SusE 11 vs Macbook

English Install/Boot/Login
1

:confused:has anyone been able to accomplish the task of installing SuSE11 on a intel macbook as yet.
If so, how did you get it done, I cant seem to get it on mine, I tried ubuntu8 last night with success, however I did not like the brown & orange, so I removed.
I want SuSE 11 but I get error with grub: no such partition…WTAT GIVES…
please help>>>>>>>>>>>>
triple booting macbook. tiger, vista, suse11
rEFIt, (no boot camp) manual drive partition from terminal: sudo diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 80G “Linux” “Linux” 20G “MS-DOS FAT32” “Windows” 30G* (*30G represents 197G remaining on my 300G HDD)

2

What are you using to control the boot loading?

3

You’re not using BootCamp?

You know, if the colors are a problem you can change the theme, that’s what Linux is all about. Or perhaps you’d like to try Kubuntu or Fedora or something with KDE 4 so it would look nicer for you.

4

Same problem as I???

OpensSuse 11 => MacBook rEFIt - openSUSE Forums

If yes, you can start to cry… Till now, any one gives any tip…

Cheers

5

You are going to have to provide more information about how you were managing the boot before installing openSUSE. Also, the disk and partition layout.

6

All information that you need about this problem is here:

OpensSuse 11 => MacBook rEFIt - openSUSE Forums

I’m having the same problem!

Cheers

7

I am using rEFIt… ubuntu installs just fine, but I would rather to use SUSe 11.

8

I also partition disk from within mac via “diskutil” resizeVolume 80G “Linux” “Linux” 25G “MS-DOS FAT32” “Windows” 30G
HDD is 300G

9

I’m not familiar with rEFIt. I did look at the documentation. Since this is an EFI machine, my understanding is that you must use rEFIt to control the boot. And, the boot utility doesn’t look very friendly. All I can offer is that I think you would need to install grub in the openSUSE root partition’s boot sector, and then with rEFIt point to that, for openSUSE to boot. This must be how Vista is being booted, too - that is, with rEFIt pointing to the Vista partition to hand off the boot to.

Sorry, but your description of the disk layout didn’t make sense to me. I don’t know if this will even help, but if you want us to take a look, use fdisk to list the partition table and post that back.

10

Hi, yersterday I got my openSuse 11 finished, refit is works as it should be. (MacBook Pro 2.2)

It’s a triple boot system OSX (10.5), Win XP (SP3) an openSUSE 11.
Instead of refeit you can press down the alt/option key at the time the macbook boots up and you get all bootable partitions listed.

I did nearly the same with diskutil, but I had to choose “MS-DOS Fat32” for the file system, because diskutil told me “Linux” wasn’t a valid file system. This wasn’t a problem, because at the installation procedure you can delete this partition again and create the right (ext3 for example) partition.

Be sure that the bootloader is installed onto the root partition und disable writing into MBR

If your SUSE install is finished (updates loaded), reinstall grub as described here

MacBook - openSUSE

and boot into OSX. refit doesn’t install the requiered ext2/2xt3 drivers by default, so may you you have to install refit again and select the advanced settings where you can choose which parts will be installed (I’m on a german mac, so I can’t tell you the right way while it will be different on your machine)
There open a terminal and type in:
$ cd /efi/refit
$ ./enable.sh

After that I was able to select the refit linux icon that bootet me into grub.
You can also add your Windows partition to grub

Don’t worry, it has taken me too a bit longer to understand what is doing refit und you also have to reinstall refit (by “./enable.sh”)and grub after a kernel update (or everything else that forces yast to rewrite grub

so long…

greetings Kump

11

Thanks for all the info. I’m a total Mac noob, but am thinking about trying opensuse 11 on a Mac Book Pro. Please pardon my ignorance, but have some very basic questions:

  1. How do you share files between the Linux and the OS X partitions? Are the file systems read/write compatible?
  2. Are you able to run compiz and 3D acceleration from within Linux on the MacBook Pro?

Thanks for your feedback, and for the great forum.

12

Go for it. Mine’s working swimmingly.

Please pardon my ignorance, but have some very basic questions:

  1. How do you share files between the Linux and the OS X partitions?

The easiest way is to use a separate FAT partition for sharing files. I may be looking in the wrong spots, but I haven’t yet found a way for OSx to read ext3.

Are the file systems read/write compatible?

I’m pretty sure the Linux kernel can read HFS+ with the correct module. As far as OSx reading ext3, no clue.

  1. Are you able to run compiz and 3D acceleration from within Linux on the MacBook Pro?

Using the ‘nvidia’ graphics module, yes. using the FOSS ‘nv’ module, no.

Hope that helps.

13

Thanks billywayne for your feddback!

This may be real dumb, but I thought rEFIT only allowed for 4 partitions: 1 for rEFIT(?), the 2nd one for Mac OS X, the 3rd for Linux and the 4th for swap. If that’s the case, there would be no space for a FAT partition?

14

It’s possible to use a swap file instead of a partition. Actually, this is the default behavior of both OSx and Windows. That’ll free up a partition for your FATness. :wink:

15

i need a step by step instruction on how to get Suse11 going on my macbook version 2 intel::
OS X tiger , vista & suse 11…
2gig ram
300g HD —>80 for Tiger 30 for Suse11 and the rest for vista…
ps this a macbook (not macbook pro)
…------------------------------------…
i get ubuntu 8.10 working everytime i try ,but suse11 no luck…
thx