install alongside OSX

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

I am interested in installing openSUSE or Ubuntu alongside Yosemite on my mid-2012 MacBook Air. I never installed Linux on an Apple or an EFI computer. After searching around I found mixed comments about how to install openSUSE. Can I install it (or similarly popular distros such as Fedora or Ubuntu) without a boot manager like rEFIt or rEFInd nowadays? I’d like to retain Yosemite as my default OS, but login to openSUSE just as I would Windows installed via bootcamp–although I’m not interested in triple booting, just OSX and openSUSE.

Sorry for the newb question. I haven’t installed Linux since switching from Win to OSX so it’s been a while. I’m also not sure how well supported the 2012 MBA is within openSUSE. If anyone recommends a different distro then I’m open to suggestions.

#2

I did several tests with native EFI install (actually with earlier releases) and as far as I can tell, with 13.2 it should work; but I expect that it will make openSUSE default boot choice; you may need to use efibootmgr later to reset default back to Mac OS X. It makes sense to boot from live distro and record current “efibootmgr -v” output for reference.

#3

Thanks. What is the correct efibootmgr command? Can I run that in OSX and Linux to fix any EFI issue?