burning linux boot disks with mac?
 

I've never burned boot disks before, I've only gotten them from others. I know that burning boot disks is diffrent than just copying them onto the CD, but I don't know how it is diffrent, or what programs I need to do it. Most of the information I've found is for windows, which doesn't help me, because the only computer with burning capability is mac.

What is diffrent when you burn boot disks?
How can I burn boot disks on mac?

To burn a boot disk you have image of (like one o Linux distributions) you need a program that can burn an ISO image (the format the image is). Nearly all programs can do it, so I don't see a reason why the one you have (system is not important here) shouldn't. Search for 'Burn as ISO' or maybe also try to check if you can open the image as ISO.

When you build the disk yourself, you usually need only to check one option ('Make disk bootable') or similar.

Alright, I took a crack at it, and I'm lost. So much information!

Alright, so I downloaded a version of DSL just to test to see if I could successfully burn a boot disk.

FTP wouldn't work, so I just used an http:// mirror, not understanding what I was getting into. Then when I was trying to find information on how to burn a boot disk, I read that you are only supposed to download from ftp, because it is bianary and http is ascii, and boot disks have to be in bianary to run.

I have no idea on how to convert the ascii dls.iso file into binary, havn't been able to figure it out using google.

Just in general I have no idea what I'm doing. What do I put on the CD I'm going to burn? Do I just put the *.iso file and burn it? I read that that wouldn't work. So what do I put on the CD to burn and how do I accomplish that?

Can somebody just explain to me step by step how to burn a boot CD, with mac if you can?

Downloading with HTTP mirror will also work. Or should. The best way is to check if the image is correct. In the directory you have downloaded it from should be file called MD5SUMS. Inside there are values beeing a result of running md5sum (in Linux) or md5summer (in Windows, www.md5summer.org) program. How is it called on Mac, I don't know. For MacOS X it should have md5sum as Linux, but I'm only guessing here.

When you use the program to calculate sum, compare it with the right one from MD5SUMS file. If they're equal, your ISO image is correct.

Burning... Don't add the ISO to burn list. You need to open it. If your burning program has 'Open..' option, use it. It may be the right way to go.

Short theory here: when your burning program has a list of files to burn it creates, before the actual burning, an intermediate file which is then burned. ISO image is that file. So you need to skip the phase of creating one.