INSTALL ON MAC

One of Elementary OS’s biggest selling points is to Mac users fed up with OS X (or running an older Mac that’s no longer supported). The good news is that with a little tweaking, you can easily adapt our instructions to install Elementary alongside OS X.

You need a Mac running OS X 10.6.8 or later, with a dual-core processor, and 2GB of RAM. You must also install the rEFInd boot manager before you begin the process, to allow your Mac to boot from the Elementary install media.

This is straightforward enough, but if you’re currently running OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) or later, you need to temporarily disable SIP (System Integrity Protection)— reboot your Mac holding Cmd-R until the Apple logo appears. When the recovery environment starts, choose “Utilities > Terminal.” Type “csrutil disable” and hit Enter, then restart your Mac.

Now download the binary zip file from the link in the “Alternative boot manager” box—it should automatically extract its contents— and open Terminal via “Applications > Utilities.” Drag the “refind-install” script file from inside the “Downloads” folder into the Terminal window, hit Enter, and provide your administrator password. When “Installation has completed successfully” appears, reboot your Mac, and rEFInd is now installed. El Capitan and Sierra users should then select “Apple Recovery” from the new boot menu to go back to the recovery environment to bring SIP back (type “csrutil enable” at the command prompt).

You then need to partition your drive using Disk Utility, to free up space for your Elementary installation, then boot from the install media, and install Elementary in the same way as outlined in the main text, following the “Something else” option when prompted (it won’t detect OS X). After installation completes, you need to reinstall rEFInd in Elementary to replace GRUB—see the box opposite.