Hi!
I’m really interested in trying out PureOS on my MacBook Pro. I tried the instructions mounting the ISO in the boot program ’etcher’ and have also partitioned on one of my HDD (msdos).
I can select the USB-boot when I restart the computer with the alt command. I also got to choose which setup type I want, and choose the first one (the regular one).
Unfortunately I’m stuck after this because all that happens is that a black screen with a blinkning underscore in the top left corner.
Have any of you experienced this and maybe have come up with a solution?
PureOS only comes with totally libre drivers, so I suspect the Macbook has hardware which only works with proprietary drivers. I wouldn’t automatically assume PureOS would work on a Macbook.
Though it could be that the Live image was corrupted/messed up during download - have you looked at the cheksum to make sure it’s correct?
that workaround is pretty insane, but the identified root cause is correct - the PureOS ISO does not support booting in UEFI mode, only legacy boot (BIOS) mode
PureOS is not a good option to install on a MacBook. Fedora makes installers for Mac, so you should be able to get that up and running. The only meaningful differences I’ve been able to identify between distros are which package manager they use and the release model they follow; all the available software is mostly the same, you just might have to compile some packages yourself if you find something you want/need that isn’t in a repository.
You’re almost certainly going to need an ethernet adapter so you can install drivers for your wifi card, unless you have a USB wifi device with open source drivers.
Thanks for your replies! I have seen that some has managed to install PureOS on Mac but maybe it’s more complicated than I thought.
Anyway, I was just hoping to get a chance to try it out since I’m about to make the switch to Linux all the way. There’s just a few things I would’ve liked to try on PureOS, like Bitwig Studio, music streaming apps like Spotify and how it handles Class Compliant USB Audio Interfaces.
I will try that Windows partition workaround and thanks for your help
The libre (read: pure) portion of the PureOS can certainly complicate life on hardware that assumes the availability of non-free drivers. For me, the workaround was simple, I merely had to load the non-free driver package that the Debian repositories possesses. On Macs, sadly, it’s just not that way.
If you want to try PureOS, and I highly recommend you do, perhaps you may wish to consider trying it in using a VirtualBox VM. Here’s a video of an individual doing exactly that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0forLO_61Q.
My own personal journey with PureOS started with dabbling on a test laptop, gaining familiarity, and then making the jump to it being my daily driver. Pure now drives, both at the OS and the hardware layer, the laptop I conduct business on every day. Not bad.
I’m impressed with the advice in the forum, it is very good. And it is true that PureOS does not target Apple products because PureOS aims to be free software to the greatest extent possible and has been recognized as such by the Free Software Foundation: https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html
This is a big deal for us and we’re careful about following it. It does mean that we have to replace things that are not free software or that do not give control to the user and we have done that with EFI. Currently we use coreboot for booting and do not include proprietary code that a Macbook requires.
