Reboot the system and your WiFi should be much more stable. Check the box to use the Broadcomm proprietary driver and click “Apply Changes”.

To fix this, go to the menu, select System > Additional Drivers. I also began to notice that the WiFi would randomly stop working after a few minutes of web browser. Once I restarted the computer, the login screen appeared in under a minute. Save the file (CTRL+X and then Y to write file), then run: sudo update-grub The line should now look like this: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT='quiet splash video=SVIDEO-1:d' On the line that starts “GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT,” add this kernel boot parameter after “splash” and before the ending quote: video=SVIDEO-1:d Open the Terminal application and run: sudo nano /etc/default/grub I was constantly seeing messages like this at startup:Ī quick Google led me to a helpful page that provided the following instructions. The extremely long boot times were infuriating, so I decided to address that first. Step 3: Fix some broken stuff First issue: Long Boot Times Next, I grabbed a cup of coffee while Peppermint is installed and the system rebooted. Be sure this is something you actually want to do and that you have a backup of any files you want to keep! Since I’m using a new SSD drive, I selected the option to erase everything and install Peppermint.

The Peppermint OS desktop took forever to appear (more on how to fix this later), but once it did, I selected the “Install Peppermint OS” option on the desktop and went through the wizard to install it. I selected the “EFI Boot” option with the USB symboled above it once it appeared. I inserted the USB drive with the Peppermint OS’ image on it and powered on the MacBook while holding down “Option” until the Mac’s boot options showed. Step 2: Install Peppermint OSīefore beginning the install process, I replaced the hard drive on the MacBook with a SSD drive to (hopefully) make the MacBook a little snappier with it’s new OS. You can check out Peppermint’s great user guide for more details on this process. I downloaded the 64-bit ISO file from Peppermint’s website and used Unetbootin to write it to a USB drive. Of course, there are many great distros out there, so feel free to explore. I also really like their implementation of Single-Site Browsers (making web apps look like desktop apps).

I picked this as I wanted something lightweight for the aging hardware of the MacBook 4,1 and I wanted a desktop that was a little “prettier” than Xubuntu’s default XFCE environment. I decided to go with Peppermint OS 10, a Linux distro based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. Be sure to backup any files you want to keep from your MacBook before you start!

How to install linux in mac