Comments on: Boot an Intel Mac into Ubuntu Linux from iPod

By: Bruce

Bruce — Wed, 14 May 2008 06:26:28 +0000

@John: thanks for what sounds like a definitive answer!

By: John Altenmueller

John Altenmueller — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:42:16 +0000

So close, yet so far: we have an installation onto the iPod, but can't boot from it. Does anyone know exactly why this doesn't work?

It's because you're on a Mac. Macs actually don't have support for booting 'legacy operating systems' (read: anything that's not OS X) from external hard drives. In other words, your Mac boots Windows simply because it's a "bail-out" alternative. If you didn't have Windows installed it gives an "invalid boot disk" error message if I recall correctly.

Has anyone tried to use rEFIt as the boot manager, to point to the ipod???

That won't work either. rEFIt is nothing more than a bootloader, which means that it still cannot detect/boot non-OS X volumes on external hard drives. If you try it, it'll give some error message saying that Apple's firmware doesn't support it.

By: jasonbuechler

jasonbuechler — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:23:42 +0000

Has anyone tried to use rEFIt as the boot manager, to point to the ipod???

By: jkiv

jkiv — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 03:56:53 +0000

I've been looking to make my dead 5G iPod into a disk that I can keep a Linux install on. I followed the steps in order until the last one, where it says it doesn't work! Ha!

Thanks anyway :)

By: Dr.choc

Dr.choc — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 01:10:41 +0000

Hello Everyone I knew that this would not work although I did have my doubts until i got to step ten were i read it would obviously not work. Let me explain why Ubuntu boots off a boot loader called grub which is loaded through the MBR as most of you know the Mac (any) does not have MBR so it will not boot grub therefore not booting Ubuntu, and last time i checke the ipod does not have an MBR. Regards Dr. Choc

By: Bruce

Bruce — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 07:20:14 +0000

That's right Justin. So now you know to read first then leap :-)

By: Justin

Justin — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 00:55:45 +0000

Wait, so step 10 is "it doesn't work"? Lame!

By: Bruce

Bruce — Sat, 27 May 2006 17:02:28 +0000

Thanks Ken, I see it is now a Release Candidate. It's mighty good of them to ship the distro free on CD-ROMs.

By: Ken

Ken — Sun, 21 May 2006 14:16:55 +0000

The beta version of 6.06 is quite stable Bruce and perfectly usable. The UI is a lot more "polished" than 5.10 with icons that are less Windows and more Mac-like (think Aqua).

By: Bruce

Bruce — Fri, 19 May 2006 14:48:31 +0000

Version 6. That would be "Dapper Drake" then, a name that makes "MacBook Pro" sound OK by comparison ;-)

I'm impressed enough with 5.10 Ken... isn't 6 still pre-release? I'd be interested to know what you particularly like in 6.x

Linux has come a long way since I last looked at it (LinuxPPC, unsupported since 2000 I think). It's so much more usable to non-geeks and it sure is a weird feeling booting a Mac with a Linux for PC CD-ROM! (although that probably says more about how far Mac has come...)