Linux on MacBookPro

[russell23]

Dear CentOS users,

I want to run CentOS-5 in my MacBookPro. I am seeking expertise advice and suggestions. May you have the question "Why you want to run Linux on a machine that already have Unix OS?"

I want to run for some personal reasons?

I am looking for expertise advice. Many thanks in advance.

[AlanBartlett]

Why not go to the vault, download the ISO image of the live-cd, burn it to disk and then try it? :-)

Alan.

[russell23]

Yup, I can do that as well....But, I heard unless we spare soem time, we cannot make it run on a Mac Box. I am planning to buy a MacBookPro. So, it would be much helpful, if you can advice me on this regard, instead of trial and error suggestions :-) .

Many thanks in advance.

[AlanBartlett]

Well unless someone has tried it with that particular hardware, you won't get an answer.

BTW, my suggestion was not "trial and error". Please do not expect others to do simple things for you. We all will help anyone - if we can. We just expect the person requesting some help, advice, etc, to make some effort themselves.

Surely downloading one ISO image, verifying it's md5sum and burning it to a CD-RW is not too difficult to do?

Alan.

[gornbo]

Two options here I think.

1. Buy Parallels and use that to run Centos alongside OSX. I ran Centos 4.4 fine this way. Parallels is well worth the license.
2. Read through the Boot Camp documentation and give it a go. I'm pretty sure it will work (you can always re-install OSX if it all goes tits up)

[russell23]

Thanks Alan and gornbo,

I will try eihter way and post my comments on it. I came across a new thing that Mac is using EFI instead of BIOS. In what way EFI is better than BIOS or it is just a marketing stuff.

I apologize, if I used any inappropriate words.

Thank you for your help.

[AlanBartlett]

As I have no personal experience of [b]EFI[/b], I cannot make any valid comment. However I can say that it is supported in the [b]CentOS 5[/b] kernel.

I've just checked the on-line documentation. You might like to have a look through the [i]Installation Guide[/i] http://www.centos.org/docs/5/html/5.1/Installation_Guide/
It should give you some idea of what the use of [b]EFI[/b] with appropriate hardware entails.

Unless someone has specific experience of [b]CentOS 5[/b] on your intended new hardware, it does look as if you will be on your own.

Good luck.
Alan.

[russell23]

Thanks Alan,

I will try and post the comments.

[Azkwith]

Hi gornbo,

You said you successfully installed CentOS 4.4 on a Macbook Pro... I just took delivery of a brand new MBP on Tuesday but have had absolutely no success getting CentOS 4 or 5 on it. I have a 50 GB Fat32 partition made with Boot Camp (I was planning on making a 4GB swap partition on it using the CentOS installer) but when I boot off of the CentOS install disk, the thing will do 1 of 3 things:

1) get to the first CentOS install screen and recognize the keyboard and allow me to hit enter, at which point it will scroll through a bunch of stuff in white text on a black background (mostly system info) and then hang up at a blue screen with CentOS at the top and some key command options at the bottom
2) get to the first CentOS install screen and not recognize my keyboard and force me to shut the computer off and try again
3) completely hang up and load only as far as an underscore in the top left of the screen

I have tried both DVD and CD versions of the install disks with absolutely no success. Have you ever experienced something like this?? I have a hunch that something in the most recent update of the MacBook Pros made it somewhat incompatible with CentOS as it seems that many people have been able to install it w/o much of a hitch... Any thoughts?

Cheers.