Hello. Although I think the title explains most of my question, I will try to describe what I am doing. I am planing on dual booting (maybe triple boot later) my Macbook Pro mid 2012 edition with Debian GNU/Linux. However, I was reading some places where it does not work with Apple's Mavericks (which I am not sure I like very much, now with the fact of Apple's plan to merge their mobile OS with). You can look at what I am talking about here (http://askubuntu.com/questions/36444...e-refit-broken).

Any responses would be helpful!

Hi:

After doing a bit more reading I would install rEFInd to aid your dual-boot up process.
However the article mentions "You will not find rEFInd useful on older BIOS-based computers." So...
It probably depends on your BIOS.

For what it's worth a Ubuntu member I had breifly spoken with last year was able to install Ubuntu on his Mac w/o much greif-

http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/refind/
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook_Pro_7,1

Take your time and read carefully the MacBook Install Section of Debian Wiki, so that you can prepare your Macbook Pro, and understand the terms needed for proceeding with the installation.
https://wiki.debian.org/MacBookPro#F...13_.287.2C1.29

Hope that helps-
https://wiki.debian.org/MacBookPro

1 members found this post helpful.

Hello. Just tried to boot my mac from a live DVD. I guess after the update it will not let me boot from a live DVD (let alone install it ). Does anyone have a work around for this?

try to boot from usb key or dvd. For preparing usb key you have instructions here. ubuntu can be installed to usb key, so changes can be saved. It could even be sd card.

i wouldn't mess around with maverick as you can distroy your main os, and if you don't have installation disk?.. it's a problem than.

When I say I can't boot from it, I boot into the DVD, I get the blinking '_', and then my DVD burner stops spinning. Nothing ever happens. I used to be able to boot from these DVD's on this computer . . . it is how I is how I installed my OS on my computer I recently built (about a week ago) . . . I know they work. I just don't know why they won't boot on my Mac. I did not just try my Debian DVD, I tried my Ubuntu DVD, my openSuse DVD, and my Slackware DVD (note I like to jump from distro to distro ). Kind of weird. I will try to install rEFInd, although I doubt that will work. Yes, and yooy, I will try a USB pen drive, but currently I do not have a empty one at hand. I will make another reply when I get success.

Thank you guys from responding!

It could be that your Mac isn't set in the BIOS to boot to the CDROM drive first and than the HDD.
Check on your boot order.
After the Live DVD/CD is in the cdrom drive shut down your Mac wait 30 seconds than restart and see if it reads the DVD/CD with Linux on it.

The other thing I'm thinking is if your Mac Book Pro came with Windows 8 on it you may need to disable the secure boot. (UEFI)
http://apple.stackexchange.com/quest...-the-shift-key

This should help.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBook

You could be onto something. Macbooks do not have a bios they have an Efi. To boot the cd on a macbook pro hold the 'option' button while it's booting.
On my old macbook pro, it would sometimes take a few seconds to identify there was a disc inserted.

Yes, that is exactly what I am doing. I hold the option key, select the DVD, and then nothing happens, and then I have to force shut down the computer. I don't know if my Mac no longer supports Linux is what I am trying to get to. When I was running Mountain Lion on my Mac, I was able to run the Live DVDs. I might still have backup of mountain lion, so I might try that. Thanks guys for helping. Might be buying a different laptop so I can run Linux.

Just so you know Ztcoracat, there is no BIOS on Mac, and no 'easy' way to change the settings of EFI. Also, Mac OS X is the only OS that is available that is preloaded on Macs.

Thanks for telling me that. Until today: I didn't know Mac's don't have BIOS-

If holding down the 'option' button down while your Mac is booting like Knightron suggest's works
let us know.

Today I happened to download a few different distros. For some very odd reason, Linux Mint boots without any problems. If I am correct, it is a 32-bit version, which is odd because I happen to have a 64-bit version of Mac OS X (the only version, currently). I don't think that it is the fact that it was 32-bit, but the fact that the DVD had 2 partition, one that the Mac called 'Windows' (which is what Mac OS X calls every non-Apple bootable DVD, to of my knowledge), and one called EFI. If I boot from the one called 'EFI', it works fine. So, in all ends, I think that the Distribution MUST have EFI support (which I used to be able to boot ones without, but ever since the update the computer won't boot them). So, I think I am stuck with Mint if I want to install a distro. I think I will download the KDE version before I go installing it however . . .

By the way, does anyone know any Distribution that has EFI support other than Mint?

Fedora has EFI support-

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/EFI

Check if your system is supported.

http://anee.me/installing-fedora-on-mac-book-pro/

2 members found this post helpful.

Yes, it printed exactly what you said it would, Ztcoracat. I will be installing that when I get the time. Thanks for all the help guys!

Your very Welcome!