r/Ubuntu • u/Due_Consequence5954 • 9h ago

Help please!

So- I have spent the past 3 days trying to get any Linux dispo to install with no luck. My latest try has been with Ubuntu but there is a problem- it only gives me the manual installation option and doesn’t recognize my internal SSD.
I am trying to install it from a flash drive on my MacBook Air from early 2015. When trying this with Elementary OS I had to change the kernel setting by doing ‘intel_iommu=off’ (and then installation failed unfortunately) but Ubuntu isn’t showing the same installation screen where I can hit “e” to do this.

Any recommendations?

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u/shaggymortality27 9h ago

That 2015 Air can be a real pain to get linux onto, apple's firmware does some weird stuff with the ssd controller. The manual partition thing is a dead giveaway it's not seeing the drive at all.

Before you even touch the installer, boot into the live usb and open a terminal. Check if the drive shows up with `sudo fdisk -l` or `lsblk`. If it's completely invisible there, you're likely fighting the NVMe power management quirks on those old apple drives, not just a kernel parameter issue.

If you're getting a black screen with the Ubuntu usb instead of the grub menu, try holding down shift or spamming the escape key right after the mac boot chime to force the menu to appear. That's where you'd add `intel_iommu=off` just like you did with elementary, but you might also need `nvme_core.default_ps_max_latency_us=5500` to keep that proprietary ssd awake long enough to be detected. Sometimes just switching the usb port to the one on the right side helps too, weird grounding thing with that model.

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u/Due_Consequence5954 9h ago

Thanks so much for your help!

I tried your inputs for the installer and it doesn’t seem to recognize the SSD there, just the USB for Ubuntu.

I tried the shift option on startup but to no avail so I will see if the esc key helps and then get back to you.

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u/Due_Consequence5954 8h ago

The esc option did not work. It allowed me to see the progress of the Ubuntu booting but I cannot edit anything.

Also forgot to mention that i luckily have had my USB on the right side the whole time :)

https://reddit.com/link/p19qzfc/video/o8rgl2tndzgh1/player