Get the ISO-2-USB EFI-Booter for Mac 0.01 beta and a recent version of Ubuntu Desktop Edition 64bit. Format a USB drive to provide a single FAT32 partition featuring MBR. Create the following directories on your USB drive: /efi and /efi/boot. The solution I found uses the ISO 2 USB EFI Booter for Mac (with unclear origin) to boot from the ISO image of a LiveCD, but with some small but important changes: use a FAT32 file system, place the EFI file in /efi/boot/ and rename it to boot.efi.

I'm trying to dual boot linux on a 2006 iMac. I have tried Arch, Ubuntu, and Fedora. I originally created the Arch USB installation media following the instructions in the Arch Beginner's Guide. Based on these instructions, I used dd to directly write the image to the USB drive. I was unable to get the iMac to boot properly from the USB media.

So later on, I tried creating an Ubuntu live USB drive using dd. This was the least successful because, as I recall, the iMac bootloader wouldn't even show me an option to try to boot from the USB drive. Most recently I tried creating a Fedora Live USB drive using the instructions provided by Fedora. Essentially, I just did sudo dd if=correct-fedora-name.iso of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=8m && sync I originally tried with bs=1m, which also failed to properly boot.

So, with my Fedora Live USB media setup, I tried booting from the USB drive and I was at the bootloader screen, I selected the Fedora option, and after that it seemed to wait for a second before proceeding to boot into Mac OS. Nothing at all came up after I selected to boot from the USB drive, other than it booting into Mac OS as it does normally.

Using the same USB drive, I tested it on my MacBook Pro Late 2013, on which it booted fine, and I was able to use Fedora a bit on the live media. I'm wondering why booting the Fedora media did not work on the iMac. At this point I don't care much about Arch or Ubuntu. However, the Arch beginner's guide has a section about restoring a USB drive for use after having imaged it. Something about it messing with the partition scheme.

This confused me a bit, but I think it's safe to assume that it is no longer a factor, given that I have overwritten the drive completely multiple times at this point? I had similar issues with this on a UEFI Surface Pro by Microsoft. The main problem is that most Linux distros predominantly rely on GRUB as a bootloader. GRUB is nice but sometimes a bit quirky in terms of EFI systems. Apparently even worse for Mac users.

I can't speak for Fedora either because I predominantly use Ubuntu and Arch as my preferred Linux OS. I did however come across a tool that is designed specifically for your case (Linux and Mac). Basically a tool for loading Live CDs onto USB drives. You'd have to compile it.

Hope this works for you. At this stage, it is impossible to diagnose exactly your problem. As a simple example, you do not say whether the Mac requires (or not) an EFI boot.

Installing a Linux system onto a Mac is not quite identical to doing so on a Windows pc. There is a large number of pitfalls. Online guides tacitly acknowledge this: for instance states: We would encourage Mac users to download Ubuntu Desktop Edition by burning a CD. In the same vein, states: Warning: It is highly recommended that this only be attempted after a clean install of OS X. Best surface for mouse mac. Using these methods on a pre-existing system may have undesired results. These sentences would be difficult to understand if installing Ubuntu or Arch Linux via a USB stick on a Mac were a breeze.

Obviously, there must be something flaky. Given that you are a fellow Archer, I would suggest you try following the above-linked guide in the Arch-Linux wiki (never praised enough for its clarity and accuracy) and come back with specific problems where we can provide a focussed guidance. I searched for your problem on Google and found a great website which makes you do some work arounds especially when it comes to tricking Apple into accepting the boot image: The solution I found uses the ISO 2 USB EFI Booter for Mac (with unclear origin) to boot from the ISO image of a LiveCD, but with some small but important changes: use a FAT32 file system, place the EFI file in /efi/boot/ and rename it to boot.efi. The minimal working solution for me was: Check out the entire directions and I hope this works for you. Also the specs for the mac computer the post uses is as follows (it isn't technically the same computer but it is pretty close): The white Core duo (without the 2) 32-bit Macbook was purchased in September 2006 and used to dual boot Gentoo Linux and Mac OSX using rEFIt.