Installing puppy on a mac?

[Mike3]

I'm planning on getting get a macbook pro and I want to use Puppy Linux.

So I read through some guide on how to install Linux on a mac but it was for ubuntu:

https://linuxnewbieguide.org/how-to-ins ... -computer/

Can I install Puppy Linux on a 64 bit intel mac? I will go with a usual Puppy, not a mac specific one, will it work (i.e. fossapup not macpup)?

I want to do a dual boot thing so that I can use both mac OS and Puppy Linux.

Is it similar to doing it on a PC. Do one use the puppy installer? Can one use grub4dos? Will grub4dos overwrite rEFInd if I use that before?

https://www.howtogeek.com/187410/how-to ... -on-a-mac/

[oui]

I use sometimes Puppy on the (very old) macbook from my wife starting from CD, absolutely no problem excepted the longer starting delay you have to wait until it is loaded (as all CD drives are slower than hard disks! (*1 )

I would like to "install" it frugal on the mac typical file system from macbook. it is certainly also no problem.

the problem is to boot it in my eyes.

although GNU names it's «grub» to be a Grand Unified Bootloader this designation is somewhat like non sens pur, I am afraid: I did never read that someone uses it with success on a macbook

(*1 second difference: my wife does never restart her macbook but only close the lap so that restart oblige her to restart completely and the starting procedure of that old macbook is only a few better than a slow CD start

[puddlemoon]

HI
Yes you can install on a macbook. no worries. I have installed bionic on one last year and just installed fossadog on another last week.

Refind is the way to go in my opinion. I use it for all my uefi machines.

If you want to dual boot then you should install refind from the mac system if you haven't already. simple install script in the refind package. You will need to disable sip or do it from terminal in recovery. Then it's just a matter of creating your menu entry. There are samples in the refind.conf to help you get close.

Refind is really a great tool, I've just made my custom puppy bootable from grub4dos or refind on the same flashdrive. Very handy.

Here is the menu entry I used, for "volume" you can use a partition label or uuid to be more specific.

Code: Select all

menuentry "jackalpup" {
    
    volume find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /jackalpup/initrd.gz
    loader /jackalpup/vmlinuz  
    initrd /jackalpup/initrd.gz
    options "pmedia=usbflash psubdir=/jackalpup pfix=fsck"
    submenuentry "fresh boot to ram" {
       loader /jackalpup/vmlinuz  
       initrd /jackalpup/initrd.gz
       options "pmedia=usbflash psubdir=/jackalpup pfix=fsck pfix=ram"
    } 

Funny, I just dug out a relic of a macbook 1,1 yet to see what that thing can do....

(edit, not sure why but the code snippet is not showing the indent below "submenuentry", should be indented one space)
lol, I guess using the code not quote would help...

[Mike3]

That's great!

Do I create my own menu entry before installing puppy on the harddrive?

Will then refind see puppy automatically once it is installed? Or do one have the menu entry for that.

Will refind see and boot puppy from a USB and does the usb have to be fat32 or can it be in the ext format.

[puddlemoon]

The menuentry can be added as soon as you have a refind.conf in place but it can happen whenever, after the puppy install is fine.

If you partition the drive and install puppy to the root of the new partition, then refind should just find both mac and puppy at the root of their respective partitions.

Mac is handy in that you can partition the drive while running osx, seems "safer" to let mac rearrange it's own system. However, you need to reformat the new partition from hfs to ext* in puppy before install.

Refind should discover and boot puppy from usb as well, so long as it is installed to /
It needs to find vmlinuz and initrd.gz. It will look in / and /boot and some others automatically. You need the menuentry for more specific setups, e.g. many puppies on one drive each in a their own folder.

making sense? I had many confused and frustrated reboots to arrive at this summary..... But i thinks it's my friend now...

[bigpup]

Do not do it!!!!

The Macbook will turn into a usable computer, if you put Puppy on it

puddlemoon,

Would be really good for Puppy if you could make a How To for putting Puppy on a Mac computer.
Would be a good thing to have in the How To section of this forum!!!

[puddlemoon]

That was extra funny because I read it on my phone and saw that huge print first and thought, oh no, he knows something I don't!

I'd be happy to put together that how to...
Only so many tries thus far but all successful.

[Mike3]

Do you install to the harddrive ext partition with the Puppy installer app?

do you refer to the / as the root partition, not the ~ partition?

[puddlemoon]

yes you can use the installer from puppy. Or you can copy the files from the iso/usb while booted into puppy.
Because you have refind in place, the installer is not needed. I'm not sure which will be more comfortable for you.

You only need the puppy files, initrd.gz, vmlinuz, and the fossapup64_9.5.sfs files, to be at the root of the ext partition. (side note, only true for newer kernels, not vintage)

Yes... by root I mean " / " not ~/ when you see the "root" folder inside puppy, that is user root's home dir so to speak. " ~ " is not a partition but an alias for the current user's "home" so as a puppy user ~/ = /root or if you're using spot ~/ = /home/spot

you may need to burn a disk if the usb does not go...


do you have the macbook? know how old/young it is?

[puddlemoon]

Well, meanwhile...

It was funny the mention of macpup from the op. both because it is easy to assume that it has anything at all to do with mac, which it really doesn't, and because that was the very first puppy I ever installed.

After many attempts to boot this '06 macbook 1,1 success!!!! with macpup!!!

until now I had only had luck with tinycore. Installing refind was a breeze but the rest was, not...
I first did manual installs of prcise light and upupbb32.
I could not get precise light or upupbb to boot at all directly from the kernel even though the 3.3+ kernel is meant to have that support.
I could get both to boot from a usb install via refind but not past "loading kernel modules....."

I could not get this mac to recognize an optical disk so that was out...
So I installed macpup 550 on usb but it did not like the syslinux, so I replaced with extlinux and voila!! (the installers from macpup gave some handy options)

So , for now, extlinux is the middleman as macpup runs the 3.2 kernel which does not have direct efi support at all.

yeah, it's pretty sluggish, I had to install chromium as I couldn't get into the forum for some ssl issue she is heating up just writing this... But... you can, it seems, dual boot leopard and macpup on a p3, 512 ram, macbook!