Because of the way older Macs work, you can’t boot directly into Linux right after flipping on the power switch like you can on a more modern machine. The bootloader is a Mac OS program that allows us to boot up Linux on older Macintosh hardware. Now you’ll have three functional pieces in the folder: the Penguin bootloader program, the Linux kernel (vmlinuz-2.6.26-1-mac), and the RAM disk image (initrd.gz).īefore we go further, I’ll step back and explain what each part does. StuffIt Expander usually works, and I bet you have that utility already if you’ve come this far. Once you have those files on your Mac OS 7.x partition, put them all inside a folder called Penguin. Here are the exact files you’ll need (including the paths to them on the CD): If you don’t have that extension, then you may have to copy them from the CD on your modern machine and copy them over to the vintage Mac via another method (beyond the scope of this article). In my case, I had a Mac OS 7.x extension that could read the Linux CD file system, so I stuck the CD in my LC 575 and copied the files directly. Once you’ve got the CD, you’ll need to get a few files off of it and onto your vintage Mac OS 7.x partition. In Mac OS X, you’ll have to use Disk Utility to properly burn the image to a CD. Just make sure you’re actually burning the image contents itself to the CD-R and not just copying the ISO file to it. You can use whatever modern PC or Mac you’re comfortable with to do it. If you haven’t done so already, burn the Debian 4.0 ISO to a CD-R. It saves a lot of time versus switching floppies or even a CD install. If you have lots of other vintage Macs lying around, it’s handy to simply connect your Linux HD as a second disk on another working Mac and copy a working System 7.x folder over.

So using whatever method (and OS version) you’re comfortable with, install it on the Mac OS partition we just created. Step 4: Install Mac OSĪs I previously mentioned, you’ll need a basic installation of Mac OS on the hard drive in order to boot into Linux. Additionally, you could do more fancy partitioning for user space and such, but this is way is simpler and it works just fine for how often you’ll likely be using your Linux installation (i.e.

Install linux on old macbook