HackLab Toronto ran their "Junk Independence Day" this past Sunday. JID is a fun event that happens approximately every six months (not consistent): take your electronic junk to HackLab, go through everyone else's electronic junk and take home the stuff that appeals to you. And all the remaining stuff is picked up by a proper electronics recycler.

A popular discussion among attendees was their "ratio" - how much weight each of us brought in as opposed to how much weight we took home. I did okay: I took in about 30 pounds and took home about ten. And some of that poundage was a 2011 MacBook Air. Which was carefully and accurately labeled: always useful (I don't always manage that myself ...). Sure, it's old ... but the Airs are lovely machines.

The machine had what appeared to be a fresh install of macOS High Sierra on it. This is the newest version of macOS that this model supports (or that Apple allows it to have ... depending on how you want to look at it). But I don't trust other people's software installs, so I wiped the SSD and attempted to re-install over the internet. But between the previous owner doing their fresh install (2023-10 according to the notes) and my trying it, I think Apple stopped providing High Sierra. I couldn't get it to install. So ... Linux it is.

I was warned by one of the other JID attendees that installing Linux on a MacBook ranges from very easy to damn near impossible depending on the model. This particular one is right over on the "easy" end of the scale. I did a tiny bit of research online, was instructed to make an Ubuntu bootable USB stick (apparently Debian - my usual default Linux version - is harder to install, didn't try), and held down the Option key immediately after booting with the USB stick inserted. Then you select "EFI Boot" and the only catch is you have to edit the GRUB command line and add "nomodeset" (or so it said: I did this, and didn't try without it). The install went flawlessly from there.

Not only is Ubuntu working just fine on the Air, but the previous owner had (per the notes taped to the machine! Thank you again ...) replaced the battery just previous to giving it away. My guess: they thought they were going to keep it, replaced the battery, then decided it wasn't worth the trouble. Whatever the reason, the current battery seems to have about eight hours of life, which is spectacular in a machine this old.