October 4, 2024

Chromium OS Gets Ported to the MacBook Air

Posted July 20, 2011 at 12:56am by iClarified · 10450 views
Hexxeh has ported Chromium OS to the MacBook to thank those contributors who helped him purchase the device.

Every piece of hardware works except for the Bluetooth (because Bluetooth isn't supported by Chromium OS yet). So WiFi works, graphics are fully accelerated via nVidia's drivers, screen brightness controls work, sound works, touchpad works. Basically everything works. The touchpad drivers could use some tweaking, as scrolling is currently painfully slow, but that's about the only issue I can think of. Boot time is around 22 seconds to the login screen, most of which is wasted by Apple's EFI implementation, as once control is passed to the kernel, the boot only takes a further 6-7 seconds thanks to the fast SSD inside the Air. Battery life is probably slightly better than that of OS X.

Hexxeh notes he has only tested the port on the 11-inch MacBook Air; however, it should work with the 13-inch version and possibly other nVidia-based Macbook/Macbook Pro machines. "I won't be supporting anything but the MacbookAir3,1 and MacbookAir3,2 but if it just happens to work for you on something else, great!"

You can find instructions on how to install Chromium OS on your MacBook at the link below...

Read More [via Darren]