didnt want the headaches I was reading about.

Tiitu

Axios You are right. Using the Mac OS is the best option, but Apple is making it difficult to use an old Mac, because you cannot update the software.

salvoc81

Hello @Tiitu and thank you for your comment. I am new in here and have only tested Solus on VM so far.
I have a Mac Mini 2018, and the only way to install Ubuntu (other distributions did not work) was to use patched ISOs and following the guide in t2linux.
Still the system has some problems and it is not great to work with.

I just wanted to confirm that you were able to install Solus on the MacMini's NVMe drive directly and not on a exeternal Drive.
If everything would worl out of the box I would be really surprises and happy!
Could you confirm the above?
If yes I would love to try it myself, and maybe add a guide in the t2linux webpage.

Thanks a lot!

Tiitu

salvoc81 Sorry for my late reply, but I got an HP ZBook 15u G4 and I'm using it instead. Installing Solus there is like a dream! I.e., the BIOS Factory Defaults are almost perfect: You only need to select "Legacy Support Disable and Secure Boot Disable" under the Secure Boot Configuration menu.

PaperTiger

I have installed many, many, and distros on my MacBook Pro 7,1 (mid-2010). Presently, I am writing this post from my installation of Solus Budgie 4.3 which works just about perfectly. The only issue I had (and this is NOT unique to Solus) is that while the network card works in live mode, after installation I had to tether the Mac to my phone and use its network connection to do an update and then install the Broadcom drivers for the network card. Having done that, everything has been smooth sailing. In all of it, I didn't need to perform anything special step to dual boot with macOS. As I'm not a fussy guy, I've never bothered to install rEFInd. I simply press the Option key at boot-up and select OS I want to boot into.

I really love Solus as a distro. It simply stays out of your way and does what it is supposed to do: work.

synthsncats

What I did was created a partition in MacOS's Disk Utility and installed Solus, Elementary, Manjaro, ... on it. Yes, you can hold down "option" at boot but, I find rEFInd so much more convenient (in my experience, the Linux distros I've used, never overwrote rEFInd). All this on a Macbookpro mid 2012 non-retina. I've not tried out any newer Macs yet, but I don't see why it wouldn't work.