How to dual boot OS X and Ubuntu

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It is a cake walk to dual boot on a PC. However, when it comes to dual booting on a MAC, most people seem to face a nightmare of a situation. Fret not, as here is an easy 5 step guide to dual booting on your MAC.

Step 1: Install a boot interrupter called ‘rEFIT’ from your existing OS X

A boot interrupter is required to be installed in MAC to allow booting between OS X and any other Linux based platforms. A typical PC user can do away without this boot interrupter as a PC uses GRUB boot loader to work on the dual boot options.

You can try a visually sleek boot interrupter called ‘rEFIT’. One can install ‘rEFIT’ directly from the OS X. All you need to do is download ‘Refit-0.14.dmg’ and double click it to run it on your MAC. After you have installed it on your MAC, the rEFIT menu will appear automatically when you restart the system.

Step 2: Make space for Ubuntu

The most important thing that you need to do to ensure easy install of Ubuntu on your MAC is to create some space on your disk. This can be done by choosing the disk utility option and creating a new partition by clicking on the ‘+’ tab on the chosen hard drive. You also get the liberty of choosing the size of the partition to be created.

Step 3: Reboot with a Live CD

Next, you need to insert the Live CD in the CD drive and reboot your system. Make sure you connect a wired mouse and a keypad to your MAC before you start the reboot to have complete access to the system. Once you do the reboot, ‘rEFIT’ will throw an install from the CD option at that time. Choose that option to continue booting from the Live CD.

Step 4: Install Linux to your desired partition

When you choose install from the Live CD, it will give you an option of installing it on the new partition that you would have created beforehand. However, in case if you do not get that option, you can do so manually by clicking on the ‘Advanced’ options. Your MAC will further guide you to choose the partition that you want.

Step 5: Make a final reboot

The next and the final step are to simply reboot your MAC and choose ‘Linux’ from the options that the boot loader presents you with. This boot loader is the same that you had installed in step 1. It thus aids you in choosing between OS X and Linux, thereby providing you with dual boot options.

Now that you are geared up with all the information on dual booting on your MAC, try it out on your own MAC. But make sure you follow all the step-by-step instructions carefully to ensure that you do not have to repeat the entire procedure again before getting the end result that you aimed for.

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