There is not enough (accurate, easily-findable) documentation out there, so this is hard-won knowledge.

After a lot of pain, I did manage do make Linux boot in EFI-only mode. There is a reasonable technical argument for this – I see no good reason to add one more layer of software (read bugs) when there is no need at all. Given that both the bootloader (be it Grub2 or elilo) and the Linux kernel support booting in an EFI environment, it rubbed me the wrong way to take the easy way out and just boot them in BIOS mode.

This is how Ubuntu (at least as of 9.10) boots on Macbooks. They run something called EFI which is significantly more advanced (though I think the jury’s out on quirkiness issues and Linus certainly doesn’t approve of the added complexity).Īnyway, in order to support booting other OSes (=> Windows) exactly as they would on PCs, Apple has added a BIOS emulation layer. For those coming from the PC world, Macs don’t have a BIOS. The one thing that did bother me is BIOS-emulation. The standard amd64 install works just fine with some minor hiccups (keyboard doesn’t work on the LiveCD, kernel only shows a console with vesafb). That said, I still don’t like the idea of running a proprietary operating system on it (as beautiful as OS X is )), so I continue to happily use Gentoo. It is an awesome piece of hardware! (especially after my own PoS HP laptop I’ve been cussing at for a while now) My company was really kind to get me a Macbook Pro (the 13.3-inch “5.5” variant).

Uefi emulator mac