I wanted to install Alpine Linux on the old Macbook Air 2011 because Alpine is small and nimble but it didn’t work. The latest build of Alpine’s USB stick gets stuck during boot after the kernel loads. Tried a bunch of tricks, nothing changed. So left it.
Then tried Debian latest. It booted, went through install and immediately after network was configured (it has a USB enthernet dongle and wifi), setup stopped moving. Tried a few times, didn’t work.
Then used Fedora Live, took a long time to boot up but boot it did (Air only has 2GB of memory) and it was too slow to work around.
So finally, tried with Fedora Server and it was just perfect and smooth. It comes text only and and ssh can be enabled during setup. Its drivers allow the screen to go blank fully and works perfectly.
Notes - OS: #
Bootable USB OS versions we tried:
- Alpine Standard 3.24.3 (x86_64)
- Debian Live 13.7.0 (amd64, XFCE)
- Fedora WorkStation Live 44-1.7 (x86_64)
- Fedora Server DVD 44-1.7 (worked)
Notes - Machine: #
Apple MacBookAir4,1 — 11-inch, circa 2011
- Intel Core i5-2467M, 1.6 GHz, 2 cores / 4 threads
- Approximately 2 GB RAM
- Intel Sandy Bridge integrated graphics
- Apple 60 GB SATA SSD
- BIOS 135.0.0.0.0, dated 2019-06-14 💌
