Saturday, September 20, 2014

Adding Startup Disk Support to Mac Linux USB Loader

Hello all. Here's a long-awaited Mac Linux USB Loader update.

I've made a number of small changes to Mac Linux USB Loader, but perhaps the biggest new feature that I'm working on is making USB drives created with Mac Linux USB Loader compatible with OS X's startup disk selector. Here is the screen I'm referring to:


In order for this to work, a few prerequisites have to be met:

  • You must enable support for HFS+ drives in Mac Linux USB Loader's preferences, under the Experimental section
  • You must be willing to have files placed outside of the EFI folder on the root of your USB drive, as OS X must find certain files in certain places (essentially, we're tricking it into thinking that your USB has an install of OS X on it)
  • You must use a distribution which includes drivers for the HFS+ file system in its initrd. Otherwise, your distribution will not be able to load properly. You may need to disable journaling.
More information will be forthcoming. In the mean time, feel free to comment, email me, or donate to the project.

Friday, September 12, 2014

Donations Accepted

I just want to announce that, starting today, I will be accepting donations to my work. You can donate any amount of money that you wish, and you can even pay by credit card.

This is the best way to help contribute to my projects if you are not a developer. Additionally, you can always help by contributing source code or by localizing resources into your native language.

Like what you see? Feel free to drop me a line or even donate to my work.