Linux Mint Forums

Hi all,

I have a MacBook Pro 8.3 (bought in oct 2011) that I would love to have Linux Mint on. The problem is that I can't boot from the Mint DVD. I have of course followed the guides on the net about installing BootCamp and rEfit, and I know how to boot from the DVD. I have also installed Linux many times on my old Mac mini (from 2007 i think), without any problems.

If I choose the first option in grub, I get the error message "(initramfs) Unable to find a medium containing a live file system".
If I choose the second option in grub, "recovery mode" I believe it's called, I get a little more debug information, but in the end I get the same error message.

My guess is that it has something to do with the driver for the DVD player in the MacBook, but I'm not sure.

I have also tried various Ubuntu variants and even Arch, but essentially with the same result.

Is there anyone who has installed Linux on a MacBook Pro 8.3?
Any ideas?

You could just run it in a virtual machine on OSX?

I haven't seen any guides for MBP 8.3 yet, but for 8.2 this Debian guide gives me the shivvers: http://dentifrice.poivron.org/laptops/macbookpro8,2/ It might help, but when I saw you have to put assembly opcodes (i.e., almost machine language) in the grub configuration to get it to boot, man...

I already have mint in virtualbox, but that's not an optimal solution. I want to run linux natively.

I will check out the guide and report back, thanks!

That guide answered a lot of my questions, but unfortunately that is way too much work for me. I don't have the time to go through all that, I will just have to wait until it's possible to install linux more or less out of the box.

I got it to work by first preparing both a DVD disc and also a USB thumb drive with the Mint DVD image.

Plug in the USB key and boot from the DVD disc. It will boot off the disc, and then find the USB media to install from.

Don't ask me why, but this works...

What Scott said is absolutely correct, but if you're like me... you didn't get as far as the Mint GUI on the Macbook Pro.

This worked for me; to get LMDE up and running from the DVD (with the USB plugged into the slot)

Boot From DVD

Hit 'Space-Bar' to Prevent Auto-Boot

Select Start Linux Mint ('Compatability Mode')

Hit the TAB Key

Backspace Twice (2x) to remove the two (hyphens) at the end

Enter and replace the two hyphens

Good luck, let me know if this works

Thanks, I will definitely try your suggestions and report back!

Might take a while though since I have a busy schedule + 2 kids..

I have tried your suggestions, but unfortunately none of them worked.. I have tried Mint 12 and Ubuntu 11.10. Will try Archbang as well, although I don't think it will be any different.

The error i get is the same as the one I'm writing about in my first post, "(initramfs) Unable to find a medium containing a live file system".

I managed to boot in my MacBook Pro 8,2 (Lion 10.7.3) by:

1) Burning the iso image onto a DVD.
2) "Burning" the iso image onto a USB drive using Unetbootin.
3) Hitting space when Linux Mint was booting, to get the boot menu screen.
4) Selecting "Compatibility Mode", hitting tab, and editing the line so that it ends with "nomodeset --"

Then it boots.

I tried all the other combinations by themselves (no USB, no DVD, no compatibility, burning the USB with the Disk Utility) and nothing worked.

Hope it helps.

Hi everyone, I'm here to share some information about this issue.

I faced the same problems as you but I tried to go further. Everything looks fine when booting from DVD, it shows some error while loading the OS but in the end instead of crashing with the "Unable to find a medium containing a live file system", it switches automatically to the USB loader I also plugged with a bootloader I've made with dd on Mac OS (search dd loader usb img mac you should find the command line to do it). So it finally boots and shows me perfectly the desktop.

So let's go forward and try to install the the OS on your hard drive disk. Fill the blanks, enter your name, keyboard preferences, then let's install ! And here, it tries to copy the first file and then stops here ; the DVD does not seem to turn anymore, and the USB stick does not show any read/write on it. So, have anyone achieved this installation ?

I just mention that I have a 2011 Macbook pro.

I just tried the new Linux Mint 13 Maya release, and it works out of the box on my MacBook Pro 8.3, just like installing it on any PC!

The wireless network driver seems to be missing though, I will need to do some googling for that.