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Comment by aspenmayer | Hacker News Reader

You might need to update the firmware for your Mac in order for the Internet Recovery to support updating to Big Sur. The firmware updates are installed at upgrade time usually, but you may be able to install them separately.

> About EFI and SMC firmware updates for Intel-based Mac computers

https://support.apple.com/en-us/101198

I would see if you can access this:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/macos-big-sur/id1526878132

Download it, then you can make a bootable flash drive if you want, or just install it from under macOS.

> How to download and install macOS

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102662

> Create a bootable installer for macOS

https://support.apple.com/en-us/101578

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Big Sur Recovery mode works for me with Option+Cmd+R, so if needed I can install that. What I meant is that the other goes into Mavericks Recovery mode. And I’m happy about that actually :-)

Edit: if you were referring to Option+Cmd+R anyway, I guess I misread

Edit2: by other one I meant Shift+Option+Cmd+R, just Cmd+R actually goes into Big Sur, you are right!

Yeah, there are a few keyboard combinations that do different things.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102655

> On an Intel-based Mac:

> If you used Command-R to start up from the local Recovery system, you get the current version of the most recently installed macOS.

> If you used Option-Command-R to start up from Internet Recovery, you might get the latest macOS that is compatible with your Mac.

> If you used Shift-Option-Command-R to start up from Internet Recovery, you might get the macOS that came with your Mac, or the closest version still available.

There is another one, you can hold Option while booting and it will show disks to boot from. But there is also a SSID dropdown to do internet recovery like Shift+Option+Command+R.

Yes, Option is boot menu iirc.

You can even boot to Linux or Windows if you have the patience to set it up. I made a hackintosh for hard drive data recovery that would dual boot Windows 10 and macOS. It’s a fun ecosystem.

Yeah I remember using BootCamp back then. FreeBSD also works quite well on the MacBook Air mid-2014, but without WiFi.

Edit: I didn’t bother to look into wifibox which is a FreeBSD package that runs a Linux VM for the WiFi driver, that could work. Also didn’t bother to check the webcam. However both WiFi and webcam work under various Linux distributions, but it’s typically a third-party Broadcom driver that has to be added outside of regular package repos.

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