How do I boot the live CD on a Macbook Pro?

Question

Trying to install Ubuntu-11.10-64bit-MAC on a Macbook Pro.

But I cannot get the live CD to load.

'C' does not work

'CMD' does not work

'OPT' no opt key

CD is not corrupt and burnt using the correct iso, all checked.

Installed perfectly on my Acer PC....

God I hate Apple Macs!

Mac currently has Ubuntu 10.10 32bit, but i get issues with the touchpad, I read Ubuntu 11.10-mac version resolves these issues, hence the attempted re-installation...

I do not have any MAC OS installed in this PC only Ubuntu 10.10.

When I press 'alt' the CD does not appear in the list only my HDD, yes my CD is working fine.

Answer 1

Sorted, for all others out there, hold the Alt key down, then wait a while until a CD icon appears, then select in order to boot from CD.

Answer 2

If you press the Alt-key the menu of boot options appear and you will be able to select to boot from CD. On some Macs holding down the C-key will work and directly boot from CD without the hassle of selecting something in a menu.

Some MacBook Pro s (notable MBP 5,1-3) will show just a white underscore instead of booting to the LiveCD's graphical user interface. That is due to nouveau failing on NVidia's 9600MGT. Enabling nouveau.noaccel=1 as a kernel boot option (described here) will fix this. Also pressing F6 during LiveCD boot and selecting nomodset or using save graphics mode with F4 has proofed to work.

Answer 3

Try looking at this article: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/10/dual-boot-os-ubuntu/

Answer 4

You may also want to check out rEFIt http://refit.sourceforge.net/ Note that some video adapters like nvidia don't always work well when booting EFI (video becomes corrupt) but standard BIOS boot should work fine.