Dual Boot Mac OS X and Ubuntu Linux

Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 in Information Technology
After I finally got the Mac iBook from the media guys I figured that I would use the opportunity to not only work with Mac OS X, but also to try out Linux on a Mac.  The distrbution that I decided to try out was Ubuntu, which I have used before on quite a few PCs and which we used to set-up our Linux Terminal Server.

I found a few different tutorials on-line about how to install a dual boot set-up with Linux and Mac OS X and I tried a few of them for a few days.  In the end though it took a combination of the tutorials that I used to get it installed.  Below are the directions that I used:

  1. Install Tiger and in the options of installation, use Disk Utility to create two seperate partitions. Set-up your first partition to be your ubuntu installation and your second partition to be your OS X one.
  2.  Install Tiger as usual on the second partition that you set-up before
  3. Once completed get the install iso for Ubuntu and burn the image to CD
  4. Chose to boot from CD (Hold C upon boot)
  5. Follow the install directions until you get to partition tables
  6. Go to Manually edit partition table and delete the partition you created for your Ubuntu install during the Tiger install, but leave the Tiger partition alone.
  7. Go back to the main partition table and select "use largest free space" for your installation.
  8. Sit back and wait while it runs and installs your dual boot
So now I have a dual boot G3 iBook running the latest edition of Ubuntu and Mac OS X Tiger.  The wireless works in both installations (which is a common problem with Linux on a laptop) and most things seem to work quite well.  The only thing that doesn't work are the speakers which are stuffed, but that's a hardware problem as the audio works in both operating systems if I used headphones.

Tamara took a picture of me and Caleb on the computers on the weekend as we both got computer games for Christmas.  It's quite a funny photo so I will have to post it on here when I get the photo off the memory card...

Here are the links to the tutorials that I used to put together the above steps:


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- Thanks for the info

Anonymous on Sunday, March 5, 2006
Thanks to your blog I am now installing Ubu on my Powerbook with less fear and more curiosity. Keep it up. Good looking kid too. :)
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- accident

Anonymous on Sunday, April 16, 2006
my cousin accidentally deleted the whole harddrive on his ibook g4 and installed ubuntu on it. how can he reinstall mac os x on it once more?
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- Use the OsX Boot CD

billhutchison on Monday, May 15, 2006
I would say that the only way to do it would be to reformat the computer using the Os X Boot CD. Then you can follow these instructions if you also want Ubuntu on it, but if you only want Mac Os X on it then just follow the standard directions for installation.
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