Swift

Macbook Air 11" purchased for travel, but Julie bonded with it and I ended up bonding with Plover so Swift was Julie's computer. Then a lot of time went by, and Apple stopped supporting the operating system so we got a fancy Pixelbook for Julie but neither of us think much of it.

Swift is back to where we bought it in 2011; I am thinking it will work as a travel companion.

Potential upgrades, there is an OWC SSD for this computer. The SSD uses a custom Apple connector. (Bah!) So don't waste time shopping for a generic M.2 drive.

History

• 2024-10 Linux Mint
• 2022 Reborn with Elementary OS Linux!!
• 2021 Retired to the closet. Makes me sad. It works perfectly.
• 2020 Replaced battery
• 2013-01-13 set up TimeMachine to Bellman via netatalk
• 2013-01 replaced dead power supply
• 2011-10-27 purchased at Corvallis Mac Store

Software

2024-10-16 Linux Mint 22 (Wilma) installed. ElementaryOS was okay but Linux Mint is better and runs everywhere.

Also added some other random things including emacs-nox, kismet, horst, git, firefox, firmware-b4-installer.

WiFi driver

Installing drivers for WiFi on Macs always a problem. I used the "Driver Manager". Reboot then run "inxi -F" to see what it finds. Should look like this,

Network:
  Device-1: Broadcom BCM43224 802.11a/b/g/n driver: wl
  IF: wlp2s0 state: dormant mac: 60:c5:47:00:90:5a

How do I add something to the Dock?

Download VSCode then install it from a .DEB package

sudo dpkg -i ****.deb

I can launch it by typing "code". But how to add to dock? Well, it showed up in Applications -- did not realize there are >1 page in there. You can also type in Applications search. Once you find it just right click and add it to the dock.

Hardware

Detailed description: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook-air/specs/macbook-air-core-i5-1.6-11-mid-2011-specs.html

I want to replace the 128GB SSD with something faster. I will probably end up going to OWC because I trust them. I can go to a 500GB for $79. I already have tools around somewhere because I did the battery replacement. I won't be able to use the old SSD though since it's a proprietary Apple part. Tsk.

Comments on the hardware

USB is 2.0 only so it's slow by modern standards.

External Wifi -- Supports the Alfa WiFi adapters out of the box. This is good for extending range and for wardriving projects. Built in WiFi is weak.

Hardware report 2024-10-16

bwilson@swift:~$ inxi -F
System:
  Host: swift Kernel: 6.8.0-47-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64
  Console: pty pts/0 Distro: Linux Mint 22 Wilma
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Apple product: MacBookAir4,1 v: 1.0 serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Apple model: Mac-C08A6BB70A942AC2 v: MacBookAir4,1 serial: <superuser required>
    UEFI: Apple v: 135.0.0.0.0 date: 06/14/2019
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 37.3 Wh (100.0%) condition: 37.3/38.5 Wh (96.9%)
CPU:
  Info: dual core model: Intel Core i5-2467M bits: 64 type: MT MCP cache: L2: 512 KiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 800 min/max: 800/2300 cores: 1: 800 2: 800 3: 800 4: 800
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics driver: i915 v: kernel
  Device-2: Apple FaceTime Camera driver: uvcvideo type: USB
  Display: server: X.org v: 1.21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6 driver: X: loaded: modesetting
    unloaded: fbdev,vesa dri: crocus gpu: i915 tty: 112x24 resolution: 1366x768
  API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: crocus,swrast platforms: surfaceless,device
  API: OpenGL v: 4.5 compat-v: 3.3 vendor: mesa v: 24.0.9-0ubuntu0.2 note: console (EGL sourced)
    renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 3000 (SNB GT2), llvmpipe (LLVM 17.0.6 256 bits)
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 6 Series/C200 Series Family High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
  API: ALSA v: k6.8.0-47-generic status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.5 status: active
Network:
  Device-1: Broadcom BCM43224 802.11a/b/g/n driver: wl
  IF: wlp2s0 state: up mac: 60:c5:47:00:90:5a
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Apple Built-in Bluetooth 2.0+EDR HCI driver: btusb type: USB
  Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 state: up address: 60:C5:47:00:90:5B bt-v: 4.0
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 113 GiB used: 11.28 GiB (10.0%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Apple model: SSD SM128C size: 113 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 110.17 GiB used: 11.27 GiB (10.2%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 511 MiB used: 6.1 MiB (1.2%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 3.89 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) file: /swapfile
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 58.0 C mobo: N/A
  Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A
Info:
  Memory: total: 4 GiB available: 3.74 GiB used: 946.7 MiB (24.7%)
  Processes: 228 Uptime: 3m Init: systemd target: graphical (5) Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.34

Results of power-calibrate

12-10-22 I don't know what it means but it took so long I thought I should memorialize the results

For 4 CPUs (of a 4 CPU system):
  Power (Watts) = (% CPU load * 1.120923e-01) + 9.510396
  1% CPU load is about 112.09 mW (about 14.73 mA @ 7.61 V)
  Coefficient of determination R^2 = 0.808659 (good)

  Energy (Watt-seconds) = (bogo op * 1.124080e-08) + 9.590517
  1 bogo op is about 11.24 nW (about 1.48 nA @ 7.61 V)
  Coefficient of determination R^2 = 0.944587 (strong)

  Energy (Watt-seconds) = (CPU cycle * 1.479422e-09) + 10.062673
  1 CPU cycle is about 1.48 nW (about 194.40 pA @ 7.61 V)
  Coefficient of determination R^2 = 0.856790 (good)

  Energy (Watt-seconds) = (CPU instruction * 8.401967e-10) + 9.593806
  1 CPU instruction is about 0.84 nW (about 110.40 pA @ 7.61 V)
  Coefficient of determination R^2 = 0.944759 (strong)

Way back when it was a MacOSX machine

Backups via Time Machine

Install Netatalk 3 on Debian server. It's only a little painful.

Mount afp://bellman/TimeMachine using Cmd-K and Guest access from Finder.

Run these commands on the Mac in a terminal

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
sudo tmutil setdestination /Volumes/TimeMachine

Create the sparse bundle file and copy it to the TimeMachine volume. See directions elsewhere. You name it with your Mac computer's hostname and MAC number. Open Time Machine from System Preferences and set it up.

For some reason Swift could not find the Time Machine volume, maybe the above commands failed? On Stellar I did not need them, everything was configurable from Time Machine itself.