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I have an old MacBook (model A1342, year 2009) with Ubuntu 18.04 on it. NO MacOSx. I want to install Debian (8 or 9) for which said computer comfortably fulfills the minimum tech specs (barely so with Ubuntu 18.04). So far I have made several bootable USBs (with sudo dd) with different packages of Debian 9 (have yet to try Debian 8), but the computer never recognizes them, much less boots from them. I'm about to make another bootable USB with UNetbootin, let's see how I fare. However, is there any advice or experience you could share on how to change Linux distro on a Mac computer?

Many thanks for your help!

user7401887
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1 Answers1

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what command did you use to make the bootable usb? If, say, you mounted the usb as /dev/sdb, the command should be

$ sudo dd if=your_debian_file.iso /dev/sdb

[ just checking... ] If you did so, can you try the usb on another computer, see if it boots? [ to make sure there is nothing wrong with the usb you're using ]

vuvu
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  • The debian faq states to use cp <file> <device> and as an alternative dd if=<file> of=<device> bs=4M; sync – Rinzwind Sep 07 '18 at 18:28
  • Yes, that's the command I used. I'm also going to use another USB, see how that works. I'll try the Debian faq suggestion. – user7401887 Sep 07 '18 at 18:49
  • also checking the md5sum of the .iso file you got from debian might help explain the problem (if different from what they state, your copy is corrupted). I would also insert into those usb ports another usb, not necessarily bootable, to see that the system detects it, to make sure nothing happened to the USB ports. In your ubuntu distribution you can run 'dmesg' and look at the last lines to see what it says about the not-recognized usb (compare with one which is recognized) – vuvu Sep 07 '18 at 19:31