These are notes on installing linux (Fedora Core 17 [FC17]) on the 2011 or 2012 macbook air. They likely apply to other distros as well. In my case I replaced OS X (10.7- snow lion) with linux, but keeping the restore partition.

• It works!
  • wifi doesn't seem to support ad-hoc mode.
  • camera not tested.
• First create a USB boot disk.
  • Download your favorite Linux distro ( I used FC 17 live CD ).
  • On Mac OS X:
    • hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o usbimage.img cd.iso
    • diskutil list
    • diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskX
    • dd if=usbimage.img of=/dev/diskX
    • where X is the usb disk from diskutil list.
    • reboot holding down alt. Select the USB disk (labeled windows by Mac)
• Once you are ready to install.
  • Choose custom disk layout.
  • Create a 200MB or larger fat partition and have it mount as /boot
  • Create a swap partition
  • Everything else in / (unless you prefer otherwise... )
  • You may be able to use LVM as well, but be careful with boot partition.
• Make sure grub2-efi is installed as part of the installation, otherwise you will need to install it manually after the installation is complete.
• The fat/msdos EFI partition may be separate from the system. If you go that route, copy over the efi files from /boot (cp -r /boot /msdos)
• At this point, linux should be installed, but you need to make it bootable.
  • Boot mac os x into rescue mode
    • either hold alt after the mac sound, then select mac rescue
    • or hold command-r
  • select your language, then find the menu bar, choose the terminal
  • Your boot partition should be mounted under /Volumes/Untitled, if it isn't mount the fat/msdos partition to /Volumes/Untitled.
  • bless efi file.
    • bless --folder /Volumes/Untitled --file /Volumes/Untitled/boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub2-efi/grub.efi --setBoot
    • alternate syntax is volume instead of folder.
  • sync ;; reboot
• You should have booted into a grub shell. If it found the menu automatically, great your done. If not, do the following:
  • you want to execute something like: configfile (hd0,gpt5)/boot/grub2/grub.cfg
  • but you need the correct path to your configfile. To find that start by typing configfile, then hit tab.
  • It should show you what root devices you have. Pick the one that seems like it contains your boot partition, then type /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
  • Use tab for file name completion.
• To save yourself having to type that every time, you can create a custom grub image. Do the following :
  • back up your previous /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub2-edi/grub.efi
  • replace (hd0,gpt5) with your root device from the previous step.

  • grub2-mkimage -d /usr/lib/grub/x86_64-efi/ \
    -o /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub2-efi/grub.efi \
    -O x86_64-efi --prefix "(hd0,gpt5)/boot/grub2" \
    part_gpt part_msdos lvm fat ext2 chain boot configfile normal minicmd \
    linux reboot halt search gfxterm gfxmenu efi_gop efi_uga video loadbios \
    gzio video_bochs video_cirrus echo true loadenv all_video test

  • make sure to copy the generated efi image to wherever it should be if that isn't the correct path.
• If you made it here, Congratulations! You now have Linux on your MB(A).