#Can you put ubuntu on a mac how to#
#Can you put ubuntu on a mac for mac#

#Can you put ubuntu on a mac how to#

You can find an explanation of how to do this here – it requires using Terminal on the Mac. I applied all updates, and installed the rEFInd application. The 500Gb Hard Disk was split into two partitions – 1 250Gb Mac OS Journaled, and 1 250Gb MS-DOS FAT.īefore installing Linux at all I made a fresh installation of Mac OS Yosemite on the partition reserved for that. All the latter partitions were MS-DOS FAT format (more about that later). 32Gb and 5Gb partitions for Ubuntu, and 32Gb and 5Gb partitions for Mint.

#Can you put ubuntu on a mac for mac#

I made 5 partitions on the 120Gb SSD – 40Gb, Mac OS Journaled format, for Mac OS. I then used Disk Utility to partition the disks in the Mac. I put the Yosemite USB in the Mac, started it while holding the “alt” key, and booted using the USB. I tried using the Mac Linux USB Loader application (detailed here) but could not get the USB keys made using this to work – hence I advice you follow the Ubuntu guide. Note that for me the Mint process took a lot longer – I had wondered if the process had just hung. The process for Ubuntu was easy, and I then followed the same process for Linux Mint.

I then followed the How to create a bootable USB stick on OS X guide from Ubuntu here. This gave me files called “ubuntu-14.04.2-desktop-amd64.iso” and “” respectively. I downloaded Ubuntu Desktop here (14.04.2 LTS), and Linux Mint here (17.1, Cinnamon). I made no use of any DVDs as my iMac no longer has a DVD player in it (was taken out to install the SSD drive) – a 2Gb key for the Linux Mint installation I needed 3 USB keys for this:- an 8Gb key with Mac OS Yosemite on it (details here of how to make this)

I used my second Mac (a MacBook Pro) to create the bootable USB keys I needed for the process. All data was backed up from the machine, and hence I could reformat disks as much as I wished. If in doubt check the specs on EveryMac before you start. This Mac has a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS (more about that later). I was using a 2008 iMac 24″ ( specs) with 6Gb of RAM, and 2 internal hard disks for these tests – an internal 120Gb SSD, and an internal 500Gb hard disk. This blog entry sums up my first efforts, and will be updated in the future when I have learnt more. Getting Linux to run on a Mac is notoriously tricky, but I was willing to experiment and work out how tricky it all is.