I've just tried to boot the installer image from USB. I get the grub boot menu, but shortly after displaying "Loading kernel and installer initrd" it sucks and nothing more happens...

Was anybody more successful than this? Could you share your experience?

It's been awhile since I tried installing linux on my macbook air, but I found the Arch Linux wiki to be a good resource. Probably also true if you don't want to use Arch.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MacBook

The forum also had some solutions for me, as far as I remember. But again, it's been a while, might not apply to newer models. Search for macbook pro also - the procedure is probably similar.

Well, sadly they cover only older Macs on the page. I tried to use the boot parameters they suggest, but this doesn't improve the situation:

• I can get to a GRUB console while boot
• I manually issue linux and initrd commands and they're both accepted by grub
• When I enter boot command nothing more happens - there's no single line of output on the console, and no USB stick activity.

Looks to me that whatever happens is either grub issue or must be very early at kernel initialization time. Once I'll find some time I will take a look on how this works on other distributions.

Hi,

Can anyone of you please try to install rEFInd (boot manager: http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/) on the Mac, and then boot into the USB using the boot manager?

I just did so. The side effect of using rEFInd is that activity led on the pen drive does blink all the time (even before loading kernel). Otherwise it's the same: it stucks with Loading huge.s kernel and installer initrd. Please wait.... message and nothing happens.

(Solved)Can I just do a normal default Install of Slackware 14.2 using UEFI like I would on a PC?

Well, the problem is that the kernel (and so the installer) will not even boot. I suspect that if it would, you could just do a normal install. As there is no console output I have no idea where's the problem here. Btw. the problem itself seems to be Slackware specific - Arch installation image boots without issues.

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A long time ago, when apples had firewire, I could put them into "target disk mode" and connect to ieee1394 port on a pc, and then the apple's drive would show up as a local drive, and I could install slackware (at the time it was slackintosh) manually, with installpkg --root /path/to/mounted/apple

When they first moved to UEFI, I bricked one, and have never touched a powerbook since. But, maybe they have some modern way of doing the "target disk" thingy, since they're so fancy and all. I just googled it, and this article suggests that they have USB target disk mode. Maybe the same procedure would work if you could get the apple fired up with USB TDM.

If arch installs fine, then you could manually install slackware from within arch.

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I have fought this battle many times on a PC laptop that I have, not a Mac. UEFI is an unreasonable pain on my machine, and I've heard that EFI/UEFI is even worse on Macs. But the experience I want to share is this: try another Linux distro. Even though I have tried many UEFI-friendly distros, my laptop refuses to install them, or sometimes installs with issues or problems. Two distros (Debian and openSUSE Leap) install cleanly and normally, but I have no idea why. Maybe those will not work for you, but maybe something else will. Good luck... I hope you find one that works for you!

After initial failure to get Slackware installer to work on my MacBook, I've eventually ended up on OpenBSD for a few years. Recently however I had to revisit the issue and actually I was able to get it working quickly, so here are my notes in case anybody may need them:

• the problem is caused by GRUB bootloader used for USB stick, my solution was to make a custom install USB with elilo bootloader instead
• I've followed the guide found here http://www.playwithtransistors.com/i...efi-boot-stick - I guess any other approach would do - it's just that you need to replace GRUB with elilo, the kernel and initrd from standard install USB will work OK.

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