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If you need to create a bootable USB Drive with the Ubuntu distribution from a Mac, there’s no other native way to do it than from using the Terminal. However, we’re going to. With a bootable Ubuntu USB stick, you can: Install or upgrade Ubuntu Test out the Ubuntu desktop experience without touching your PC configuration Boot into Ubuntu on a. Instant Ubuntu VMs. On-demand VMs for cloud devs on Windows, Mac and Linux desktops with Multipass. This will give you a chance to test your Mac's hardware compatibility with Ubuntu. – David Anderson Jan 25 '18 at 12:45 So, after finishing all steps up until 'Replace Ubuntu Server with Ubuntu Desktop' I reboot, but instead of the GRUB boot screen I get stuck with 'No bootable device. This is the easiest way to create a live linux USB on a mac. If you use OSX Lion, you can Download this file, and if you use OSX Snow Leopard, you can Download this file For more information on the Linux USB creator, just visit the Website.

1. Ubuntu Make Bootable Usb Mac Os
2. Ubuntu Mac Usb Boot
3. Ubuntu Iso To Usb Mac
4. Ubuntu Usb Mac Terminal

So, I have this MacBook that is approaching four years old, but I find that I’m not really using it these days. Then I had an idea. Why not take this aging MacBook that is probably already on borrowed time given Apple’s strict retirement policies as it pertains to hardware and give it new life with one of my favorite operating systems – Ubuntu Linux.

My goal is to install Ubuntu on a Mac to create a Linux laptop for me to be able to use around my home that I can use easily for both work and play. While I know I won’t do too much gaming on it, I should still be able to do everything I want to do, and that is enough.

Then I had another idea. Why not take this opportunity to show all of you how to do this while I’m at it. Linux is a great way to breathe new life into an aging laptop, and especially an aging Apple laptop. After all, you paid a lot of money for that laptop so you want to be able to use it for as long as you possibly can don’t you?

Today, let’s take a look at how to install Ubuntu on a MacBook Pro so you can see the step by step process for yourself before you start undertaking this type of change on your own. My hope is that you will find this guide helpful and useful to you as you move your Mac to the Linux platform and free it from the walled garden that is Apple’s Mac OS X.

1. What You Will Need

Before we get started, you will need a few things to get the job done. Luckily, our needs are pretty basic. So have a look at what you will need and then start gathering it all. I will walk you through how to get the Ubuntu ISO as part of this guide.

• A MacBook Pro (of course)
• Internet Connection
• Ubuntu ISO
• USB Stick with At Least 2 GB of Storage

2. Download Ubuntu

You can grab the Ubuntu ISO straight from their site. I would use the 64-bit version of the latest stable release, but you can choose whichever release you prefer. Once you have downloaded the ISO, make a note of where it is stored on your hard drive.

3. Build Your Bootable USB Stick

While you can create this manually, the easiest way to do it is to install Rufus. Rufus allows you to easily create bootable USB sticks with just a few clicks.

Using a PC

1. Plug in your USB stick.

2. Open Rufus.

3. Change the label to UBUNTU and make sure the scheme is set to “MBR partition scheme for BIOS or UEFI”.

4. Click the small CD/Hard Drive icon next to where it says “Create a bootable disk using…” and select your Ubuntu ISO that you downloaded.

5. Click Start.

6. It will then prompt you requesting to download Syslinux. Click Yes.

7. Select “Write in ISO Image mode (Recommended)” and click OK.

8. Click OK to accept that all data on the USB Stick will be destroyed to create a bootable Ubuntu USB stick.

9. When finished, eject your USB stick.

Using a Mac

If you don’t have a PC handy, you can always use the Mac OS X operating system you currently have installed to do the job.

1. Insert your USB and go to Applications > Utilities and launch Disk Utility.

2. Click on the USB drive in the left pane, then click the Partition tab and select 1 Partition from the drop down.

3. Create a name for the drive and then change the format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

4. Click the Options Button and ensure that GUID Partition Table is selected and then click Ok.

5. Open Terminal and enter the following command replacing the generic path and names to suit your file locations:

6. Find the Device Node for the USB Drive.

7. Unmount the USB by running the following command:

8. Create your bootable USB by running the following command:

4. Install Ubuntu on Your MacBook Pro

Now it is time for the fun part. For this guide, we are completely replacing the existing Mac OS X on the MacBook and going with an Ubuntu only installation, but you can set it up in a dual boot scenario as well if you wish. You will have to forgive me as this is being done on a live Mac, my screenshots will be very few and far between as you can really take them during the process. I hope you understand.

1. Insert your USB stick in your Mac.
2. Restart your Mac and hold down the Option Key while it reboots.
3. When you arrive at the Boot Selection screen, choose “EFI Boot” to select your bootable USB Stick.
4. Select Install Ubuntu from the Grub boot screen.
5. Select Your Language and click Continue.
6. Click on “Install third-party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware, Flash, MP3 and other media.” Click Continue.
7. Choose “Erase disk and install Ubuntu.” Click Install Now.
8. Select Your Time zone and click Continue.
9. Choose Your Keyboard Layout and click
10. Enter your name, create a username and password and name your computer. Click Continue when finished.
11. Wait for the installation to complete.
12. Once the installation is complete, click the prompt saying Restart Now.
13. Connect an Ethernet cable to your system to gain Internet access if it doesn’t find the Wi-Fi drivers.
14. Run all Software Updates and restart your computer.

5. Get Wi-Fi Working

Chances are, the Wi-Fi on your Mac won’t work out the box. Don’t worry, you won’t have to go without wireless connectivity on your Mac just because you want to use Ubuntu. Follow the steps below to get Wi-Fi working.

1. Make sure you are connected with an Ethernet cable to your network.
2. Select the Broadcom driver listed in the Additional Drivers Tab and click Apply Changes.
3. When the changes complete, close the app and restart your computer. Be patient, it may take a few minutes to make all the necessary changes.

6. Enjoy Ubuntu

Congratulations! You have now successfully installed Ubuntu onto your MacBook Pro and you can enjoy it and everything it has to offer when it comes to the world of free software right on your Mac. Now it is time to get to work tweaking your new installation of Ubuntu so you can enjoy it the way you want it. That, of course, is a guide for another day.

Although I do recommend you take the time to read a little more about all the freedom you actually have when you use Ubuntu. I think you will be glad you did, as the free world of Linux has so much to offer users from all types of backgrounds.

Conclusion

It wasn’t always easy to install Linux on a Mac, however today things are a little different. While there are a few extra steps to get everything working just right, in the end I believe it is worth it and it is a great way to breathe new life into your aging MacBook. As you know, Apple abandons their older tech pretty quickly, which could leave you out in the cold. But with Linux, you can keep using your MacBook or MacBook Pro for many years to come.

What did you think about this guide? Did you find it easy to follow or did you have issues? Let me know if this guide helped you out in the comments below and if you have any questions please feel free to ask and I will do my best to give you a hand. If you are looking for an alternative laptop for Ubuntu or other versions of Linux also feel free to browse our best Linux laptops guide.

The general procedure to install Ubuntu (or Ubuntu flavour, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, ...) from a USB flash drive is:

• Get the correct Ubuntu installation file, 'the iso file', via this link or Ubuntu flavour via this link. Download the iso file into your running computer (for example into the directory Downloads in the internal drive, not into the USB flash drive that you want to make into a USB boot drive).

• Check with md5sum (or another checksum tool) that the download was good.

• Put Ubuntu onto your USB flash drive alias 'stick' alias 'pendrive' alias 'thumb'. Tools for this purpose are described in this help page.
• Configure your computer to boot from USB flash drive and boot from it.

• Try Ubuntu (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, ...) before installing it.

• Install Ubuntu to your internal drive (hard disk drive or solid state drive or external drive).

See also: Installation/FromUSBStickQuick for beginners starting from Windows.

Ubuntu can be installed from a USB flash drive. This may be necessary for most new portable computers without DVD drives and is handy for others because a USB flash drive is so convenient. Also, you can configure Ubuntu on the USB flash drive to save changes you make, unlike a read-only CD/DVD disk.

Booting from a USB flash drive created with usb-creator alias Startup Disk Creator and mkusb will behave just as if you had booted from the install CD. It will show the language selection and then the install menu, from which you can install Ubuntu onto the computer's hard drive or launch the LiveCD environment. Other utilities, e.g. UNetbootin, may create slightly different boot drives or if on UEFI might not work at all with Debian iso files due to a bug

Note: This article uses the term 'USB flash drive' alongside USB stick, USB drive, USB device, USB pendrive and thumb drive.

To create a USB installation device, you will need:

• a 4 GB USB flash device/drive/stick. If the iso file is smaller than 2 GB, it is possible to use a 2 GB USB device, at least with some of the methods. Files on this USB device will be erased, so backup the files you want to keep before making the device bootable. Some of the tools require that this USB device is properly formatted and mounted while other tools will overwrite whatever is on the target device. Please follow the instructions for each tool.

• an Ubuntu flavour ISO file downloaded from an official web page, ubuntu.com/download or http://releases.ubuntu.com, stored in your running computer (for example in the directory Downloads in the internal drive, not in the USB flash drive that you want to make into a USB boot drive).

• Check with md5sum (or another checksum tool) that the download was good. In Linux there is the tool 'md5sum'. In Windows you can do it with Rufus: click on the circle with a tick mark (more about Rufus here.)

Dummy headlines

After a major remake of this help page the following headlines are kept here because they may be linked to from other web sites. Several other headlines further down in the page are also kept for this reason.

Notes about speed

Notes about size

Notes about bootability

The flash hardware

There are various methods available for Windows to create a bootable Ubuntu USB flash drive.

NEVER try to use one of your hard disk drives or partitions in this process unless you really know what you are doing, as data will get erased.

Rufus

Rufus is the tool in Windows that is recommended officially by Ubuntu. A tutorial is available from here.

Download Rufus.

balenaEtcher

Download balenaEtcher

Pendrivelinux's Universal USB Installer

Download Universal USB Installer

UNetbootin

Download UNetbootin

Win32 Disk Imager

Download Win32 Disk Imager

Install and run Startup Disk Creator alias usb-creator

• The Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator is dedicated to creating USB boot drives for Ubuntu and Ubuntu family flavours (Kubuntu, Lubuntu ... Xubuntu).

• Use another tool (e.g. 'UNetbootin' or 'mkusb'), if you want to create a USB boot drive with another Linux distro (alias Linux operating system).

You can find usb-creator-gtk by typing 'Startup Disk Creator' (Ubuntu Desktop) or usb-creator-kde in K-Menu-->Applications-->System-->Startup Disk Creator (Kubuntu). If it is not there, then you can install it using the Ubuntu Software Center.

• Insert and mount the USB drive. Inserting the USB drive should auto-mount it.
• Start the Startup Disk Creator
• In the top pane of the Startup Disk Creator, pick the .iso file that you downloaded.
• If the .iso file isn't listed, click 'Other' to locate and select the .iso file that you downloaded.
• In the bottom pane of the Startup Disk Creator, pick the target device, the USB flash drive. If more than one choice, please check carefully, until you are sure that you will be writing to the correct device.
• After checking that you are pointing to the correct target device, the USB flash drive, you can start the action.

• You must enter a password because this is a risky operation. Use the password of the current user ID (the same as for login and running tasks with 'sudo'. Password is not required when installing from a 'live' system (booted from a DVD disk or another USB flash drive).

The Startup Disk Creator clones the iso file, which means that you need neither erase nor format the target drive. It will be completely overwritten anyway by the cloning process. The Startup Disk Creator looks like this in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS:

Screenshots: Startup Disk Creator - to SSD or pendrive

Notes

• NEVER try to use one of your hard disk drives or SSDs or partitions in this process unless you really know what you are doing, as data will get erased.

• There are bugs that affect the Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator, when you run it in old Ubuntu versions in BIOS mode and try to create USB boot drives with other versions. In the Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator version 0.3.2 in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, these bugs are no longer a problem, so you can install any version of the Ubuntu flavours from 16.04 LTS and newer versions.

UNetbootin

• Download UNetbootin

• UNetbootin works in and with most Linux distros.
• It is an extracting tool (not a cloning tool).
• It can make a persistence file up to 4GB in size to save data and defaults.

mkusb - dd image of iso file to USB device safely

• Install mkusb via PPA

• If you want to clone from a general image file to a drive, you can use mkusb. It lets you clone to any drive that is not busy, also an internal drive, and there are very obvious warnings to prevent mistakes.

• mkusb can also
  • run in Debian and many linux distros that are similar to Ubuntu and Debian,
  • clone from iso files of most Linux distros to create USB boot drives,
  • create persistent live drives of the Ubuntu family and Debian, using all available drive space for persistence and/or data storage,
  • restore a USB boot drive to a standard storage device.

See How to install Ubuntu on MacBook using USB flash drive and this Ubuntu Forum thread by Quackers

There is a good wiki page about booting with UEFI, and a good tutorial thread, UEFI Installing - Tips.

Test if running in UEFI mode

You may want to test if your Ubuntu flavour is running in [U]EFI mode. An installed system and a live system too is using the directory /sys/firmware/efi, so you can run the following command line,

The following command line is more robust and also easier to understand, so you may prefer it (if you copy & paste and are not bothered by typing a long command line),

Boot and install

Stable portable systems - good for USB sticks

Creating an EFI-only image

Ubuntu single boot in UEFI mode

'Do it yourself'

When the boot structure is modified in Ubuntu or the booting software, there can be problems until the extracting tools are modified to manage the modification. It is worthwhile to find a method that is as simple as possible and to learn how to use it in order to manage the extraction also when the boot structure is modified.

• For an UEFI only boot flash drive you need no installer
• Make the drive boot both in UEFI mode and BIOS mode

See this link: Installation/iso2usb#Do_it_yourself

Ubuntu Make Bootable Usb Mac Os

Portable installed system booting from UEFI and BIOS

Multiboot pendrives

Booting ISO files on internal drive

Booting USB drives with grub2 and iso files 'grub-n-iso'

Remove all unneeded USB items, but keep the network cable attached.

Boot menu

Instead of editing BIOS settings, you can choose a boot device from the boot menu. Press the function key to enter the boot menu when your computer is booting. Typically, the boot screen displays which key you need to press. It maybe one of F12, F10, F9.

Edit the BIOS settings

Insert the bootable USB flash drive that you just created in your target computer and restart it. Most newer computers can boot from a USB flash drive. If your computer does not automatically do so, you might need to edit the BIOS settings.

Restart your computer, and watch for a message telling you which key, hotkey to press to enter the BIOS setup.

• It will usually be one of F1, F2, F9, F10, DEL, Enter or ESC.
• The hotkey should be described in the user manual provided by the manufacturer of the computer (a printed or electronic document).

• You can also search your hardware on boot-keys.org.

Press this hotkey continuously or tap repeatedly (different between computers) while your computer is booting to edit your BIOS settings. (On HP Mini Netbooks, the correct key is usually F9.)

Select 'hard disk/USB-HDD0'

Note: with some motherboards you have to select 'hard disk/USB-HDD0' to choose the USB flash disk. It may work like this because the system sees the USB drive 'a mass storage device' as a hard disk drive, and it should be at the top of the boot order list.

So you need to edit the Boot Order. Depending on your computer, and how your USB key was formatted, you should see an entry for 'removable drive' or 'USB media'. Move this to the top of the list to make the computer attempt to boot from the USB device before booting from the hard disk.

Chainloading

PLoP Boot Manager

• For old computers that cannot boot from USB

Flow chart for trouble-shooting

• See this link: Why Doesn't a Bootable USB Boot

• There are problems with the versions of the Startup Disk Creator alias usb-creator in versions of Ubuntu older than 16.04 LTS. There are similar problems with old versions of Unetbootin. Until these problems are solved other tools work, for example mkusb and Win32DiskImager described in the following links, https://help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Win32DiskImager/iso2usb

• The version 0.3.2 (and newer versions) of the Startup Disk Creator alias usb-creator in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (and newer versions) clones the iso file and creates a read-only file system. This method is very robust, but if you want to re-use the USB stick as a storage drive, you must restore it. Two methods are described in the next paragraph.

'Postrequisites' - after installation: how to restore the USB stick to a standard storage drive. The standard is an MSDOS partition table (MBR) and a partition with the FAT32 file system.

gparted

Ubuntu Mac Usb Boot

Disks

Ubuntu Iso To Usb Mac

mkusb

Ubuntu Usb Mac Terminal

• FromUSBStickQuick for beginners starting from Windows

• USB Installation Media: custom, manual, older versions, and technical instructions and troubleshooting. There are also network installation options available.

• Why Doesn't a Bootable USB Boot: flowchart and lists of possible causes to help troubleshooting

• MinimalCD alias mini.iso

• booting with grub2

• booting with UEFI

• Ubuntu Forums tutorial 'Howto make USB boot drives'

• Ubuntu Forums tutorial 'Howto help USB boot drives'

• Ubuntu Forums tutorial 'How to create an external USB bootable Linux hard drive (without dual-boot)'

• Unetbootin for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X

• Paul Sutton's Unetbootin how to

• Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way (from Windows)

• Pendrivelinux about Multisystem

• Pendrivelinux about grub2

• YUMI – Multiboot USB Creator

• Choosing between Live USB and Full USB Installation

• Try Ubuntu (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, ...) before installing it

• LiveCD/Persistence

• Dual Boot with Windows

• Discussion about tools to create USB boot drives at the Ubuntu Forums 'http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2291946'

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