If the boot order shows Ubuntu as 2nd in the boot order you need to run a command to put it in 1st position. Note that it says Ubuntu and not Linux Mint but it means the same thing. The labelling of the disks is shown underneath. If you have lots of data then you might need a bigger USB drive or an external hard drive which is what I used for the task.Īs you can see from the image above my MacBook Air is going to boot 0000 first and then 0080. On a fairly vanilla system you could therefore get away with backing up to a 32 gigabyte USB drive. The size of the recovery drive is showing as 16.7 gigabytes. The MacBook Air that I am using is new and therefore I don't have much installed. Therefore before we start partitioning drives and changing boot settings let's look at backing up what you have.

If you have been using your MacBook Air for some time you will probably have accumulated some data and you will have installed some applications which you probably want to keep. The chances of you turning your MacBook Air into an expensive brick are highly unlikely. One thing I really like about the MacBook Air is the fact that if you completely destroy your operating system it is always possible to get back to a point where the computer is working again. The first and most important step you can take before undertaking any of these steps is to back up your drive. Optionally you might look into purchasing an Apple USB Ethernet cable as it will help when setting up the internet. A MacBook Air - If you don't have a MacBook Air you can pick one up from here.As always if there are better ways to achieve the same goals please feel free to leave a comment. The actual installation isn't too difficult but there are some challenges on the way and the steps highlighted are the steps I used to complete the task. Whilst the rankings have to be taken with a pinch of salt there is clearly merit in writing an article showing the best that Linux has to offer working on hardware that oozes quality. Linux Mint has been top of the Distrowatch rankings for the past year. This time I am going to show how to install Linux Mint alongside OSX on the MacBook Air. In previous articles I have shown how to install Ubuntu Linux alongside Windows 8 and how to dual boot Ubuntu with ChromeOS on the HP Chromebook.

Best way to get linux apps on mac osx