Q4OS Forum

bin

Member

From: U.K.

Registered: 2016-01-28

Posts: 1,492

Aquarius Plasma on Intel Macbook Air

I was recently given a 2014 Macbook Air (El Capitain) 125/4Gb - which was nice. One owner, low mileage and bags of battery life left.

It seemed only natural to try dropping Q4OS onto it as there was no way forward with MACOS in a 4gb machine - at least not one I particularly want to follow as I'm no real fan of it in the first place. However I do know from long experience that Apple hardware is good - if occasionally I little 'idiosyncratic'.

So, boot off USB - hmmmm - no wifi - it's a BCM4360. No ethernet port - bother! Amazon please supply a usb>ethernet adapter and a thunderbolt>HDMI while you're at it for external monitor.

That's better. Zapped the drive and then install Plasma, all good.
Install wl driver - we've got wifi.
This requires the broadcom-sta-dkms package - AND the linux-headers for your current kernel
uname -r will tell you that.
Once it has done its thing just sudo modprobe wl should get you going

FacetimeHD Camera was a little more fun till I found https://github.com/patjak/facetimehd/wi … -on-debian and all worked perfectly.

OK I know the keyboard is annoying on MACs. No way of setting the Fn keys to operate properly (i.e. F action first then Fn to provide other controls, Command Backspace to delete... Really??? and so on.

BUT the trackpad is a treasure and more than makes up for it, the display is of course good and build quality excellent - and best of all it's SILENT!!!

It seemed only natural to find a nice theme to go with the hardware Apple Catalina works well and seems a good fit with just a little tweaking.

After switching off a few un-needed services RAM use at tickover is around the 650 mb range which is no worse than XFCE and way better than Mint/Cinnamon.

Last edited by bin (2025-10-08 11:57)

crosscourt

Banned

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 2,706

Re: Aquarius Plasma on Intel Macbook Air

Love it when you can get a system thats been with one owner with low usage. Ive got a lot of hardware that was given to me like that and all of it is in use right now. Plasma runs a lot better than people think with 4gb of memory or less and Q4OS at least for me had a slightly lower resource usage than many other KDE based distros.

nathanjhill

Member

Registered: 2024-12-11

Posts: 20

Re: Aquarius Plasma on Intel Macbook Air

Hey, I am dinging this old thread, just because I too grabbed a MacBook Air 2014 recently and am going to turn it into my regular Q4OS box. The timing is weird with the new release around the corner, so I am trying the beta version.

Because of the broadcom chip, it seems like you have to have a backup internet connection anytime the kernel is updated, correct? Like you need to run to reconfigure the broadcom drivers? Even with Q4OS5, it's a little annoying, so I may be super conservative with the kernel fixes.

crosscourt

Banned

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 2,706

Re: Aquarius Plasma on Intel Macbook Air

I haven't use Apple in quite sometime but is there anyway you can get rid of the Broadcom to avoid issues, rather than having to use a USB to ethernet adapter.

bin

Member

From: U.K.

Registered: 2016-01-28

Posts: 1,492

Re: Aquarius Plasma on Intel Macbook Air

I just used the wl broadcom driver in the end and it works fine no further maintenance. Make sure other broadcom drivers are removed. OK that's for the BCM43600. From what I have seen there were various BC cards used in Macbooks so it may be pot luck as to what you get.
I've found the MB to be rock solid and a great little machine.

I DO have to reinstall the camera on kernel updates but there are instructions for using DKMS to take care of that if you can be bothered.

Last edited by bin (2025-10-08 11:58)

crosscourt

Banned

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 2,706

Re: Aquarius Plasma on Intel Macbook Air

That's actually fairly painless bin, Im impressed.

nathanjhill

Member

Registered: 2024-12-11

Posts: 20

Re: Aquarius Plasma on Intel Macbook Air

What is funny is that I like Q4OS for older machines. But Fedora is pretty nice.

It's just your kernel may come out before any broadcom-wl drivers are rebuilt for it.

Here are the instructions I used:
https://wiki.debian.org/wl

I noticed that I have to rerun these commands if I make system changes or a new kernel, which makes sense. But it's a bit of a pain! In this instance though, the more conservative base of Debian with only necessary kernel fixes is kind of helpful.

Alternately, you can use a USB wireless adapter - there is a $20 brand Panda on Amazon.

Aliexpress sells a wireless card adapter that converts the MacBook Air slot potentially to like an Intel AX200 wireless card. It may work out of the box, but I haven't seen anyone give a review of the setup.

crosscourt

Banned

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 2,706

Re: Aquarius Plasma on Intel Macbook Air

AX200 would be a great alternative.