(parted) mkpart primary ext4 100m 100% # (optional) Here’s how to do it in parted (where a UEFI partition is labelled ESI (sic)), nicked from the Gentoo wiki: I chose 100Mb and call the disc /dev/sdX below - make sure you replace the “X” with the proper letter for your drive. People recommend sizes between 20 and 500 Mb. You will need a small, dedicated partition for UEFI. Steps in detail Creating the UEFI partition grub), use EFI mode (despite the fact that rEFInd emulates BIOS – see below). It will typically be mounted on /boot/efi/. Install Linux as usual, but make sure your first partition (sdX1) is not erased.(Note that this would be a different flash drive than the one in the first step). Reboot your Mac (with the new drive installed) and boot from the installation (second) LiveUSB/CD/DVD system.Download rEFInd and install it on the first partition (sdX1).Partition the rest of the disc as you wish for your Linux installation (boot, root, swap, home, etc.), or leave this until you boot from the LiveUSB/CD/DVD system you want to install your actual Linux distribution from (sdX2-sdXn).Create a ~50-500Mb UEFI/ESI/vfat/FAT32 partition (sdX1 – see below).Boot your Mac, with the blank drive installed, from a (first) LiveUSB system - or mount the new drive on an existing system (this may be troublesome if it has a different bitness - I didn’t consider or try this).See the next section for more detail for some of these steps. This is a schematic overview of the main installation steps. However, I started out under the impression that I would manage to boot Linux directly using Apple’s screwed-up UEFI system. If I had known that installing rEFInd was inevitable, I had not gone through all the trouble of creating the first LiveUSB drive, but I would have mounted my new drive on another Linux computer and installed rEFInd that way instead (although doing this from a 64-bit system may have led to complications - I didn’t try).

I booted Kubuntu from a custom-made EFI LiveUSB flash disc, installed rEFInd, which then allowed me to boot from the LiveUSB flash drive / USB pen drive / USB stick of my choice and install Linux. The white Core duo (without the 2) 32-bit Macbook was purchased in September 2006. The peculiarities of this process are described below. I gave up on the idea that Linux must be able to boot directly from Apple’s UEFI, and used rEFInd instead. While installing Linux on a blank hard-disc drive is trivial on most PCs, it turned out not to be on a 2006 Macbook Core duo.

Install linux on mac bootloader