How to: Dual boot Ubuntu & OSX
> Summary: How I got Ubuntu Linux & OSX dual booting on my Apple Powerbook. Includes some basic steps intended for the novice Linux user interested in experimenting with Ubuntu.
This past few days I’ve been working at getting Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Dapper Drake) installed on my 12″ Powerbook. Overall, the process was relatively simple, but required some research and trial-and error.
For the benefit of others who might be interested, the following outlines the steps I took to get Ubuntu up and running. Please keep in mind that the following instructions are meant for users with a PowerPC (not MacIntel) Powerbook. Some of this may apply to different hardware configurations, but use this info at your own risk.
Testing out Ubuntu
Before permanently installing Ubuntu, I wanted to play around with this operating system a bit and make sure it was something I really wanted. Fortunately, Ubuntu comes packaged as a LiveCD, which lets you boot into Ubuntu without actually installing anything or making any changes to your system.
In order to boot into Ubuntu using the LiveCD, you first have to download the package from
I used Toast for to burn the disc. The process is pretty easy: you simply drag and drop the disc image (ISO) into Toast. The only real catch is that you want to make sure you burn a bootable disc image. This means you don’t want to burn a CD with one ISO file on it. If burning a disc image is new to you, there’s a guide on the Ubuntu site:
Once you have a disc burned, you need to insert it into your computer. Check to make sure you have a bunch of folders & files on that disc (and not one ISO file). If you have just one ISO file, you messed up the burning step and need to try again.
Once you’ve confirmed that your disc was burned correctly, you need to restart your computer. While restarting, hold down “c” to boot from CDROM. If everything is correct, you’ll boot into Ubuntu. Be patient, because booting from CDROM takes a bit longer than usual. While it’s booting, you’ll see an Ubuntu splash screen and some scrolling text. This is a good sign.
After a few minutes, you’ll be looking at the Ubuntu Gnome interface. Don’t worry, though. Because you booted from disc, your machine is unchanged and you need only reboot to get back into OSX.
Play around with Ubuntu for a bit. If you like what you see, and want to continue installing Ubuntu permanently, remove the disc and read on.
Preparing for a Permanent Ubuntu install
Assuming you like Ubuntu and you want to install it permanently, you’ll first want to prepare your hard disc for installation. The following is VERY important if you want to save your existing data and preserve OSX
In order to dual boot Ubuntu and OSX you need to first:
- partition your hard disc
- resize your hard disc
Seems simple enough, right? Well, there’s a trick to it: you need to dynamically partition your hard drive in order to preserve your existing data. And generally speaking, you cannot partition or resize a disc from which you booted from.
Put more specifically, I had about 40Gigs used on a 100Gig Powerbook hard drive (called “Brain”). I want to partition Brain so that 80Gigs is allocated to OSX, and 20Gigs is set aside for the Ubuntu install. But I cannot partition Brain since I booted from Brain. So I need to find another way.
Here’s what I did: First, I used VolumeWorks to partition an external 250 Gig FireWire drive (called “Body”) into two parts: a 200G partition and a 50G partition. This is easily done, since I booted from Brain and not Body.
The partioning of Body takes a long time, mainly because VolumeWorks defragments the drive before resizing it. The process is simple: In VolumeWorks, you locate your external drive(in my case, “Body”), choose a partition (in my case, there was only one) and resize it (in my case, from 250G to 200G). This’ll defragment your drive and shrink your partition. I recommend you do this part before you go to bed, because it takes a while.
If all goes well, you’ll wake up to an external drive with a 200G partition and about 50G free space. From there, use VolumeWorks to add a new partition in place of the free space. Once complete, you’ll have two partitions. Mine were labeled Body (200G) and OSX Backup (50G).
Okay, so assuming everything went fine, what next? Well, the reason why I partitioned Body is so that I could make a bootable clone of OSX on the external drive (in the 50G partition). By booting from Body, I’ll have full access to partition and resize Brain. Also, by cloning Brain onto Body, I’ll also end up with a full copy of OSX, just in case something goes wrong. Backups are EXTREMELY important when you start messing around with your laptop’s hard disc.
Cloning OSX
Getting the backup clone of OSX from my laptop hard disc to the external 50G partion was a piece of cake, due to Carbon Copy Cloner. This simple application let me create a bootable, identical copy of my OSX installation on my external drive.
To clone OSX, launch Carbon Copy Cloner and set it to copy from your hard disc to the new (empty) partition on your external drive. In my case I copied Brain to the 50G partition (called OSX Backup). Be sure to set Carbon Copy Cloner to “make bootable”!
Cloning OSX is another step you want to set up before you go to bed, because it takes a while. Once complete, you’ll have a copy of OSX on the external drive from which to boot from.
Booting into OSX from your external drive
Here comes the moment of truth — booting into OSX from your external drive. To do this, go into OSX preferences, and open StartupDisk. If the cloning process was successful, you should be able to see an option to boot either from your local disc (e.g. “Brain”) or the new partition on your external drive (e.g. “OSX Backup”). Choose OSX Backup, make sure your Firewire Drive is connected, and hit “Restart”.
You should now boot into OSX from your external drive. You’ll know you’ve successfully booted via Frirewire if your usual hard disc icon on your desktop is replaced by a new icon labelled “OSX backup”.
Resizing your internal hard disc
Now that you’ve booted from somewhere other than your internal hard drive, you can now make changes to your internal hard drive.
To do so, open VolumeWorks, making sure you open the “cloned” version of VolumeWorks living on “OSX Backup”.
In VolumeWorks, look for your internal hard drive. Select it from the list, and click “resize”. You’ll be prompted to enter a new size for your main partition. As mentioned before, I wanted OSX to live on a 80G partition and have Ubuntu live on the remaining 20G, so I entered 80,000,000k.
VolumeWorks will then attempt to unmount, defrag, and resize your internal hard drive. This process also takes a ridiculously long time, so set it up before you go to bed.
Be aware that if you have any errors on your internal drive, VolumeWorks may not be able to begin the defragmenting and resizing process. This happened to me, and was easily resolved using Apple’s Disc Utility’s “repair permissions” and “repair” commands. Disc Utility is in the Applications, Utilities, and is pretty self-explanatory.
Installing Ubuntu
At this point you should have an 80G partition on an 100G internal drive. OSX and all your files (in my case, ~40G) are on the 80G partition. The remaining 20G is free space, and that’s where you install Ubuntu.
At this point, you’re done with the external drive. You might as well hang on to the OSX Backup partition (if you aren’t pressed for storage space), since it’s always a good idea to backup.
Before you begin installing Ubuntu, you should shut down and reboot from the 80G partition. To do this, go back into Perferences, StartupDisk and select your local hard disc. Boot into OSX using the local disc, and confirm that everything is working.
If OSX boots successfully, here’s the good news: your computer was unharmed during the process of making space for Ubuntu. You only have one step to go to get Ubuntu up and running.
Insert your Ubuntu LiveCD and restart your machine, holding down the C key. This will boot from the LiveCD again.
Once Ubuntu boots, double click the Install icon to install Ubuntu. You’ll be prompted with a few questions about default languages and time zone.
When you get to the question about how you want to install Ubuntu, Be sure to check the box marked “use largest continuous free space”. This is very important. If you check something else, you risk losing your OSX partition.
In my case, the largest continous free space was the 20G of free space that I had created for Ubuntu to reside. Hopefully by now it makes sense why I resized my disk…
The Ubuntu installer will then take over and walk you through all the installation steps. Just follow the directions on the screen.
Dual Booting
Once Ubuntu is installed, you’ll be prompted every time you restart you computer to select an operating system. Unfortunately for most, Ubuntu will be the default. However, this is easily changed by reconfiguring the bootloader “yaboot”.
I set my default boot to OSX by making the changes listed here:
Now everytime I boot, I get 30 seconds to choose Ubuntu, otherwise it boots to OSX.
If you need to boot from your Firewire disk for any reason (i.e. you want to resize the Ubuntu partition), you may find that you lose the ability to select an OS when during startup. This is due to the StartupDisk utility in OSX. If you use OSX’s StartupDisk for any reason while in a dual boot environment, you’ll no longer be prompted to choose an OS.
This is rectified by holding down alt (aka “option”) during startup. You’ll be presented with the choice to boot into Ubuntu. Boot into Ubuntu, open a Terminal window, and run “sudo ybin”. This will reset the Yaboot loader to a state before you used StartupDisk (and things got messed up).
Additional Considerations
I haven’t really played around too much in Ubuntu, so I can’t really comment on how much I like it. However, for those of you who are looking to install this on your Powerbooks, there are a couple of minor issues you should be aware of:
- Powerbook trackpad doesn’t work – It’s extremely sluggish and unresponsive. Expect to use a mouse at first. (although I came across this which might be a nice fix:
- Wifi won’t work initially – Expect to get familiar with the Terminal if you hope to get Ubuntu to recognize Broadcom’s proprietary drivers. There’s lots of information out there (and even some reverse-engineered drivers), but it requires some time and trial and error. I was successful in getting Wireless to work thanks to these instructions, but they’re not for the newbie.
- Ubuntu isn’t recognizing a 2nd monitor. Not sure why.
But overall, my initial impression is that Ubuntu is a nice alternative OS to have running on the Powerbook. As for me, Ubuntu is the 5th complete operating system I’ve installed on my laptop, and easily my 2nd favorite after OSX:
- OSX
- Ubuntu
- Windows XP SP1 – emulated via VirtualPC (a necessary evil)
- Windows 95 – emulated also (for running simple .exe’s)
- OS 9 (hey, it came with OSX).
If anyone has any corrections on this how-to, please leave a comment. I’m extremely new to Linux, so I look forward to any comments/feedback.
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I just installed the Ubuntu Feisty Fawn daily build from 11Feb2007 . Here is what I did to get my AirPort Extreme card working with my home router.
1) Fresh install of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn
2) Connect an ethernet cable to the PowerBook
3) Boot the PowerBook
4) Add universe (and possible multiverse) repositories
5) $ sudo apt-get update
6) $ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
7) $ sudo apt-get install bcm43xx-fwcutter
8) Select “Yes” when asked if you want to download the firmware
9) Remove the ethernet cable
10) Select a wireless network from the network manager in the system tray.
11) Enjoy the Internet!
There are several places where the text seems to indicate a link to another location, but there’s no link. Perhaps they were lost when this article was posted. Could we get a corrected copy with the links?