I do precisely this with my previous MacBook Air and have completed for a while. The one distinction from the above posts is that as a substitute of utilizing macOS I wiped it clear and put in Ubuntu Server (it is nonetheless doable to reinstall macOS ought to I ever need to).
There are some things you could take into account. One is that the wi-fi nearly definitely will not work out of the field on Linux because it’s Broadcom and is dependent upon a proprietary driver that must be manually put in. In my case I take advantage of a wired USB ethernet adapter which is a greater match for a server use case anyway.
To repair the lid closing concern on Ubuntu you need to edit the file /and many others/systemd/logind.conf and uncomment the road #HandleLidSwitch=ignore (take away the # image initially).
The opposite downside you will encounter is the display being on, which on older fashions means the Apple brand staying completely lit. I might think about this is not good for it. On my machine I mounted this by including a line to my crontab that robotically turns it off when the laptop computer boots:
Do sudo crontab -e then insert one thing like the road beneath:
@reboot echo 0 > /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness
This can be particular to my MacBook Air however the setting seems to be prefer it most likely applies to most or all Intel-based MacBooks.
Lastly, I like to recommend controlling the machine by way of SSH, there’s loads about this in case you are not acquainted. The OpenSSH server ought to be enabled by default if you set up Ubuntu Server iirc.
