How can I add Linux to my system with Windows 10 and El Capitan already running?

I have 2 500GB SSD's. One 500 GB will only have Windows 10. The other one currently has only El Capitan but I used Disk Utility to add another partition of 250GB and named it "Linux"

I want to add a Linux distro to that 250GB partition so that SSD will have El Capitan and Linux.

Thanks for the help.

hdubb said:

I have 2 500GB SSD's. One 500 GB will only have Windows 10. The other one currently has only El Capitan but I used Disk Utility to add another partition of 250GB and named it "Linux"

I want to add a Linux distro to that 250GB partition so that SSD will have El Capitan and Linux.

Thanks for the help.

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First thing to do is use disk utility to delete the partition you created, leaving it free space. Then, when you set up your Linux partitions you will select the format for each partition during the install process. Be sure you install Grub in EFI mode. Clover will not boot it installed legacy mode.

Going Bald said:

First thing to do is use disk utility to delete the partition you created, leaving it free space. Then, when you set up your Linux partitions you will select the format for each partition during the install process. Be sure you install Grub in EFI mode. Clover will not boot it installed legacy mode.

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When I use disk utility to delete the linux partition, the 250gb merges with the other partition and is 500gb. Am i doing it wrong? Should i forgot it to ms-dos or exfat and then run linux installer?

hdubb said:

When I use disk utility to delete the linux partition, the 250gb merges with the other partition and is 500gb. Am i doing it wrong? Should i forgot it to ms-dos or exfat and then run linux installer?

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If you format it XFAT or MSDOS FAT you create a GUID/MBR hybrid partition - you do not want that. Not sure how to leave a free space with El Capitan DU - I wish Apple would go back to the old one.

Going Bald said:

Be sure you install Grub in EFI mode. Clover will not boot it installed legacy mode.

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I also wish to install EFI Linux onto another partition on my OS X system drive, but I'm uncertain how to install GRUB properly in EFI mode.

In the Chimera days, I would, during installation, place GRUB onto the Linux / partition for chain loading.

How to do it for EFI? Is there Anything special to be aware of regarding GRUB installation to accommodate Clover and OS X? Or just let it do the default installation?

StudioK said:

I also wish to install EFI Linux onto another partition on my OS X system drive, but I'm uncertain how to install GRUB properly in EFI mode.

In the Chimera days, I would, during installation, place GRUB onto the Linux / partition for chain loading.

How to do it for EFI? Is there Anything special to be aware of regarding GRUB installation to accommodate Clover and OS X? Or just let it do the default installation?

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So far I have been unsuccessful in this attempt, but in all honesty I have to say it has been more for lack of time to really take a look at the problems and work on a solution.
One of the main problems is getting any flavor of Linux I use to boot UEFI - so far flat failure there, but maybe someone has come up with better UEFI Grub booting in the 4 months since i looked at it last. Debian and RedHat I don't think anyone is working on, but I saw some progress being made on the Ubuntu forum.

Going Bald said:

So far I have been unsuccessful in this attempt, but in all honesty I have to say it has been more for lack of time to really take a look at the problems and work on a solution.
One of the main problems is getting any flavor of Linux I use to boot UEFI - so far flat failure there, but maybe someone has come up with better UEFI Grub booting in the 4 months since i looked at it last. Debian and RedHat I don't think anyone is working on, but I saw some progress being made on the Ubuntu forum.

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I tinkered with this (Not recently though) and it did work. I used Mint Linux which is Ubuntu based. You MUST boot linux in UEFI mode; a live distro disk is ideal and Mint Linux is one such example. I was installing to my live system drive which already had OSX on it. So long as the EFI partition is there and accessible, and formatted with the FAT32 file system, it should work. IIRC the installer created another folder alongside the Clover folder on the EFI partition and it contained the Grub EFI boot files. You can create a new partition using OSX DU, then delete it and recreate a linux partition in its place when you install linux.

There is also a command line tool to switch between hybrid and non- hybrid layouts although i didnt need that in the end.

If you have a Unibeast USB installer from a previous version of OSX, you can boot from that to access the previous version of disk utility which was better than the current one.

Usual caveats apply; backup all your important data before proceeding, and also keep a Unibeast USB stick available for your current version of OSX. Then if linux does bork your boot files, you can get back in there and reinstall Clover. As usual when working with partitions, make sure you dont do anything with the EFI partition or the OSX partition.

I kept mine simple and used a single partition for Mint Linux and put the swap file on there too.

WonkeyDonkey said:

I tinkered with this (Not recently though) and it did work. I used Mint Linux which is Ubuntu based. You MUST boot linux in UEFI mode; a live distro disk is ideal and Mint Linux is one such example. I was installing to my live system drive which already had OSX on it. So long as the EFI partition is there and accessible, and formatted with the FAT32 file system, it should work. IIRC the installer created another folder alongside the Clover folder on the EFI partition and it contained the Grub EFI boot files. You can create a new partition using OSX DU, then delete it and recreate a linux partition in its place when you install linux..

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Thanks for this explanation. I am intending to use Mint Linux and to install onto the same drive as OS X.

So it sounds like the way to do this is to let the installer just do it's thing, and GRUB, etc. will be placed in the existing EFI alongside Clover.

I am assuming that the live USB must be booted as UEFI (assuming that option appears in the F12 menu).

I have completed an UEFI installation of Linux Mint 17.3 onto another partition on my OS X boot SSD.

It is working very well, so far.

As WonkeyDonkey stated, the Linux Mint installer places another folder (named 'ubuntu') into the EFI partition alongside the Clover stuff that's already there.

After installation, the system's Boot order will be reset so that your 1st Boot Device is 'ubuntu' and the system will boot straight into Linux instead of Clover. To get Clover instead, enter Setup and reset your 1st Boot device to whichever one is Clover. To ensure it stays that way, I disabled 2nd and 3rd boot device to prevent ubuntu or Windows from 'taking over'.

When installing, it's important to place the GRUB bootloader onto the partition with your EFI. The default location for GRUB is /dev/sda. My EFI was located on /dev/sda1, so that is what I selected.

One more thing worth mentioning (mabye): To minimize the potential for problems, I did all of my pre-installation partitioning in OS X using Disk Utility. That is, I created a second volume intended for Linux, and formatted that new volume Mac OS Extended Journaled (I did not use FAT32, because Going Bald mentioned earlier not to do this when installing Linux UEFI). The newly-created volume is then reformatted EXT4 by the Linux Live installer. Using DU to do the pre-install partitioning also creates the 128MB gap between volumes. Since DU likes to have that gap, then I prefer to have it there.

I use Disk Utility to do all of this preliminary disk partitioning work, because I don't know how things would work out if I used Gparted to shrink the OS X volume. Best to resize OS X using a native OS X app, I think.

To recap: My system is now triple-boot with OS X and Linux Mint installed on separate volumes on the same SSD, and Windows 10 installed on a second hard drive. All three operating systems are EFI and bootable with Clover.

I hope that this is informative for someone.

Thanks for ur suggestion StudioK. So if I got it right and from what I see from my own installation (X then WIN10 and then Mint all on the same drive), the way to boot now is through BIOS. If I want X or WIN I can choose them from Clover which is 1st on my sequence. If I want Mint I need to tell BIOS to boot from it straight away. Any idea how can I add Mint as an option to the clover loader? Tnx in advance