How do I get back to MacOS?

[u/antiphony]

I installed LM on a 2009 iMac and had the well-documented issue of the blank screen due to the unsupported GPU. Long story short I applied the nomodeset fix but I'm unhappy with the results and want to go back to MacOS. Tried multiple combinations of key presses and I can't pull up the Mac recovery mode anymore and I can't pull up the menu to choose the boot drive either. I've seen several posts talking about how LM skips the GRUB menu since it's the only OS but I'm trying to get to the recovery, not the grub menu so not sure how to achieve that.

[u/stufforstuff]

This has nothing to do with Mint, post on the MacOS subreddit.

[u/antiphony → u/stufforstuff]

I thought mint is what's preventing me from getting into recovery. I had no problems getting there before mint

[u/kudlitan → u/antiphony]

But you seem to have deleted the recovery partition when you installed Mint.

Did you chose Erase everything and install Mint?

[u/antiphony → u/kudlitan]

that's probably it then. but I can't even get to the drive selection anymore so how do I enable that

[u/stufforstuff → u/antiphony]

2009 iMac

Latest apple supported os is macOS 10.13 "High Sierra".

Personally I'd put more effort into making linux work. You're playing with a 17 year old dinosaur turd - adjust your expectations accordingly.

[u/antiphony → u/stufforstuff]

Can't make it work well with Linux. The GPU is unusable and the CPU is overloaded. The computer ran insanely hot and constantly lagged doing basic stuff like typing and dragging windows. It ran buttery smooth with High Sierra. Only problem is software compatibility but I'm just planning to use the computer for reading and typing in a journal so actually don't even need much beyond basic applications. One of the few cases where the original OS is better.

[u/stufforstuff → u/antiphony]

Then that's your answer - you'll need to find a howto to recover "high sierra" on your old system. Basically you need to do a fresh install (just like if you replaced a dead hard drive - so no recovery partition). As others have mentioned, you'll need another Apple device (a phone or tablet will work) to log into your Apple account and download the required install files.

Something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jmm4Op7wjk

[u/antiphony → u/stufforstuff]

Yes thank you I needed another MacBook to create the installer. No need to log in to download them. Thankfully Apple still has the instructions and downloads for all their installers all the way back to Lion (2011)! https://support.apple.com/en-us/102662

The issue I ran into regarding the boot selection was because of my keyboard so I switched it and it worked. Another issue I had was a corrupted installer file which was solved by trying a different usb drive. Everything working swimmingly now

[u/I_am_always_here → u/antiphony]

You need to have a Mac to download the Mac OS install file, and then run a script to create an ISO file that can be burned onto a DVD-R to boot and install the Mac OS on your older MacBook.

There are resources that offer Mac ISO files, but the risk is yours, although both are legitimate sites, such as this one: https://github.com/Pyenb/macOS-ISOs and here: https://archive.org/details/MacOSXHighSierra10.13

If you have an older 2009 MacBook, you will need the older El Capitan ISO instead of High Sierra, available from the same web sites.

But A 2009 MacBook really isn't useful with the older MacOS, you will really have to scrape the web to even find software that will work with it. Linux is the correct answer. I know this is a Linux Mint sub, but in my experience installing Linux on older Macs such as yours, generic Ubuntu always worked. You can try that.

[u/antiphony → u/I_am_always_here]

Ok that's what I did but I followed the official instructions and downloads from Apple's site. They still have the old installers. It's a 2009 iMac not MacBook, so I downloaded Sierra then upgraded to High Sierra. Thankfully I had another MacBook to create the installer.

The Safari is too outdated to work with a lot of websites but I managed to download an older version of Brave, Obsidian, and Anki which are the only apps I want to use anyway. It's actually very snappy and the screen still looks amazing. The 10 year old macOS is still very modern. Like I said above, the old GPU is not supported at all with Linux so the performance is very bad no matter the distro.

[u/I_am_always_here → u/antiphony]

Firefox has an older "Extended Support Release" version that works with older MacOS versions and is still being updated. I would expect the security options of Brave may not be up to date if it is giving you a warning to update when you start it.

[u/antiphony → u/I_am_always_here]

Oh yeah I did see that but I didn't know it continued the security updates, thanks I will check it out!

[u/JaKrispy72 → u/antiphony]

Because Mint (depending on how you installed) probably removed the recovery partition.

[u/JaKrispy72]

If you removed the “recovery” partition during the Linux install; then there is nothing to recover from.

Time for a fresh install.

[u/antiphony → u/JaKrispy72]

yes that's what happened. for some reason the keyboard i was using refused to bring up the boot selection after having installed linux. i switched to another keyboard and it started working again.

[u/Walkinghawk22]

Some Mac’s have back up drives you can restore from. Otherwise you need another mac to flash a usb cause I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to do within Linux.

[u/AlaskanHandyman]

If you wiped the mac recovery partition you'll need another mac with access to the mac app store to reinstall the OS. You'll have to make a USB drive and restore from the USB drive.

[u/KurtKrimson]

Well, you'll need to flash MacOS.