Mint on Mac: Yes
Hi, sorry if it's not cool to reawaken an old thread, but I've been running Mint on my MacBook Air (4,2 late 2011 model) for some months now.
I don't know how useful my experience will be to anyone. I had a lot of false starts trying to put a Linux distro onto the MBA and I'm sure some of them left some changes on my SSD. I had actually bought the MBA for the hardware and intended to run Linux from the very beginning but that didn't pan out.
Ultimately I got hold of Linux Mint 14 XFCE edition and it's running mostly happily.
Key points for the installation:
1. I installed rEFIt in OS X and shrunk the OS X partition down to half the SSD.
2. Stock installations of both Ubuntu and Mint quickly ground to a halt apparently because of a bug in the operation of kworker (which is something used by the kernel, not a KDE utility). The solution was
sudo -i
echo N> /sys/module/drm_kms_helper/parameters/poll
echo "options drm_kms_helper poll=N">/etc/modprobe.d/local.conf
as posted in Ubuntu forums Ubuntu > "linux" package > Bugs > Bug #887793 > Comment #30 by zzeroo (co)
What works:
Video: full resolution on the MBA and on the 27" Thunderbolt monitor
I can have the MBA closed and dark and the Thunderbolt running
Wired Ethernet via the USB-Ethernet adapter
Wireless networking (had to install a module, can't remember which, but it was in the repository)
Touchpad
Trackball (Logitech TrackMan Marble that I use when the MBA's on the desk)
Printing
VLC and Banshee for music
The occasional video
What more or less works:
Scanning (Epson Perfection Photo 2450 scanner has been problematic since day one, why should it be any different with Mint on the MBA?). Sometimes requires a few plug-unplug sequences.
Screen backlighting (doesn't seem to respond to room illumination and boots up at full brightness but is nicely controlled by Fn-F1 and Fn-F2)
Battery life: definitely a bit shorter than using OS X. I wonder, though, if some of that isn't application-related. Thunderbird seems to hog a lot of cycles in Linux. Sometimes the system suddenly thinks the battery is almost totally depleted and throws up a logout window, but suspend-and-resume puts the battery meter back to where it ought to be.
What doesn't work:
Keyboard backlight. I've installed lightum and lightum-indicator but they don't do anything; the keyboard backlight stays resolutely OFF.
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I only boot into OS X when I'm using the MBA strictly as a music source (and only sometimes then). Because of the way iTunes labelled the files from my classical CD collection, I'm still working on reorganising the collection so I can readily find the albums and compositions I want to play in VLC.
When I'm not at the desktop I do miss the keyboard backlight but am glad to be free of OS X's irritating quirks and limitations.
