Create an Ubuntu USB boot disk for Mac in Mac OS X

Create an Ubuntu USB boot disk for Mac in Mac OS X

Last month, after I lost my laptop at the Dell service center, I bought a Macbook Air notebook. The first thing I did after I bought it was to install dual systems on the machine to make Ubuntu Linux and Mac OS X available. Later, I will introduce how to install Linux on a Macbook. At the beginning, we need to learn how to create an Ubuntu USB boot disk for Mac in Mac OS X.

It is very easy to create a portable USB in Ubuntu or Windows, but it is not that easy in Mac OS X. This is why live Ubuntu is recommended to be installed on a CD rather than USB in Mac in Ubuntu's official guide. Considering that my Macbook Air has neither a CD drive nor a DVD drive, I prefer to create a live USB under Mac OS X.

Create a boot USB drive disk under Mac OS X

As mentioned above, creating a USB disk on Mac OS X is a cumbersome process for booting a USB disk like Ubuntu or any other bootable operating system. But do not worry. follow the steps below to perform the operation step by step. Let's start creating a portable USB disk:

Step 1: format the USB drive Disk

Apple is famous for its custom standards, so it is no surprise that Mac OS x has its own file system type. Its file system is called Mac OS extension or HFS plug-in. Therefore, the first thing you need to do is format your USB drive disk with the Mac OS extended file system.

To Format a USB disk, First insert it into the USB disk. Go to the disk tool application from Launchpad (a rocket-shaped icon on the bottom panel.

• In the disk tool, select your USB disk from the left-hand panel to format it.
• Click the partition label on the right panel.
• Select 1 partition from the drop-down menu.
• Give the drive disk the name you want.
• Next, switch the partition format to format it into Mac OS extension (log type)

The screenshot below will be helpful to you.

This is the only operation to do before we start to format the USB disk. Click the option button on the right panel. Make sure that the partition mode is in the GUID partition table format.

After all the settings are complete, you only need to click the application button. It will pop up a warning message to format the USB drive disk. Of course, you need to click the partition button to format the USB drive disk.

Step 2: Download Ubuntu

Of course, you need to download the ISO image file for the Ubuntu Desktop version. Go to the Ubuntu official website to download your favorite Ubuntu Desktop version. Because you are using a Macbook Air, I suggest you download one of the 64-bit versions. Ubuntu 14.04 is the latest LTS version. We recommend that you use it.

Step 3: Convert ISO to IMG

The downloaded file is in the ISO format, but we need it in the IMG format. You can easily convert it using the hdiutil command tool. Open the terminal or from Launchpad or Spotlight. Then, use the following command to convert the ISO format to the IMG format:

1. Hdiutil convert-format UDRW-o ~ /Path-to-IMG-file ~ /Path-to-ISO-file

Normally, the downloaded files are stored in ~ /Downloads directory. So in my system, the input command is:

1. Hdiutil convert-format UDRW-o ~ /Downloads/ubuntu-14.10-desktop-amd64 ~ /Downloads/ubuntu-14.10-desktop-amd64.iso

You may have noticed that I have not added the IMG suffix to the new file. This is okay, because the suffix is only a sign, and the important thing is that the file type is not the file extension. The converted file may be automatically added with A. dmg suffix by the Mac OS X system. Don't worry. This is normal.

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