Ubuntu – Create a bootable USB drive for installing Linux

live-usbmac

I have a netbook that I would like to start using agan and and need to reinstall things (I think an update broke a bunch and it is faster to rebuild vs figuring it out. Anyways I have my Macbook Air that I would like to create a bootable usb drive on it to install Linux on my Netbook.

Most of the steps that I've found googling are for installing Ubuntu on a Mac, which is not what I want to do. I would like to build the bootable key on my Mac to install Linux on my netbook.

Did some searching on this site and a lot of questions linked back to Problems with making a bootable USB Drive on a Mac which is all about creating a bootable USB for installing Linux on Mac.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Best Answer

You can create the bootable usb stick on a mac using this utility.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Create a bootable USB on a Mac to install Ubuntu on a PC

You will need:
- A 4GB or larger USB stick/flash drive
- An Apple computer or laptop running macOS
- An Ubuntu ISO file. See Get Ubuntu for download links
To ensure maximum compatibility with Apple hardware, first blank and reformat the USB stick using Apple's "Disk Utility", but this step can be skipped if you intend to use the USB stick with only generic PC hardware.
- Launch Disk Utility from Applications -> Utilities or Spotlight search.
- Insert your USB stick and observe the new device added to Disk Utility.
- Select the USB stick device (you may need to enable the option View -> Show All Devices) and select Erase from the toolbar (or right-click menu).
- Set the format to MS-DOS (FAT) and the scheme to GUID Partition Map.
- Check you've chosen the correct device and click Erase.
Warning: Disk Utility needs to be used with caution as selecting the wrong device or partition can result in data loss.
Install and run Etcher

To write the ISO file to the USB stick, use a free and open source application called Etcher. After downloading this and clicking to mount the package, Etcher can either be run in place or dragged into your Applications folder.

By default, recent versions of macOS block the running of applications from unidentified developers. To side-step this issue, enable App Store and identified developers in the Security & Privacy pane of System Preferences. If you are still warned against running the application, click Open Anyway in the same pane.
Etcher configuration

Etcher will configure and write to your USB device in three stages, each of which needs to be selected in turn:
- Select image will open a file requester from which should navigate to and select the ISO file downloaded previously. By default, the ISO file will be in your Downloads folder.
- Select drive, replaced by the name of your USB device if one is already attached, lets you select your target device. You will be warned if the storage space is too small for your selected ISO.
- Flash! will activate when both the image and the drive have been selected. As with Disk Utility, Etcher needs low-level access to your storage hardware and will ask for your password after selection.
Write to device

After entering your password, Etcher will start writing the ISO file to your USB device.

The Flash stage of the process will show progress, writing speed and an estimated duration until completion. This will be followed by a validation stage that will ensure the contents of the USB device are identical to the source image.

When everything has finished, Etcher will declare the process a success.

Congratulations! You now have Ubuntu on a USB stick, bootable and ready to go.

Warning: After the write process has completed, macOS may inform you that 'The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer'. Don't select Initialize. Instead, select Eject and remove the USB device.
Boot your Mac

If you want to use your USB stick with an Apple Mac, you will need to restart or power-on the Mac with the USB stick inserted while the Option/alt ⌥ key is pressed.

This will launch Apple's 'Startup Manager' which shows bootable devices connected to the machine. Your USB stick should appear as gold/yellow and labelled 'EFI Boot'. Selecting this will lead you to the standard Ubuntu boot menu.

_{Source: Create a bootable USB stick on macOS}

Ubuntu – Best way to create a bootable USB volume for testing potential PC purchases for compatibility with Lightworks under Linux

Testing with the free graphics drivers

If you intend to test the performance with the free graphics drivers, I would recommend that you make a persistent live system. You can use the tool mkusb for this purpose.

A [persistent] live system is very portable between computers, so likely to work when you have the opportunity to test a new computer.

Testing with a proprietary nvidia driver

If you intend to test the performance with a proprietary nvidia graphics driver, I would recommend that you make an installed system, that boots in UEFI mode.

Recently I answered a question here at AskUbuntu, that should help you make such a system.

Boot Ubuntu from external drive

(Of course, in addition to those instructions, you should install an nvidia driver, that is likely to work with the graphics chips/card that you want to test, and your particular software, Lightworks.)

Custom live USB volume

Unless you already know how to do it, it is probably too difficult to create a custom live USB volume for this purpose.

Borrow a PC

Installed systems are portable, but not as portable as [persistent] live systems.

Mac computers are different from the standard PCs that are delivered with Windows, so I suggest that you borrow a standard PC to build the test volume, if you want to make an installed system and test with a proprietary nvidia driver. It would help if the computer is rather new to have hardware that is similar to what you intend to test (and of course boot in UEFI mode).

UEFI/BIOS system

You might have to turn off secure boot in order to make the computer boot from a USB drive. This is different between computers, depending on the UEFI/BIOS system. I don't think that all sales people can help you with that; you might need some research before visiting the store in order to succeed.

Several HP computers boot only from USB via grub if there is an MSDOS partition table, not if there is a GUID partition table, GPT.

Some UEFI/BIOS/motherboard systems are extra tricky, and you need some special boot option to make the computer boot from USB. Sometimes it seems like the manufacturers use non-standard features and tweaks to make it difficult to boot anything but Windows.

Preliminary testing

I suggest that you test your USB drive in some computers, before visiting the stores and the real testing. You can ask friends, relatives and colleagues to try in their computers. This way you will get a feeling of how easy it will be to do the real testing. Maybe you have to modify the system in order to make it more portable.