• How To Boot Linux From Usb

1. Plug the bootable installer into a compatible Mac. Use Startup Manager or Startup Disk preferences to select the bootable installer as the startup disk, then start up from it. Your Mac will start up to macOS Recovery. Learn about selecting a startup disk, including what to do if your Mac doesn't start up from it. Choose your language, if prompted.
2. Hi Stephen, the usb stick will never be readble by your mac, the filesystem is not in a format that it can read. To boot from the USB stick, restart your mac, hold down the option key while you hear the chime and youll see the option to boot from the USB media, select that with the arrow keys and you should be good to go.
3. This easy to use app can create a bootable USB flash drive from a downloaded ISO file or can even download the necessary ISO file for you. UNetbootin is available for Windows, Mac, or Linux and can, within a few short minutes, have you booting a live Linux distribution. Creating a Bootable Live Distribution on a USB Flash Drive.
4. If you want to use your USB stick with an Apple Mac, you will need to restart or power-on the Mac with the USB stick inserted while the Option/alt (⌥) key is pressed. This will launch Apple’s ‘Startup Manager’ which shows bootable devices connected to the machine.

How to Boot Mac from USB Media. After creating a bootable USB drive, the user simply needs to plug the created drive into the open port on the Mac. Here are the steps to boot Mac from the USB flash drive: Power on the system. Press and hold the Option (Alt) key on the keyboard when the computer starts.

The Need

I was recently using multiple machines for work (Lab machines, friend’s laptop, etc) and I needed Linux. I own a 128GB MacBook Air I could’nt install Linux on it as storage was tiny. I did have a USB 3.0 flash drive which had speeds comparable to some(not-so-fast) harddrives. It struck me that if I install Linux on my flash drive it would make my life a hell lot easier. It was later that I realised it wasn’t so straight forward mainly because of EFI boot and Mac ‘quirks’. I did a lot of googling but could’nt find anything that worked. After reading multiple sources I deduced what was the problem. Since I got it figured out I decided to write this post so that other people can benefit from it.

The problem

• Modern Macs boot using EFI and their bootloader expects boot partition to be HFS+ or APFS(High Sierra) not EXT4.
• Ubuntu installer is buggy and always installs bootloader in EFI partition of internal HDD despite being instructed to install it on EFI partition of flash drive.
  • This makes the flash drive only bootable on the mac it was made on

The Solution

Step 1: Preparing live USB for installation

• Download https://unetbootin.github.io/
• Download your favourite Ubuntu flavor, Im using Ubuntu Mate
• Burn the iso to a USB drive(not on your installation flash drive) using UNetbootin
  ​

Step 2: Boot using live installation drive

• Plug both drives and press option+power button
• Choose EFI boot option
• Choose Try Ubuntu without Installing
  ​

Step 3: Install Linux on target flash drive

• Once into the live session, open terminal and run ubuquity —no-bootloader , this will start installation wizard in a mode that wont install a bootloader (Dont worry we will take care of it later)

Fig 1: Run installer with no-bootloader option

• Keep going next untill an option comes as shown in below image. Choose Something else

Fig 2: Choose this option

• On your target drive, create a 200MB EFI System Partition as the first partition (Primary)
• Create a reasonable sized ext4 partition, with mount point = ' (Primary)

Fig 3: Sample partitions

• Click on Install
• Reboot into Mac after installation finishes

Step 4: Setting up Boot manager

We will be using a super awesome 3rd party boot manager rEFInd. It can detect any operating systems installed in EFI mode and boot them.

• Download rEFInd zip and extract it
• Open Terminal and navigate to rEFInd directory
• Run diskutil list and find the name of your flash drive’s EFI partition. (In my case /dev/disk2s1)
• Run ./refind-install --usedefault /dev/diskXXX (replace XXX with appropriate name)

Fig 4: Output must be similar to this

Now your flash drive is ready to boot on any Mac or EFI compatible PC. Moreover, if you ever mess up your bootloader and are unable to boot rEFInd can help you boot into your OS (if it exists :p)

Testing on Mac and PC

MacBook Air (Early 2015)

• Press option+power and select EFI Boot
  

Fig 5: rEFInd screen

• Select your apropriate Linux to boot
  

Fig 6: MacBook booted

Asus X550LD (PC)

• Boot from flash drive in UEFI Mode
  

Fig 7: rEFInd screen

• Select your apropriate Linux to boot
  

Fig 8: PC booted

Boot from USB on MAC

I tried to boot Slax on a MAC computer from USB stick long time ago and I wasn't successful, it seemed that MAC computers don't boot from USB at all. Few weeks ago the makeuseof website published an article about making a Linux distro bootable from USB on MAC. The article is here:

I'm not able to test this myself, since I don't have MAC (and definitely will not buy one in near future), so I would appreciate if there is anybody who has MAC computer and is willing to give it a go and try to boot Slax from USB on MAC, with or without the help of the utility mentioned in the article. I'd be mostly interested in how to make an USB drive with Slax which could be universal to boot on both MAC and regular PCs, that could be beneficial for all Slax users. I'll be happy for you suggestions! :) Thank you.

User comments

Mark De Silva2013-07-08 12:55

Hi Tomas, Slax has been able to boot from Intel based Macs for some time? My bioinformatics distro has been used by students to boot from their Macs. There were issues with drivers (had to make lzms specifically for the Macs) but other than that I don't recall any problems. This was with Slax 6 by the way, haven't tried with 7 as yet.

Martin Pavlik2013-07-09 09:09

Hi Thomas,
today I've tried to boot MB air via usb created by copying slax on usb and running the batch file on windows machine. That did not work.
So I've tried the tutorial you posted, but the tool for mac just created empty efi directory on the flash drive :(
I am willing to do more tests if will have a clue how to proceed.

Guilherme Mendes2013-07-15 09:56

hey tomas, have you heard about this https://github.com/SUSE/hackweek/wiki/Lightweight-KDE-based-desktop ?

Barry Hoffman2013-07-24 08:22

Hi-
I can confirm that Slax boots successfully on the latest Mac versions (built Winter 2012 or more recently). I was able to get it to work with EFI as well which eliminates to need to run bootinst.bat. With the Linux Foundations UEFI boot loader, it even works on Windows 8 machines that have Secure Boot enabled.
Best regards,
Barry

The Doctor2013-07-26 02:45

Project Byzantium worked around this problem by using the isohybrid utility from syslinux to turn the ISO into a hybrid ISO. It was then dd'd onto a USB key and booted from a couple of relatively modern Macbooks (MacBook Air and MacBook, both manufactured in early 2013). Here's a writeup of everything that went into the effort:
http://project-byzantium.org/isc-grant-milestone-achieved-v0-3-2a-runs-on-macs/

Антон Кочков2013-07-28 23:29

It is possible even without additional loaders, just put built kernel efi image into /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI on FAT32 usb flash - then most of UEFI computers should run automatically this image. No need additional bat or sh scripts - just unpack archive into your flash, and boot!

Igor2013-07-30 07:22

Where else is loaded Slax-weirdly interesting.
It does not load after 7.05-this is bullshit.
7.09-gamma should be checked up on the washing machine.