7. One Last Thing

After you set your user information, you’ll see a screen that says, “Ready to install.” However, you’re most definitely not ready to install. There’s one last thing to do. Click the Advanced tab in the bottom-right of the window, and change the “Device for bootloader installation” drop-down menu to whatever partition you are going to have Linux on. Choose the same ID as the partition you erased with gparted in step 5--for most computers, that’s /dev/sda3.

It's funny how a drop-down menu can completely make or break an OS install. Poetic justice?

This is incredibly important, because the Linux bootloader, called Grub, is notorious for messing with the way Mac OS X boots. So when you tell the installer to install Grub to your Linux partition, you allow your Mac to select which partition to boot and then go through Grub to your Linux partition.

After you finish this step, click OK to accept the changes, and then click Install.

Quick Tip

You can access the files on your OS X partition with the Linux file browser. Open the volume labeled Macintosh HD (or equivalent), and type in your password when it prompts you. If a folder is marked with an “x,” you have to right-click it, then “Open it as root” to gain access.

8. Sync or Be Sunk

After the install is finished, you can’t click Restart. Instead, click Continue Testing, click the menu button, and then click Exit. From there, you can choose to shut the computer down. And then the fun/hell of configuration starts. The first thing you need to do when you start your computer is sync your partitions. Luckily, rEFIt makes this really easy. At the rEFIt screen, navigate to Start Partitioning Tool and press Enter. If your partitions are not in sync, it will prompt you to sync them, and if they are in sync, you don’t have to do anything.

We definitely have a soft spot for penguins.

9. Setting the Default OS

You should probably boot into Mac OS X, just to check that order has been maintained in your absence. At this point, you have a few options for how to boot. If you feel like rEFIt is too obtrusive, and you have no wish to see it before Mac OS X starts as the default OS, you can delete the /efi folder (in Macintosh HD), which removes rEFIt. Then, go to System Preferences > Startup Disk, and make sure Mac OS X is selected.

Now, to boot into Linux, you have to hold the Option key at boot, and when the drives pop up, choose Windows. (Unfortunately, because Boot Camp decided to name the drive Windows back in step 2, there’s nothing you can do about the misnomer.)

10. Drivers' Ed

Back in Linux Mint, the first thing you need to do is fix your seemingly broken drivers. To do this, open the menu, search for hardware drivers, and click the corresponding result. You should see a dialog about the proprietary drivers available for your system. Select all of them and activate each. This will boost graphics performance, enable Wi-Fi, and do a lot of other magical things that are so secret, we don’t even know about them. Then log out (Menu > Logout) and log back in.

In the open-source community, proprietary is a synonym for Eeeevilll.

Quick Tip

To get a trippy rotating Desktop like the one shown at the top of this post, go to the Compiz Config Manager (Menu > Preferences > Compiz Config Manager) and activate the Cube plug-in.

11. Get Your Wi-Fi Workin'

Even though you’ve technically enabled Wi-Fi, it most likely won’t work without some coaxing. To enable it for good, you need to create a new network connection. Open Network Connections (Menu > search for network connections), then click the wireless tab, and click Add. Now you can either fill in your network information or put in random information and choose different networks later. Click Apply, and a Wi-Fi applet will pop up in the menubar. Now you can click it to pick different networks and connect to them manually.

It's OK to fake the new network connection info.

12. That's It

There you have it: a Mac running Linux. For optimal results, after your configuration, you should run mintUpdate (Menu > search for update) and then shut down and power up your computer again. If you have problems after this generic installation, chances are they are driver issues, and you can check the Ubuntu reference guide for Macs (help.ubuntu.com/community/Intel_iMac) for fixes. Happy geeking!

Linux VM with VirtualBox

If you want Linux on your Mac but don’t want to dedicate an entire partition to it or go through the hassle of configuration, you can always install it in a virtual machine, or VM. VirtualBox, developed by Sun Microsystems, is generally the most reliable when it comes to virtualizing Linux desktops. Simply download the VirtualBox disk image at www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads, open the application, create a new VM, and follow the step-by-step instructions.

Linux inside a Mac OS X window! Whoa!

You don’t even have to burn the Linux .iso to a CD, because VirtualBox supports booting from the .iso file itself. The drawback to running an OS in a virtual machine, however, is that it will eat up your system resources and will generally run substantially slower than if it had its own partition.