Replacing iMac OSX with MX-Linux

[koesherbacon]

Hello fellow MX users.

This question is a little long so there's a summary at the bottom as a <TLDR>.

My Dad got himself a MacBook Air on Black Friday and gave me his old iMac, which I'd like to completely replace OSX with Linux.

For the time being, I'm planning on using the tool Apple provides to enable dual booting, but my preference would be using Linux exclusively. As a Linux user I'm actually not very familiar with Apple hardware so replacing OSX with Linux seems like it will be a little more challenging than installing Linux on any other non-Apple computer like my wonderful Acer laptop.

Since I've never installed Linux on any Apple computer, I'd like to know how to replace OSX on an iMac properly. I know that the iMac boots up using EFI, so I'll have to create a separate EFI partition as well as reformatting the rest of the HDD into '/' and '/home'. With an EFI partition, do I also need a separate '/boot' as well?

Do I need to install anything on OSX to begin with like rEFInder, rEFIt, Clover, etc?

I'm pretty sure the EFI partition will have to be formatted as FAT32. If a separate boot partition is necessary, I also assume that should be FAT32 as well. As for the others I also expect they can be any Linux format, probably BTRFS or Ext4. Then again, I could be wrong about what formats the EFI and boot partitions should be.

<TLDR>
So, to summarize, what's the best way to completely replace OSX with Linux on an iMac that uses EFI without completely breaking the computer and being unable to boot up entirely? Please share any info you think will help me put Linux onto this iMac exclusively since I am neither interested in dual-booting nor using OSX whatsoever!

Thanks very much! And Happy Holidays and New Year!

[JayM]

Happy hols to you too. There have been numerous topics on installing MX on iMacs and Macbooks. I suggest you start with a forum search and read what's already been done by others and answers to their questions.

[Beratung]

iMacs use the same processors, RAM, and hard disks as other computers. If you can select a live boot option during startup of the machine, then you should be able to boot into Live MX from which you should then be able to install. During the installation process you should be able to wipe out the entire contents of the iMac hard disk / file system, followed by creating the ext4 file system in order to run MX Linux. Admittedly, I've never converted an iMac to Linux before, but I really don't see why that wouldn't work ... unless of course there's something during the bios boot process which would prevent you from getting the live MX to work?
Happy Holidays to everyone.

.

[jo361]

Hi,

i had similar problem in the past with my macbook 3.1. in the screen you can see the inner life of the machine i got:

inxi-2019-09-19.png

my solution was:

- i started the machine, and booted from the usb-stick, on which had the mx-linux 18.3 stored
- by holding "ralt+." i was asked if i want to start from usb stick or mac hd efi
- i selected to start from usb efi => life linux started
- on this point you can start GParted from MX menu>system>GParted
- there you can remove all unnecessary partitions, beside the EFI partition
- in my case i had the problem that i did not have enough space on the original hard drive
- if you are in the same situation, don't be afraid to use a bigger hard drive
- you can easily copy the EFI partition by using Gparted to new drive and create there needed root partition, home partition and swap partition
- in my case this was looking like this in the end

gparted.png