But this is probably due to the fact, that I had to fix everything afterwards on Ubuntu. In fact I felt, that the setup through the TTY felt much more smooth, than Ubuntu’s wizard. When you come from Ubuntu you will notice, that no setup wizard will boot up, just an empty TTY ( Oh noes!)ĭon’t worry, you won’t miss it. I browsed through some of them and some third websites to find what I needed.įollowing I will compress the installation instructions into a smooth guide you can follow, to get everything up and running in no time. The guides and manuals over at the Arch Linux Wiki were really helpful. And we want our setup to boot as quickly as possible, right? Booting the Arch Linux installer The Mac would startup the EFI, then the BIOS-legacy mode, then the Linux bootloader, then Arch Linux itself. The BIOS-legacy mode is included in the Mac firmware and emulates a full BIOS, which is obviously really inefficient. Make sure you select the EFI option though, as the other option only loads the setup in BIOS-legacy mode. There you can select the installation stick.

When you boot from your fresh setup-stick and press “alt” it will bring up the boot menu. You can find all mirrors to the Arch Linux ISOs here: Look here into the Arch wiki to get more detailed instructions on creating boot sticks: It’s really easy to make a bootable setup-stick for Arch Linux (just as it is for Ubuntu). It might work for similar models too, but I can’t guarantee it. I wrote this guide for a Macbook Pro Retina 11,1 13'. No OS X involved! If you really want to do this make backups, lots of them. This guide will wipe everything from your disk and install Arch Linux only. You could package those into the installation medium, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just assume this requirement. It probably won’t come with wifi drivers. You will need a thunderbolt-to-LAN, or USB-to-LAN adapter to make this work. are afraid of deleting everything from their Mac.who want to acquire a deep understanding of the Arch Linux distro by themselves.think that Mac OS X is the single most best OS.just have mediocre Bash and Linux skills.

love not opinionated systems, that allow complete freedom.got bored (or frustrated) with Ubuntu and want to make the switch to Arch Linux.want to learn how to set up an Arch system.I will tell you to install this and that, possibly without even telling you about great alternatives- blasphemy! For whom I wrote this article Īlso note, that this is a highly “opinionated” guide. Make sure, that you don’t run into unsolvable problems, that need a reinstall.

Arch linux macbook retina