Jun 23, 2014 - We would encourage Mac users to download Ubuntu Desktop Edition by burning. This is the easiest way to create a live linux USB on a mac.

• Live Linux Usb Creator

So, you’ve got a mac computer and you want to put the ISO you just downloaded onto it. If you’ve used tools like before, then you’ll have found it a nice easy graphical way on a PC. Unfortunately, Mac users have to go through a few more hurdles to get an ISO image onto a USB stick in order to make it boot properly. What are we trying to do here? So, just to be clear, you have downloaded Linux (say Ubuntu) from the Ubuntu website. When you downloaded it you get a.iso file. This.iso file is a disk image.

In the past, we’d ‘burn’ this image onto a blank CD or DVD. They weren’t really intended to be put onto USB sticks. USB sticks were more meant to pop regular files onto, not disk images.

However, this is 2016, and people don’t have CDRW drives any more, so let’s find out how to do this on your beloved mac. If you want a full tutorial on how to install Linux on a Mac computer,. Step 1: Download the ISO This may seem obvious – but just in case you haven’t already downloaded your Linux distro, make sure you grab the right one for your machine (if it’s a new Mac, it’s going to be the 64-bit ISO image – the filename usually ends amd64.iso. If you are downloading Ubuntu, you can get it here: Step 2: Erase / Format / Initialise your USB Stick It’s time to pop your USB stick in your Mac.

Regardless of whether you have a blank USB stick, or one with lots of files, you are going to need to completely erase the contents of it. It’s commonly known as ‘Formatting’, but those Cupertino Cliques like to call it ‘Initialise’ instead 🙂 To initialise your USB stick, go to your Applications menu. In Utilities you’ll find an Apple app called ‘Disk Utility’. Launch that App, and you’ll see something similar to the below screenshot: Mac Disk Utility When you launch the app, find the USB stick icon.

I’ve circled my one on the left hand side. Once you’ve found it, click on it (making sure you definitely have the right disk), and press Erase. Erase (Initialise) the USB Stick When you click Erase, you’ll get a few options. Make sure you choose ‘GUID Partition Map’ from the Scheme dropdown. I also gave it a name of UBUNTU so it is easy to identify in the following steps, however this is not required.

Click on the Erase button. Step 3: Identify the disk and unmount it Use diskutil to list the available disks Next up, open another inbuilt Utility on the Mac, this time it’s called Terminal. Launch that and you’ll get a blank text window. Use the ‘diskutil list’ command as per the above screenshot (click the image to see it clearer). Take a note of what device name your newly initialised USB disk is. You can see in my screenshot that /dev/disk0 is the Mac’s hard drive, disk1 is the USB stick in my case (note the name I gave it, UBUNTU).

It is VERY important that you take note of the correct disk here. If you use the dd program (coming up shortly) on your Mac’s hard drive, instead of the USB stick, your data will be toast! You have been warned!

Now that you have initialised the USB stick, unmount it. This is different from ejecting it, because we want to make the USB stick still visible to MacOS, we just want to stop it from being used by the OS. To unmount the disk enter the following command: diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskX Where diskX is the name you wrote down.

Step 4: Convert the image type to UDRW Convert the image to UDRW Next you have to go into the folder which you downloaded the.iso file. If this is your Downloads folder you would type: cd /Downloads Note that it is case sensitive. You can use /home/yourusername instead of the You can use the ls -l command to look at the files in the folder, just to make sure you are in the correct folder. In there, you should see the.iso file you downloaded in Step 1. In order for the image to be writeable to the USB stick, you need to convert it into the UDRW image format. To do this we use the hdiutil command. As you can see from the above screen shot, you type hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o after the -o you provide a filename for the file you are about to create.

It doesn’t really matter what it’s called. I called my one ubuntu1610.img. Note that MacOS will append a.dmg filename on the end of it because. Well, because MacOS! Finally you provide the source file. The source file is of course the name of the file you downloaded from the web (ubuntu-16.10-desktop-amd64.iso, in my case). So, the command in full is, for example: hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o outputfile.img sourcefile.iso When the command finishes, you’ll see the filename of the newly created UDRW disk image.

You can copy this to the clipboard to help with the next step if you like. Step 5: Put the disk image onto the USB stick Use DD to write the image to the USB stick This is the vital stage. And this is where, if you didn’t take a note of that /dev/diskX bit in step 3 properly, you are going to be in a whole world of pain. Still in the Terminal, carefully type the following: sudo dd if= of=/dev/diskX bs=1m It will ask you for your usual account password. Enter this and the dd command will start.

Unfortunately, dd is about as old-school as it gets. Literally, you won’t see anything happening on your screen for quite some time. If your USB stick has a light on it, you’ll be seeing it flash, but otherwise you will have no idea that anything is happening. Hold on tight though, it’s doing its thing. Go find some wet paint to watch drying in the mean time. I’ve tried this a number of times on different USB sticks.

Some were done in 5 minutes, some took 25. Once the process is finished, you’ll see a screen that looks pretty much like the one above. You’ll also likely get a popup from MacOS saying that the USB stick can’t be read by the computer. Do not click any of those buttons, no matter how tempting that ‘Eject’ button might look! Step 6: Finishing up It’s now time to eject the disk.

We need to do this manually, to do so, enter the following command: diskutil eject /dev/diskX Replacing the X with the number you used earlier in this guide. It’s now safe to press the Ignore button on the window you saw in Step 5. You can now boot your computer (whether it’s your Mac, or another PC), using the newly created USB stick. To start it on your mac, reboot your mac, with the USB stick plugged in. Whilst it’s rebooting, hold down the ‘option’ key (sometimes it’s called Alt, depending upon your keyboard). You should see a selection of disks to start up from. Your USB stick should be visible as a yellow disk icon, you can select the USB stick using the left/right arrow keys.

Hit return to start up from it. Hi again, I was able to install Ubuntu 16.04.2 using Unetbootin, reFind, and manual partition (create partition on existing HD using disk utility in MacOS first). My biggest challenge now is to make wifi work Don’t get me wrong, I know I installed a server but this is a lab server and I need it to be stashed in a quiet corner or anywhere I can just put it I tried this link in ubuntu on how to solve it but it seems that I can’t seem to connect to my home wifi network. Any ideas gladly appreciated. Hi, So once I boot up the mac and hold down the alt/option key, that is the only time I will see the yellow icon appear and then I can start on installing Ubuntu right? So after install, I will then remove the USB bootable drive and reboot the system. Naturally it will boot to the Ubuntu image right?

What if I want to boot to my mac again? Do I just reboot and hold the alt/option key and from there I can see two icons? That is, one for mac and one for the Ubuntu OS?

Thanks again for your replies.

Advertisement Linux has long been synonymous with bootable flash drives, whether it’s to fix some sort of problem with your primary OS, or for trialling and installing USB drives are great, not just for installing portable versions of Linux but for protecting your computer when things go awry. Here are the 5 most useful Linux distributions for installing on a USB drive. There are a few ways to get a create live USB sticks that will boot on your Mac. You can go the freeware route for an easy option, or put a little bit of time into creating the drive yourself using Terminal. Today we’ll cover both these methods! First: Prepare Your USB Drive Make sure you choose the right USB drive for the job, and that it’s formatted correctly to avoid any problems. Some Linux variants may require larger volumes, so pay attention to the requirements when downloading. Others don’t have any strict requirements, but formatting to FAT beforehand is a good idea: Warning: Everything on your drive will be erased if you do this!. Insert your USB drive into your Mac and launch Disk Utility (under Applications Utilities, or Today we're going to share our favourite good Mac habits, while desperately trying to forget the bad ones.).

Select your USB device in the menu on the left, then click Erase. Give it a name (or not) and choose MS-DOS (FAT) under “Format” and GUID Partition Map under “Scheme.”.

Hit Erase to apply the changes. If it fails, try again — sometimes the system doesn’t unmount the volume in time and the process will be unable to complete. Generally speaking anything above 4GB will do the job (I used an 8GB Lexar for this tutorial).

If you have persistent problems, try another USB drive. Method 1: Create a Live USB Using Etcher (Easy) is a free open source tool for burning disc images onto USB and SD drives. It’s a relatively recent addition to the When most people think open source, they think Linux.

But Mac OS X has its share of quality open source programs as well — and a bunch of them aren't available for Linux or Windows., and it makes creating bootable devices completely foolproof:. Grab your desired Linux image, then and install it. Insert your USB stick, then launch Etcher. Click Select image and find the Linux image you downloaded — Etcher supports.IMG,.ISO and.ZIP among others. Ensure the correct USB device is selected — hit Change to see a list of connected devices.

Finalize the process by clicking Flash! And wait for the process to complete.

You’ll likely see an error message warning you that your USB drive isn’t compatible with your Mac. That’s normal — simply eject and go. Your bootable Linux USB drive is now ready, you can now skip to the Booting Your USB Drive section below. Method 2: Create a Live USB Using the Terminal (Moderate) If for some reason you don’t want to use Etcher (maybe you’re on an incompatible version of macOS), you can accomplish this task using the command line. This is possible using Terminal, your Mac’s built-in command line interface. While this method requires a little more thought and patience on your part, it’s actually pretty straightforward.

You might even learn a thing or two, plus you’ll feel smart afterwards. Assuming you’ve formatted your drive as per the instructions at the start of this tutorial, here’s how it works: 1. Convert Your.ISO Launch Terminal and take note of where your Linux disc image is stored in Finder. Convert your image (usually an.ISO) to an.IMG file using the hdiutil convert command: hdiutil convert /path/to/downloaded.iso -format UDRW -o /path/to/newimage Replace /path/to/downloaded.iso with the location of your own.ISO (you can drag and drop directly into the Terminal window if you want) and /path/to/newimage to wherever you want the new image file to be created. You’ll likely be able to identify the drive by its name, it’s format, and its size using a process of elimination. Take a note of the listing under the IDENTIFIER column, then unmount the drive using the following command: diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskX You’ll need to replace diskX with the corresponding number, e.g. Disk3 — if successful Terminal will report that the disk was unmounted. If you’re having trouble unmounting a drive, you can launch Disk Utility, right click on a drive, then choose Unmount (don’t eject the drive, though).

The final step is to write the image to your USB stick, using the dd command: sudo dd if=/path/to/newimage.dmg of=/dev/diskN bs=1m Replace /path/to/newimage.dmg with the path to the file we created in step 1 (again, drag and drop works best), and diskN with the location we identified earlier. You’ll need to authorize with your administrator password immediately afterwards, since we used the sudo command. You’re done, and your drive is ready for booting. Booting Your USB Drive Assuming all went well, you’ll now have a USB drive that will let you boot Linux. You can plug it into the Mac you want to use it on, then shut down the computer. In order to access your Mac’s boot menu, you’ll need to hold the option (alt) key while it boots.

The best way to do this is to shut down, hold the option key, start your Mac, and wait. If you did it correctly you’ll see a few options including your built-in hard drive, and the USB device we created earlier titled “EFI Boot.” To boot into Linux, select the USB device and click the arrow (or double click). Depending on what you’re using, you may get another menu which acts as a bootloader for your particular flavor of Linux. If you have problems, or your USB drive won’t show up, try running the process again, try using an alternative method above, try a different USB stick or port, and consult your respective distro’s help documentation. The Best Way to Try Linux on Your Mac Assuming all went well, you now have Linux running on your Mac and you can test it out or install it outright if you’re tired of macOS.

You still have an If you are looking to ditch macOS, you may want to delete your recovery partition for some extra disk space. Later you also may want to restore it. Here's how to do both. which can be accessed by holding command+r while your machine boots. This can Need to restore your Mac to factory settings? Here's how to install a fresh copy of macOS and erase everything.

Live Linux Usb Creator

Among other things if you decide to go back. There are other tools that claim to help you do this, but not all of them work, and some cost money. Is still a popular choice for Linux and Windows users, but it hasn’t been able to create Mac-bootable USB drives for years. I tested it again for this article, it failed miserably and was generally unpleasant to use. There’s also our old favorite, which is open source and actively maintained. It’ll cost you $5 for a pre-compiled binary, assuming you don’t want to download and compile it yourself. This low entry fee helps keep the project maintained, but it’s hard to justify paying for something Etcher or Terminal can do for free. Which technique do you prefer for burning Linux USB drives? And which flavors of Linux work best on your Mac?

Talk about it in the comments, below. Explore more about:,.