Linux on Intel Mac's - Anyone done it?

[Dos_Box]

I won a huge lot of Macs the other week at auction for very little money and all bar a MacBook Air are working fine. They range between 2009 and 2012 and most are quite well specced. Two of them are 27" iMacs and, apart from the processors (1st gen i5's), maxed out. they even have Apple SSD's.
 

My issue however, is that I've been trying to get Linux Mint to install to a 2012 MacBook Pro and, after much trying and not succeeding (and a HUGE amount of trawling through various Linux forums) I'm left scratching my head.
The issue is that I had put in a spare SATA SSD and the install process runs successfully, but it will never boot and fails to recognise the drive. I have followed all the instructions\advice on how the drive should be prepared, turned off various features to ensure it can be seen, but no joy. I can't even install OSX onto it.
I've even tried other flavours of Linux with the same results.
All drive diagnostics tell me the drive is fine.  

 

I'm really scratching my head over this and if any of you have done this successfully, then please let me know any tips you might have as it's turning into a challenge I don't intend to lose.

[dmj]

I have done this, but not recently.

I don't recall there being any issues at all TBH - could it be something simple like a cable failure ? Can you boot it via USB?

[Dos_Box]

Yes, it boots via USB fine, and OSX on the original (spinning) drive works fine. I had considered this, but all tests say it's fine.
The entire detection and install process runs just seamlessly. Just on reboot, after installation, do I get the issue. 
This Mac should be fine with SSD's, but the first one I used (Intel, which works fine in everything else) really struggled in there.
This apparently could be down to the SATA\SSD controller and Mac hardware not liking each other.

 

I may do a search and see if there is a list of SATA SSD's that work without issues.

[dhicks]

2 hours ago, Dos_Box said:

They range between 2009 and 2012 and most are quite well specced.

 

If it's any help, I have a 2011-era iMac running ChromeOS, which of course has a Linux core. It does have problems with the wireless hardware, having no supported driver available for the wireless used in that device, I wonder if your disk problem might be similar - it might manage to get to the initial boot stage, but need some sort of "driver" to get any further. It might, possibly, be instructive to try installing ChromeOS Flex on it and (if that boots) see if that can give you any hints as to how hardware might work.

[DalekSec]

Been awhile since i installed Linux on a Mac, but i can't remember it being any issue, this was a 2011 iMac i belive 

[Dos_Box]

18 hours ago, dhicks said:

 

If it's any help, I have a 2011-era iMac running ChromeOS, which of course has a Linux core. It does have problems with the wireless hardware, having no supported driver available for the wireless used in that device, I wonder if your disk problem might be similar - it might manage to get to the initial boot stage, but need some sort of "driver" to get any further. It might, possibly, be instructive to try installing ChromeOS Flex on it and (if that boots) see if that can give you any hints as to how hardware might work.

As part of the Mint install, it does download the drivers for WiFi and will install them as part of the image (I have it hardwired to do this). I'm suspecting it's more to do with the SATA SSD's I'm using. All the people online seem to be using the original spinning disks when they do they YT vids showing how to do it.
more digging to be done I think. It may just be as simple as the type of disk controller used in the SSD's.
I'm going to have to (as per @ZeroHours advice during a chat yesterday) use AI to get to the bottom of this I think.
 

[ovenchips]

I used to work at an Apple refurb company years ago, and 2012 MBPs were notorious for having HDD Ribbon cable failures, I probably replaced more than I've had hot dinners. Usually it showed itself when we swapped out the HDD for an SSD and imaged the drive, it would fail to boot afterwards.

 

Might not 100% be the issue, but they're fairly cheap & easy to replace.

[Dos_Box]

6 minutes ago, ovenchips said:

I used to work at an Apple refurb company years ago, and 2012 MBPs were notorious for having HDD Ribbon cable failures, I probably replaced more than I've had hot dinners. Usually it showed itself when we swapped out the HDD for an SSD and imaged the drive, it would fail to boot afterwards.

 

Might not 100% be the issue, but they're fairly cheap & easy to replace.

That's exactly the answer AI gave me! 😅

[Hamster]

On 18/08/2026 at 14:15, ovenchips said:

I used to work at an Apple refurb company years ago, and 2012 MBPs were notorious for having HDD Ribbon cable failures, I probably replaced more than I've had hot dinners. Usually it showed itself when we swapped out the HDD for an SSD and imaged the drive, it would fail to boot afterwards.

 

Might not 100% be the issue, but they're fairly cheap & easy to replace.

Yep this happened on my MBP 2012, You can buy the replacement ribbon cable for quite cheap on amazon or at least when I brought mine it was cheap!

Apparently you can prevent this from happening by putting a single layer of electrical tape around the ribbon so that when the cable rubs against the chassis it doesn't sand itself and short out, that what I did when I replaced the ribbon cable in mine.

 

I used to have Xubuntu on my MBP when I was using it, ran very well for quite some time, got me through college when MacOS was EOL on it!

[Dos_Box]

Bit of an update as to what I have found out so far, especially after installing it several times to spinning disks:

 

1. The cables are fragile and can affect reliability (as mentioned above)
2. The cables fitted to some Macs with spinning disks around that time were rated for SATA II, not III which SSD's would require to work reliably
3. Macs are fussy about which SATA SSD's you fit. Apparently they don't like lower capacity ones

I've ordered a new cable which should be here today and I'll let you know how I get on.

[Dos_Box]

The new cable arrived yesterday and solved all the issues. How right you all were 😀
I now have a MacBook Pro that I can use as my home laptop running the latest version of Mint. It's pretty fast too (16GB DDR3 ram still keeps up)!
The only snag I had was that once I'd installed Mint and got a temp monitor running I found it was idling at 80+ degrees, so a clean and re-paste was in order (it's not been done in 14 years!) 
When removing the logic board the keyboard backlight connector ZIF connector simply came away.
Not a deal breaker, but I'll look into either replacing the board or getting a replacement connector soldered back on.
All in all though, I'm quite happy with the outcome and it's going to get a few more years out of an old machine.
And I can cover it in stickers!

 

*And I do have to get some decent fonts on here as I don't like the default.

[Dos_Box]

And one last thing, I had noted that it was not cooling down enough under load and the fan hadn't been kicking in.
It turns out that Mac fan curves are not really catered for under Mint\Linux, so you will have to install mpbfan (search for it in Software Manager), which fixed things nicely.