Breathing New Life Into Vintage Macs

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 Apple’s Intel-era hardware is still really nice to use — slim cases, good keyboards, decent screens — but the software side ages out more quickly. A 2013 iMac or a 2017 MacBook Pro may be perfectly usable physically, yet Apple’s support window means no new macOS releases, no security updates, and a shrinking list of installable apps.

Rather than throw them away, I’ve started putting Linux on them. It’s a great way to keep solid but “obsolete” Macs relevant — giving them new roles instead of letting them gather dust. My iMac, once rarely touched, is now a genuinely useful part of my daily environment. The MacBook Pro that sat idle after my last upgrade is back in service too, reborn as a powerful Ubuntu machine wrapped in sleek Apple hardware.

And the best part? I didn’t have to give up macOS entirely. By preserving the original partition, I can still boot into my old system when needed. That dual-boot peace of mind is a big selling point.

Luckily the process is so much easier than it used to be. No Boot Camp required! Still, I have a few tips that should make the process go more smoothly.

The Install Process

IMPORTANT Make a Time Machine backup (or the moral equivalent) before you follow any of my steps.

Also, before diving into the install, it’s worth giving your Mac a quick cleanup — wipe the screen, clear the dust, and reset the SMC for good measure.

The procedure I used was to download the latest amd64 image of Ubuntu Desktop (At time of writing I chose Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS). For Intel macs you want the Intel or AMD 64-bit architecture version. I have tested this with Ubuntu, Mint and Debian.

• https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop

• Ubuntu Desktop Guide

Next, you will need a USB thumb drive. An 8gb or larger drive should be plenty. There are different ways to write the image to the flash drive but I used Balena Etcher which is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. The program is easy to use, just make sure to choose the correct drive (it only displays removable drives on my machines which makes it extra simple). You will then choose the Linux iso image you downloaded and begin the process. It can take a while and I found that letting my Macbook Pro idle interrupted the process. The second time I kept the computer from locking or sleeping until the process finished.

You should now have an Ubuntu (or whatever distro you prefer) bootable thumb drive.

For my machines, I wanted to retain my macOS partition as opposed to giving Linux the whole drive. This would allow me to dual-boot if desired. Regardless of your choice, you should backup any files or the OS if you care about them. Time Machine on Mac is a great solution.

Partitioning an Intel Mac for Linux

“What you don’t know can hurt you, only you won’t know it.”

To resize the disks, reboot into Recovery mode by holding Command-R while the system boots (just before or when the startup chime sounds).

Choose Disk Utility and find the drive with your Macintosh HD volume. If you use APFS and FileVault, you will need to mount the encrypted volume by highlighting it and clicking the mount button and entering your password. Once that is done you can select

Note: On older Intel Macs (pre-2011), Internet Recovery (Command + Option + R) may not be available unless you’ve applied a firmware update. In that case you’ll need a local recovery partition or an installer USB.

In Disk Utility, the key is knowing the difference between containers/volumes and the physical drive.

🔍 The Hierarchy in Disk Utility

• Physical drive → the actual SSD, usually named something like Apple SSD… at the top of the tree.
• APFS container → a partition on that physical drive which contains APFS volumes.
• APFS volumes → what you see as “Macintosh HD” (and its companions like “Macintosh HD – Data”).

⚡ The Step That Matters

When you want to make space for Linux, you don’t add a volume inside the APFS container. Volumes just share the container’s space dynamically, and Linux can’t install into an APFS volume.

Instead, you:

1. Reboot into Recovery mode by holding Command + R as the system boots (right before or when the startup chime plays).
   • If Command + R doesn’t work, try Internet Recovery with Command + Option + R.
2. Open Disk Utility.
3. If you use APFS with FileVault, mount the encrypted volume:
   • Highlight it, click Mount, and enter your password.
4. Select the physical disk (the top entry in the sidebar, e.g. Apple SSD…).
   • Not just “Macintosh HD.”
   • Not just the APFS container.
5. Click Partition (not “Add Volume”).
6. Shrink the APFS container and create a new partition for Linux:
   • Free Space is the cleanest choice (Ubuntu installer will handle formatting).
   • MS-DOS (FAT) also works as a placeholder, since Ubuntu will reformat it anyway.

NOTE: If Disk Utility refuses to shrink the APFS container, boot from the installer USB and use diskutil from Terminal instead:

diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 200g  

(where disk0s2 is your APFS container and 200g is the new size).

NOTE: If you’re unsure, 40–60GB (or more) should give you a decent amount of legroom in Linux.

📝 Why That Step is Crucial

• If you add an APFS volume → Linux can’t use it.
• If you resize the container and carve out a partition → Ubuntu can see that space and format it as ext4.

Installing Linux

Once you have a partition, you’re ready to boot from your installer.

• Hold the Option (Alt) key while booting to enter Startup Manager.
  • On some Macs, the USB installer may appear as EFI Boot instead of “Ubuntu.”
• Select the Linux USB installer and choose the option to install Linux.
  • Documentation.
• I chose the standard Interactive Installation and then selected Manual Installation so I could point Ubuntu at the new partition.

Note: On some Intel Macs you may need to disable Secure Boot in the Ubuntu installer. The Mac firmware itself doesn’t enforce Secure Boot — this is specific to Ubuntu’s shim loader. If the system refuses to boot the USB or drops you back to Startup Manager, toggling Secure Boot in the installer usually fixes it.

Manual Partitioning

When you reach the Installation Type screen:

1. Select Something else (manual partitioning).
2. Highlight the empty partition you created in Disk Utility.
   • Do not touch your macOS/APFS container.
3. Choose Change → set the following:
   • Use as: Ext4 journaling file system
   • Mount point: /
   • Format: checked (so the installer formats the new partition).
4. Leave your macOS volumes alone — Ubuntu will install side-by-side.

The installer will then set up Ubuntu on the Linux partition while preserving macOS. At boot you can hold Option (Alt) to pick which OS you want to load.

Pro-Tip: If you want a nicer boot menu instead of the plain “EFI Boot” entry, check out rEFInd, a lightweight boot manager that makes dual-booting friendlier.

First Boot Hurdles: Networking

The biggest issue I encountered doing this was that Wi-Fi wasn’t detected in the Ubuntu installer. I found simple enough workarounds and I am pretty sure from my research that I could have used any number of Wi-Fi USB dongles (as a temporary workaround) and they would have been supported and detected instantly. The objective is just to get online long enough to enable Wi-Fi.

On the iMac I was able to use an Ethernet cable so Wi-Fi wasn’t a priorty like it might be in another room.

For the Macbook Pro, I found that my Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter was not detected—Ethernet was out.

The workaround I used was to tether my phone. It’s easy to connect your iPhone with a USB cable and connect via tethering. You’ll need to unlock your device and trust the computer when prompted and the system should prompt you to activate a wired connection.

You can verify which Broadcom chip you have with the following command lspci -nn | grep -i network

Go ahead and install the proprietary drivers during install although this didn’t contain the Wi-Fi driver. To install that, I had to do the following additional step to install the WiFi drivers:

sudo apt update  
sudo apt install bcmwl-kernel-source  
reboot  

After reboot, Wi-Fi was working and I was able to connect.

Note: Some newer Broadcom chipsets may need broadcom-sta-dkms instead of bcmwl-kernel-source. If Wi-Fi doesn’t come up after reboot, try:

sudo apt install broadcom-sta-dkms  

Post-Install Setup

Great Success! Ubuntu is now installed and Wi-Fi is working.

I’m working on documenting the steps to get all of the built in hardware working. The facetime camera doesn’t show up by default, for instance. I installed hardinfo and it sees most of it though.

Pro-Tip: To smooth out hardware quirks:

• Graphics: If you have an Nvidia GPU, install the proprietary nvidia-driver package instead of relying on Nouveau.
• Fans & thermals: Macs can run hot under Linux. Install mbpfan to get sane fan control.
• Backlight & keyboard: The pommed utility or kernel backlight drivers may be needed for brightness and keyboard controls.

Check out my quick guide that I used with both machines. ZRAM for Efficient Swap

The Project Side

I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something. – Steve Jobs (1955-2011)

So what can you actually do with a Linux-powered Mac?

As mentioned, my iMac has been pulling its weight as a reliable little workstation — and it’s held up better than I expected. The MacBook Pro is newly imaged, but even while drafting this article I found myself tweaking it, customizing it, and genuinely enjoying the experience. Sure, I miss a few macOS niceties, but Ubuntu is very usable day to day.

Most of my favorite apps are cross-platform these days anyway: VS Code, PyCharm, Obsidian, OBS Studio, Audacity, Spotify, Firefox, Chromium. Add in a proper Unix environment and my go-to wallpapers, and the machine felt like home almost instantly.

Compared to my Raspberry Pi server, these Intel Macs bring serious advantages: quiet cooling, rock-solid build quality, and hardware that was premium in its day. That makes them a fantastic middle ground between tiny low-power boards and brand-new desktops.

I can’t wait to build more docker containers and a top-notch dev and test laptop!

Links and Stuff

Essential references used in this article

Other resources that might be useful

Closing Thought

Like my older iMac, this MacBook Pro is now running Ubuntu instead of sitting idle. It’s not worth much on eBay, but it’s too valuable to throw away — and with Linux, it still has plenty of life left.

The project is about more than just recycling hardware. It’s about taking machines Apple has orphaned and turning them into relevant, capable systems again.